G. Love & Special Sauce emerged from Philadelphia's music scene in the early 1990s with a sound they coined "hip-hop blues" — a genre-blurring mix of blues, hip-hop, jazz, and folk that has kept them a fixture of American roots music for over three decades. Founded in 1993 by frontman G. Love (Garrett Dutton) on vocals, guitar, and harmonica, alongside Jeffrey "The Houseman" Clemens on drums and Jim "Jazz" Prescott on bass, the trio built their sound around Dutton's laid-back, half-rapped vocal delivery and vintage blues sensibility.

Their self-titled debut, G. Love and Special Sauce (1994), released on Epic subsidiary Okeh Records, went gold on the strength of the summer anthem "Cold Beverage" and the fan favorite "Baby's Got Sauce," establishing the band as one of the most distinctive alternative acts of the era. Rolling Stone and MTV took immediate notice, and the group became a college-radio staple.