Sauce Money is a rapper from the Marcy Projects of Brooklyn, NY, notorious most for Def Jam honcho and 9-year rap veteran Jay-Z. Sauce was one of the first rappers to run with Jay at the start of his career; the two formed a trio with Jaz-O, who gave Jay his first break in the music biz.
Sauce was known to wow hip-hop heads with his punchlines, and along with the well-known deceased Harlem rapper Big L can probably be attributed for the popularity of punchlines with most mixtape rappers today. He was featured on Jay-Z’s debut, Reasonable Doubt, on the DJ Premier-produced “Bring it On”, and on Jay’s third and breakthrough album Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life on the track “Reservoir Dogs” with The LOX and Beanie Sigel. He also briefly had beef with Nas’ then-protege Nature, which may have contributed to the eventual rivalry between Jay-Z and Nas.
As reported by Jaz-O, he and Sauce Money were never very comfortable with signing to Roc-A-Fella Records or being managed by Dame Dash, as Jay-Z was. So it was with little surprise when Sauce left the label with little fanfare and was scarcely heard from again until 1997, when he won a Grammy for ghostwriting Puff Daddy’s tribute to The Notorious B.I.G., “I’ll Be Missing U”.
He eventually released his debut and only album, Middle Finger U, on Priority Records in 2000. The album featured one guest spot from Jay-Z and one track produced by DJ Premier, but otherwise had little cause to draw attention. He released 1 single from this project “For My Hustlaz”. In 2005, he appeared at Jay-Z’s I Declare War concert to perform “Reservoir Dogs”, but his presence was overshadowed by the surprise arrival of Nas. Sauce has become mostly a ghostwriter for various artists, staying low-key in hip-hop. |
