G. Love On 'G. Love & Special Sauce' At 30: Revisiting A Classic Document Of The Hip-Hop Blues | GRAMMY.com (2024)

It's been decades since G. Love was a hip-hop-loving kid living with his parents in Philadelphia. But he kept their breakfast table.

Today, at his cozy-looking Cape Cod home, the artist born Garrett Dutton sits at that very table. Over Zoom, one also notices his conspicuous tattoos. Emblazoned on his left forearm is his seven-year-old's name and birthday; on his right, his three-year-old's. (His eldest is near the crook of his elbow; his two-year-old is pending.

The table and tats make this conversation about his debut album rather poignant. "These songs have given me everything that I love in life," he says of G. Love and Special Sauce's self-titled 1994 debut. "I wouldn't have met my wife if I wasn't a musician; I wouldn't have had my kids.

"Music has really given me everything in my life. In particular, this record," he continues. "So, I'm happy to have this milestone."

Naturally so: G. Love and Special Sauce kicked off a fruitful career in what he calls "the hip-hop blues." While both genres are offshoots of Black American music, with a plethora of common DNA, nobody combined them as Dutton did; strictly speaking, he might be the sole occupant of this lane.

At times, it's been a turbulent ride. Over the ensuing three decades, the music industry's fluctuated, and so have the college rock favorites' cachet — despite releasing albums easily of G. Love and Special Sauce's quality, like 1999's Philadelphonic and 2022's Philadelphia Mississippi. Recently, their drummer, Jeff "Houseman" Clemens, retired from the road.

But the genial, gracious Dutton stayed steady on the wheel. Sure, they're nothing if not idiosyncratic; Google their name and "laid-back" and see how many hits you get. But G. Love has managed to do what numberless acts can't: last.

Happily, in 2024, G. Love and Special Sauce are on an upswing. They remain a live favorite; the thirst for "Cold Beverage" and the rest is unabated. They've signed with new management, in Regime Music; perhaps that nudged them to put some muscle into G. Love and Special Sauce's 30th anniversary.

G. Love and Special Sauce is also something of a nexus: from here, you can go in so many directions — from alternative hip-hop to crackly Delta blues to peak 2000s sandals-core, like his longtime colleague Jack Johnson. Could this aesthetic resurge, like shoegaze or indie sleaze or Myspace emo? Revisit G. Love and Special Sauce, and you be the judge.

Back when Dutton's breakfast table sat in Philadelphia, the sounds of the Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., Eric B. and Rakim, LL Cool J, Boogie Down Productions, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest lit up Dutton's dome.

"My generation was the first generation of kids to grow up as fans of hip-hop," Dutton explains. But being a practitioner seemed to be off the table.

"I definitely never thought about trying to be a rapper, because at that time, except for the Beastie Boys, Vanilla Ice, and 3rd Base, there were really not many white people rapping," he continues. "Because it was Black music that was coming out of the Black community, and it was so great that it took over the whole world, to where it is now — where it's part of the production on most records, of every genre."

Instead of rocking the mic, Dutton opted to strum an acoustic guitar, and be a folkie a la Bob Dylan. But then he discovered John Hammond, and that was his portal into the blues: Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, other foundational figures.

As a street musician, Dutton rapped Eric B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full" over a blues riff. Eureka. "It was like the whole sky opened up and the light shined down on me and it was like, 'Oh, this is it,'" he recalls, still seeming in awe."

The band grew from there: at a solo performance in Boston, Dutton met Clemens, and later, bassist Jim "Jimi Jazz" Prescott. Their aesthetic developed around thrift-store polyester leisure suits, pawn-shopped guitars, and an antiquated, oversized kick drum.

"And I know that's where Jack White got his whole aesthetic," Dutton claims. "From seeing me play that pawn shop guitar — except he really dialed it in." (He remembers White rolling up to a Pontiac show that Kid Rock and the Black Crowes' late keyboardist, Eddie Harsch, attended.

Despite being signed to OKeh Records — a subsidiary of Epic — as a "developing artist," G. Love and Special Sauce seemed to arrive fully formed. With Boston as a new base, they caught flame instantly: Dutton describes their Monday night gigs at Irish pub the Plough and Stars as "euphoric… we were kind of blowing up on a local level in Boston."

When it came time to record their self-titled debut, the mission was simple: "We were trying to capture what we were doing live, which we were automatically addicted to."

The album's boomy, organic sound owes itself to minimal isolation, with bleed aplenty: Dutton sang and rapped into "some Italian funky mic I got at the cool music store, because I liked vintage-looking s—." (It's in the ballpark of a bullet mic, which harmonica players use; he fed it into an amplifier.)

"We were trying to capture the essence of the people that we loved, like John Lee Hooker, and Bob Dylan, and all the records that were made from the '40s through the '70s," Dutton says. "Performance records, capturing this amazing magic."

Other than "This Ain't Living," which features piano by mega-producer Scott Storch, and a guest appearance by the rapper Jasper, every note on G. Love and Special Sauce is by the core trio.

Despite its minimalism, G. Love and Special Sauce features a multiplicity of moods and shades. The hypnotic "Blues Music" is a mission statement; you want that mellow, loop-like groove to unspool for miles. "Garbage Man" features a stony Bonham-esque groove, with a gigantic kick drum sound and one of Dutton's darkest and most steely-eyed flows.

Highlights are all over the place: the grimy garage rock of "Fatman," the shimmering comedown that is "Some Peoples Like That," the solo valentine "I Love You." But, understandably, the label pushed the kegger-ready "Cold Beverage" and besotted brag "Baby's Got Sauce" first and foremost.

"Some of our more fun stuff," is how G. Love characterizes them. But that tune with Storch and Jasper comes to mind: "We should have come back for 'This Ain't Living,' which was a more social song about homelessness and steady living. It had more merit, maybe."

"Cold Beverage" and "Baby's Got Sauce" put G. Love and Special Sauce on the map, and also carved out their demographic. "We did get adopted by more of a party crowd," he says. "A lot of hipsters that would come to our shows kind of got turned off, maybe, by the college people."

As usual, Dutton flips a potential negative into a resounding positive. "You can't control your audience, and now our audience has kind of grown up with us," he says, noting that listeners who were kids in the mid-'90s are now bringing their kids to shows.

"That's what happens, and that's what you hope for," Dutton continues. "That your audience kind of stays with you, and you're part of their culture and their life."

As G. Love and Special Sauce gained steam on the live circuit, they also got pushback.

"People would ask, 'How can you be a white kid from Philadelphia and play the blues?'," he says. "But artists would never say that. Especially the first couple of years, we were doing shows with all my influences: Gang Starr, Jazzmatazz, De La Soul, f***ing Cypress Hill. No rappers were ever like, 'Oh, you suck,' or 'You can't do this.' Music was just music."

But by Dutton's telling, the live rap circuit ate the band alive. As he explains, G. Love and Special Sauce got thrown onto hip-hop bills with abandon, "even though we're more like a garage band that has hip-hop in our music."

When he was thrown on massive rap bills, "The crowds were really tough," he says.

"We're a three-piece garage band playing on either side of MC's rocking to decks. So they sound like they're at a club, just blasting, and we sound like this little rinky-dink unit."

Dutton was fed up with rap — so much so that he briefly threw it out. "I was like, "This is not what I'm trying to do. I want to play the blues.' Then that's why our second record was blues," he says. That album was 1995's Coast to Coast Motel; due to financial differences, the band reportedly almost broke up on its tour.

"I'd be the first to admit that it came in fully formed and it kind of unraveled as our influences diversified, and what we wanted to do artistically diversified, kind of lost the core of what we did," Dutton says. "But we came back to it; we came back to it."

If G. Love and Special Sauce come caked with unpleasant associations with frat parties and hackysack in the quad, give them another chance: G. Love's catalog with and without Special Sauce is mightily rewarding, as well as comforting.

One solo album from the aughts is called Lemonade, which leads us to one last tattoo.

"This is a funny story: I said, 'If I ever get a record deal, I'm going to get lemonade tattooed on my arm," he says, sans explanation. "The day that I got that, Jeff got a tattoo. We were staying at my parents' house in Philadelphia, and we came back to this kitchen table right here. We're looking sheepishly at each other, and we were like, 'I got a tattoo.' 'So did I!'"

Dutton has other musical outlets outside of Special Sauce, like his band, the Juice; his label, Philadelphonic Records; and his Outermost Roots & Blues Festival in Orleans, Massachusetts, on October 12. But with his long-running band, he just wants to keep going.

"Just to put on great shows and be happy," he says. "We have our health, and we have this great legacy of songs and albums, and we continue to make more." That is living.

Last time GRAMMY.com heard from G. Love, he was joyously paying homage to Brittany Howard under a clear blue sky for the ReImagined At Home series.

And while any cover from the Special Sauce leader and the Juice frontman is bound to be interesting, the world originally fell in love with G. Love for his original tunes, like the ones on G. Love and Special Sauce (1994), Philadelphonic (1999) and The Juice (2020).

In the newest episode of Press Play At Home, watch a chilled-out G. Love strum and sing his rootsy 2020 track "She's the Rock," off The Juice, with a Gretsch and a harmonica on a similar patch of terra firma.

Check out G. Love's infectious performance above and enjoy more episodes of Press Play At Home.

Derek Trucks On Tedeschi Trucks Band's Layla Revisited Concert Album: "There Are Some Nights You Feel Like You Can Play Anything"

As one of the world's foremost purveyors of the hip-hop blues,G. Lovehas many world-renowned abilities. Staying away from an available package of sandwich cookies is not one of them.

"I've come close to forbidding the peanut butter Nutter Butters," the Philly leader of Special Sauce and the Juice tells GRAMMY.com, with a laugh, in the latest episode of. What hewillabide, however, is local craft beer to support whatever city he's touring.

In the clip above, watch as G. Love explains his tour rider and tells GRAMMY.com how he and his band stay mentally centered before the stage lights flare up.

Check out the quirky clip above andclick hereto enjoy more episodes of Herbal Tea & White Sofas.

ReImagined At Home: G. Love Performs A Joyous Version Of Brittany Howard's "Stay High"

G. Love and Brittany Howard are rarely mentioned in the same breath, but they've contributed to American roots music in similar ways. While G. Love did so via his Philly junkyard-rap-blues aesthetic, Howard carved her place in the canon as part of the rock-and-soul band, Alabama Shakes.

Love and Howard now converge in the latest episode of ReImagined At Home. Under a clear blue sky, G. Love joyfully strums and wails Howard's hit, "Stay High," which won the 2020 GRAMMY for Best Rock Song. (It was also nominated for Best Rock Performance; in total, Howard has won five GRAMMYs and counts 16 total nominations.)

Watch the soulful and charmingly scrappy performance above and click here to enjoy more episodes of ReImagined At Home. Will Howard return the favor with a cover of "This Ain't Livin'" or "Milk and Cereal"? If so, GRAMMY.com will be here for it.

ReImagined At Home: Ryland James Performs A Commanding Version Of Hozier's "Take Me To Church"

Maroon 5 keyboardist PJ Morton's guest-stuffed new album, Cape Town to Cairo, is built on an attention-grabbing conceit. He wrote and recorded it within a 30-day span, while journeying the African continent, visiting Johannesburg, Lagos, Accra, up to Cairo, back down to South Africa.

But a good story is just that, and the entire project — which features Fireboy DML, Mádé Kuti, the Soweto Spiritual Singers, and others — would collapse without quality songs. "The songs were the main thing," the five-time GRAMMY winner says. "It doesn't matter who I have on these songs if I don't have any good songs, so that was the priority."

It's a chicken-or-egg situation; the raw materials of Cape Town to Cairo are solid, but the guests helped them truly pop. Of Nigerian native Fireboy DML, who Morton worked with in his home country: "I had a bit of my song 'Count on Me' already, and he sat there and wrote that in 20 minutes," he says, with awe still palpable in his voice.

Elsewhere, Morton hails South African trumpeter and composer Ndabo Zulu's sense of instrumental space on "All the Dreamers" (which also features singer/songwriter Aṣa), and on the highlife "Who You Are," Mádé Kuti's channeling of his grandfather Fela Kuti's essence.

What was Morton's primary takeaway from the experience? Most of us abstractly understand how much Africa influenced American music; it's another ballgame altogether to witness it firsthand — as this native New Orleanian did.

"When I'm in Lagos, Nigeria, and I'm seeing the horn players play, I'm like, Man, this feels like home," Morton enthuses. "I'm in Ghana, and I hear highlife, I'm like, This feels like a second line or something. And then, I eat jollof rice, and I'm like, Man, this is jambalaya. This is their version."

Read on for the full interview about Cape Town to Cairo, and what Maroon 5's working on in 2024.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

When our CEO, Harvey Mason jr., traveled Africa, he called the experience "mind-bending," "game-changing" and "eye-opening." What was your reaction?

Oh, man. That was constantly happening for me over and over. When someone says, "Welcome home," or I look at money and see a Black man on the money, I'm like, Man. This is a different place, and so much love.

But for me, it was all the connections I was making to my home. I mean, being from New Orleans, a lot of the food, the music, the way they dance in the streets, and the way they celebrate, it just was really a bunch of connections happening for me. I'd say it was a life-changing trip for me.

I totally hear that syncopation and swing in Maroon 5.

Yeah. This is a big statement, but ultimately all our music is African music. It's hard to unsee once you see that. Now, all I see and hear is Africa a lot of times. We've used those three chords and the truth forever. These banjos, these things were created in Africa.

I've been in Maroon 14 years, and I think a reason I connected with the guys is because we're influenced by the same things — even in different worlds that we didn't realize were the same things.

Can you talk about the process of making Cape Town to Cairo while on the road?

That's what was so crazy about this — I created the album in 30 days while in Africa from scratch.

So, there was no time to process and then put it together, which was also just fascinating — something I never do. I take my time. I'm intricate. I cross every T and dot every I, so this was an experiment in trusting my instincts and just trusting what I know that has gotten me this far in music.

That was a really interesting part — because I had to quickly process what I was feeling, or not even fully process, but allow my soul and my body to process it and just write whatever was coming out, and create whatever music that was happening in South Africa.

Sounds like a heavy readjustment of your usual thinking.

As soon as I stepped on the ground and the first day we were in the studio, everybody was kind of on edge because they didn't know what I was going to write. I didn't know what I was going to write, but three songs came immediately.

Three ideas came that very first day I was in the studio, and that kind of relaxed me a bit, but that was the process. It was feel where you are, go in the studio, write some melodies, create some music, come back a few days later, put lyrics to that, and then redo.

And so, we did from South Africa, we started in Cape Town, obviously to Cairo, but with Cape Town. Then we went to Johannesburg, and all in between this, I was doing shows. We were doing concerts. I was doing radio interviews, TV interviews. I really wanted to just engulf myself as fast as I could.

When we got to Lagos, we landed on Fela Kuti's birthday, who's the father of Afrobeat. And man, it was so inspiring for me. I went in the studio the next day in Lagos, and the same thing happened — three songs just like that, three ideas.

One thing that was also different from my process is, sequencing is so important to me, but I couldn't leave Africa without knowing that these songs worked together. So I had to kind of work through that process in a truncated period of time, but I'm so proud of what happened. It's just really listening to my instincts, and it is raw emotion, this album is.

Some of the songs, I didn't realize what I was talking about until after I listened to them, and it was like, oh, I thought I was talking about this, but I'm talking about this.

Such as?

"Please Be Good to Me," specifically, it was like, I thought it was like a sexy love song, vibe song, but I feel like I'm talking to Africa.

Like, Take me to another place. I don't need to be in control. I've promised all these people I'm going to write an album in 30 days. Continent, please be good to me. Just give it to me. I have bad writer's block sometimes, so I was hoping that didn't happen, and it worked out.

Fela Kuti… speaking of people who should be on money. But what's his significance to you, personally?

I just think the way he was a fighter, the way he was a band leader, I really pride myself on musicianship.

Again, being from New Orleans — Afro Orleans is the name of my new band that we're going out with in the summer, and it's the horns, it's the percussion and all of that. So it is in that spirit of Fela. Also, his grandson, Mádé Kuti, is on one of the songs, "Who You Are."

He's the first person that made me pay attention to African music in general. My gateway was Fela. And so, to connect it this way, and to finally be in Lagos where he did it — to be at the shrine — was just special.

You made Cape Town to Cairo in such an intuitive and freewheeling manner. How did you ensure an album came out the other end, and not a bunch of outtakes or something?

It was trial and error, man, because initially I was trying to do so much stuff that I was like, Wait, I lost my voice. You know what I'm saying? I was just trying to do too much, and I was like, OK, let's kind of refocus and keep the main thing. So, I had to cancel some interviews; I had to cancel some things and really focus on the main things.

For me, it was trusting those ideas, the things that felt good. What happens in the studio with me is, sometimes I'll have a good idea, but I'm like, well, I can beat that. Let me try to beat it, and then I'll try to beat it. Sometimes, that first one was the one that was supposed to happen, but technically I'm beating it.

But am I beating it? I don't know, because maybe it wanted to come out in that pure form, and not have me get in the way with all my knowledge and years of [experience].

So I started to really trust that. I really just was like, OK, first idea, let's go. This first melody, that's what came out. Let's go with that. Then, I would write lyrics to my mumble track of the melody that I felt right, that moved me immediately. Thankfully, I've been writing songs for a long time, and we got to it, man.

But you're right — it wasn't just about writing songs in 30 days. It's about writing a complete album that I thought was good in 30 days, which is a completely different thing. But I just locked in, man, and I'm still kind of tripping that it happened this way, but I can literally place every song and remember where I was because it's such a short period of time.

I can't wait to fully see the footage of me creating from scratch. We're working on the documentary now, but I've never seen myself make something from nothing [like] this. So, I'm excited to see the inception to the full thing.

What's Maroon 5 up to?

We just did Questlove's podcast and talked about it a little bit, but we're definitely working on a record. Adam's been on fire writing lately, and we just finished the residency in Vegas days ago. We'll be back in Vegas in September, at Park MGM.

But it's going great, man. The music is coming out really cool. I joined at a unique time, which is after Hands All Over and before "Moves Like Jagger" and all of that stuff. It was a transition when Adam started to bring in co-work, and Hands All Over is the last time they didn't use co-writers.

So, now it's back to just him writing, and it's refreshing. I can't lie. It's exciting.

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