The Sauce is a term coined by modern Atlanta based philosopher and poet Gucci Mane. In an interview with Noisey, Gucci mane was asked if it’s hard for one to be “fresh” if one didn’t have money. Gucci Mane responded with one of the most important quotes of the decade, he said “If a man does not have sauce, then he is lost. But the same man can get lost in the sauce.”
The profundity in that statement works on so many levels. The sauce can be many things. The sauce encompasses confidence, belief, self awareness, self motivation and potential. Potential isn’t really pragmatically quantifiable. I can’t really count your potential, I can’t see it and I can’t touch it.
There are countless stories of successful people that were torn down early in their ventures towards their goals. You always hear the stories of Michael Jordan being cut from the high school basketball team or Oprah Winfrey being fired from multiple News Networks. For a lot of people that would be the end of the road but Oprah and Jordan both possessed The Sauce. The Sauce is the same thing that makes Kobe take 400 shots per day. It’s that Sauce that made him one of the best basketball players to ever live. Before any of these people got successful they needed The Sauce.
Some people have an enormous amount of Sauce. Elon Musk is a gravy boat of Sauce. Elon taught himself computer programming at the age of 10, and by the age of 12 sold the code of a BASIC-based video game he created called Blastar, to a magazine called PC and Office Technology, for approximately $500. This was in the 80s in South Africa before Computers and the internet became what they are today. He then went on to invent PayPal, revolutionize the electric car with Tesla, create recyclable rockets that are going to Mars with SpaceX, he’s working on revolutionizing transportation with his construction company The Boring Company which also happens to build family friendly flame throwers, and he’s a meme maker/successful SoundCloud rapper. Elon Musk has the sauce and he’s had it since he was a child.
The Sauce exists within each and every person and has helped people achieve heights that were thought unfathomable at one point. Human flight is an Ancient Greek myth that was made a reality by the Wright Brothers on December 17, 1903. If you would have told people 100 years ago that in the future we’d have devices the size of playing cards in our pockets that carried all of the information the world has ever known and allows you to communicate with every person on the face of the Earth they would have sent you to the mental ward, but Steve Jobs had access to The Sauce. You can direct The Sauce at whichever venture you choose to follow.
Kanye West accessed The Sauce and chose to direct it primarily in the arts with music, fashion and branching off into film etc. You can hear The Sauce in Kanye’s voice in his debut album ‘The College Dropout’ where he exclaims that it’s going to be remembered as a classic album and he mocks the people that passed up on signing him to their record labels. From creating multiple critically and commercially acclaimed sonic masterpieces to creating the most sought after clothing brand and sneakers in the world and shifting the landscape in music, fashion, art and inspiring a whole generation. Kanye is obviously dripping in Sauce.
Donald Glover is another person in possession of this sauce. Donald Glover is an actor, writer, stand up comic, rapper, producer, singer and director. Like Kanye, Donald Glover aims his Sauce at creativity. Donald Glover started off on YouTube creating sketch comedy, he went on to write and star in his original film ‘Mystery Team’ with his sketch comedy group, he wrote for ‘30 Rock’, starred as Troy in NBCs sitcom ‘Community’, debuted his rap alter ego Childish Gambino and went on to make multiple independent mixtapes and 3 albums, 2 of which were Grammy nominated. Glover created his hit FX series ‘Atlanta’, which in my opinion is the best show on television right now. He starred in too many noteworthy movies to mention but some of the biggest were ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’, ‘The Martian’ and he was Simba in Disney’s remake of the ‘Lion King’. While doing all of that he got a hilarious hour long stand up special from Comedy Central, that’s something that Louis Ck, one of the best comics to ever live, said it took him 20 years to make his first one. Donald Glover has the sauce like a McDonald’s dip. He’s a creative that’s been able to aim his sights in all different fields and then master them.
There’s many other examples of this sauce from Tyler The Creator to Nikola Tesla to Leonardo Da Vinci. The sauce isn’t tangible. The sauce exists and everyone has access to it but not everyone accesses it. The Sauce is repressed because capitalism is inherently competitive. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. That leads to a small minority of people hoarding a large percentage of the wealth and resources available. In that system it is more beneficial to those hoarding the wealth to manipulate large amounts of people into becoming consumers of the products they supply. Consumerism started with the industrial revolution. Since then private interests began building consumerism into every aspect of society from policy making, public education, higher education, media, advertising and more.
For the 1% of people in control of the resources in this infrastructure it would be more beneficial to have mindless consuming drones. I hate to sound like Tyler Durden but the system needs people who are willing to take out loans to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. The system needs people reliant on it for all aspects of their lives. So they strip people of their individuality and turn them into consumption clones because they would rather have people that are only smart enough to fill out paperwork and start the machines than a population of critical thinking, highly intelligent, creative, self sufficient, multifaceted people that are skilled in various trades. A lot of us spend years in school learning things that will never help us, taking out loans to end up getting jobs we hate so we can spend our time eating food that’s gonna kill us, consuming advertisements disguised as content, spending billions of dollars we don’t have to buy things we don’t want, until we’re back on the treadmill to work so we can pay off some of that debt. The system prevents you from accessing your individuality and in turn your Sauce because it wouldn’t be beneficial to the current order, and so you remain lost.
Everyone has access to The Sauce, you may have even accessed it at times. It comes out when you’re doing something you’re confident in. When preparation meets execution and you know in your being that what you are about to do is gonna go perfectly before you’ve even done it. It’s that moment when Steph Curry shoots a three and turns around before the ball goes in. It’s that moment where Jordan would be mocking the other players before the ball enters the hoop. Its that flow you enter when you’ve mastered something and know without a shadow of a doubt that it will go perfectly. But for the average person those moments are far and few.
The Sauce is repressed by the system, but every once in a while there are people that find The Sauce and they soar. But in the words of Gucci Mane, that same man that accessed The Sauce can get lost in The Sauce. There are many examples of people getting lost in The Sauce throughout history. Even in Mythology there’s examples like Icarus. Icarus was the son of master craftsman Daedalus, creator of the Labyrinth. Daedalus made Icarus wings and warned him not to fly too high because he would fly too close to the sun. Icarus ignored his father's wishes, flew too close to the sun which made the wax in his wings melt, and made him tumble into the ocean where he drowned.
There are many people like Icarus in real life. People like Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Diego Maradona, Richard Pryor and more. All of these men were once heralded as some of the greatest in the world. Bill Clinton was one of the youngest presidents in United States history and by far one of the coolest. He would go on the hip 90s late night ‘Arsenio Hall Show’ and play the saxophone, he was beloved by the country and he was the most powerful man in the world. He had it all and he decided he wanted more. Bill Clinton decided to sleep with his young secretary Monica Lewinsky, he felt like this would be an easy task after looking at everything else he’s accomplished, but it brought a whirlwind into his life. Clinton was impeached, his name was tarnished, his relationship with his wife strained and his legacy forever being tied with the Lewinsky scandal.
Maradona was seen as the best soccer player the world has ever seen until he was caught in a doping scandal which sent his career downhill. Tiger Woods was before his fall, reputed to be one of the most renowned golfers of all time. In 2009, he was involved in a sex scandal that tarnished his image, cost him millions of dollars in lost endorsements from sponsors, and caused his once promising career to crash. Since then he had multiple DUIs and it looked like there was no way to come back from that. Tiger did end up making his return earlier in 2019 but his legacy is forever linked to his crash.
Richard Pryor was the greatest comedian in the world until he got into various drug addictions and at one point even lit himself on fire, he was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he was divorced over 6 times, had multiple heart attacks and later died from a heart attack at the age of 65. Pryor will always be remembered as one of the greatest comics of all time but it’s evident that he got lost in The Sauce.
These are just famous examples from recent times but there are historical documents of people that accessed The Sauce and were later lost in it. Rome, Greece and Ancient Egypt are all examples of civilizations of people that possessed The Sauce that went on to perish because they were lost in it. Once these men achieved their success with The Sauce they felt invincible and gained that human hubris we were warned about with Icarus and became lost in their own Sauce, unable to see past it. The Sauce is powerful. It’s beneficial and it’s necessary if you want to leave a mark on this world. It can be beautiful, it can be revolutionary, it can change human lives and it can make you loved by millions, but it could also very easily be the cause of your downfall. So educate yourself, maintain your individuality, find your Sauce, embrace it and use it but make sure to remember where you came from and not drown in your own Sauce.
Conformity is the Jailer of Freedom and the Enemy of Growth. ~ President John F. Kennedy