773. G. Love and Special Sauce - G. Love and Special Sauce (1994)

Track Listing

1. The Things That I Used To Do
2. Blues Music
3. Garbage Man
4. Eyes Have Miles
5. Baby's Got Sauce
6. Rhyme for the Summertime
7. Cold Beverage
8. Fatman
9. This Ain't Living
10. Walk To Slide
11. Shooting Hoops
12. Some Peoples Like That
13. Town To Town
14. I Love You

Review

First there was Blues, then there was Jazz, then there was Vanilla Ice, and when all of those got stuck in a blender you got G. Love and Special Sauce. Fortunately the crap that was Vanilla Ice was well diluted in this milkshake.

So yeah, white rappers... not usually a very successful endeavour, well you could say Eminem, but I find him ridiculous and annoying. G. Love and Special Sauce, are, however able to create their own niche of very good white hip-hop.

The smart thing about the music of G. Love is that they are not attempting to imitate black hip-hop culture, much like the Beastie Boys don't, as it always comes off wrong and inauthentic when middle class white boys do it. G. Love mix it with Blues, Jazz and Folk avoiding sampling to draw on an older African-American musical well. And it works surprisingly well. Some of the songs are positively bouncy and catchy like Baby's Got Sauce or Cool Beverage, and all the tracks work fantastically well here. A really enjoyable album.

Track Highlights

1. Baby's Got Sauce
2. Cool Beverage
3. Blues Music
4. Some Peoples Like That


Final Grade

9/10


Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In the episode A.T. The Abusive Terrestrial of the series American Dad!, the song "Cold Beverage" is played during a scene with the Mr. Pibb mobile.

Cold Beverage: