G. Love & Special Sauce [Vinyl]

G. Love first appeared on the music scene in a pre-Eminem era when a white rapper was generally seen as little more than a Vanilla Ice redux, but his 1994 debut album showed that he had more on his mind than being the Caucasian P.M. Dawn. As these tracks make apparent, G. Love (Philadelphia-born Garrett Dutton) was influenced as much by blues as hip-hop. His lazy, drawling rhyme style made him sound more like an early Dirty South proponent than a Philly boy, but it merged perfectly with the swampy blues grooves he laid down on his guitar, which were picked up on by his band, Special Sauce. The collision of hip-hop beats, blues riffs, and Sylvester-the-Cat MC-ing made for an unusual combination, but G. Love's debut was warmly received, laying the groundwork for his future refinement of the style.