Gilles Deleuze & Gucci Mane: Minor Literature Becoming Meme John Duncan Bass (2017) in a 2013 Interview with VICE's

Gilles Deleuze & Gucci Mane: Minor Literature becoming meme John Duncan Bass (2017)

In a 2013 interview with VICE’s NoiseyRaps, the rapper Gucci Mane provided some philosophical insight into the minor usage of a quotidian English word: sauce, a common argot in the ‘trap’ music subculture. Gucci’s musings went viral several years later and introduced the term to a wider audience of pop-culture consumers. But what is the metaphysical nature of this Sauce?

The adoption of Sauce into the popular vernacular follows a model outlined by Gilles Deleuze in his discussion of the relationship between minor literatures and major languages. Jumping on the Deleuzian academic-bandwagon, let’s ask Gilles for some insight on Gucci Mane. In Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, Deleuze celebrates the ability of minority uses of language to counteract the territorializing nature of languages. Deleuze directly connects Kafka’s ‘Prague German’ to “what blacks in America today are able to do with the English language” (Deleuze and Guattari, 17). Writing in 1986, seven years after the release of Rapper’s Delight, a symbolic origin point for the historical discussion around rap music and Hip-Hop culture on a broader scale, Deleuze’s statement carries a surprising amount of critical weight and historical accuracy.

Deleuze outlines three characteristics common to minor literatures: the deterritorialization of language, an inherent political nature, and a collective value. In support of Deleuze’s first characteristic of minor literature, linguist H. Samy Alim argues that language is central to the Hip Hop Nation, which he describes as the “borderless” composite of hip hop communities around the world (Alim, #). To paraphrase Deleuze, ‘in short, (t)rap English is a deterritorialized language, appropriate for strange and minor uses.’

Alim also provides defense for all of Hip-Hop Language’s inherent political bent in his ten tenets of Hip-Hop Nation Language, specifically linking the language to the surrounding sociopolitical circumstances facing Black communities such as police brutality and disproportionate incarceration rates. This inherent politicism can be seen even in the genre title Trap, a reference to the systemic socioeconomic circumstances facing inner city minority communities in the United States that traps young people of color in school-to- prison pipelines and cycles of economic exploitation. This term also presents a great deal of deterritorialization; capable of being used as a noun that refers specifically to “borderless” Hip-Hop communities (location: ‘in the trap’) as well as a verb that passively acknowledges the community’s part in perpetuating this system (‘we are trapping’).

Deleuze’s third characteristic of minor literatures, their collective value or collective enunciation is a fitting segway into the conversation surrounding Sauce. Sauce’s appearance in Hip-Hop Language and lyrics is nothing new and might be interpreted as an evolution of the term ‘Juice,’ a popular vernacular term used through the 1990s in reference to an intangible element whose possession is felt, understood and respected. The adoption and use of Sauce, Juice, Trap and terms like them tells us little — collective adoption is not the equivalent of collective enunciation — however Gucci Mane’s readily delivered answers outlining the nature of Sauce demonstrate an ingrained understanding of the term’s collective enunciation, the language’s collective value.

For Deleuze there is an intermediary step between the speaker (or the author) and the word (or the language) — this between-space is syntax — style. Deleuze: “I should like to say what a style is. It belongs to people of whom you normally say, ‘They have no style’…. It is an assemblage, an assemblage of enunciation. A style is managing to stammer in one’s own language…. Not being a stammerer in one’s speech, but being a stammerer of language itself. Being like a foreigner in one’s own language” (Dialogues, 4). By developing new and often subversive sociopolitical meanings for quotidian English words, Hip Hip Language and more recently Trap English create a collective enunciation that is heard as a styleless ‘stammering’ to the primary speakers of the Major Language.

At the core of Gucci’s exposition on Sauce is the ontological nature of said Sauce — specifically the means and implications of acquiring and embodying Sauce. Gucci: “You gotta keep a little money in your pocket and you’ve gotta have swag. Because money can’t buy flavor…. See, when I ain’t have no money, I still had sauce.” Gucci Mane’s introduction to the term sauce contains two points worth mentioning. First, the natural fluidity with which Gucci Mane moves between terms such as Sauce and Swag (and later Seasoning), indicates the community’s ubiquitous, intuitive understanding of the term — it’s collective enunciation. More importantly, this first statement provides the basis for the first characteristic of Sauce: Sauce exists independently of economic markets. Gucci establishes an immediate distinction between capital/commodity and the notion of Sauce through the use of a Deleuzian AND (“You gotta keep a little money in your pocket AND you’ve gotta have swag.”).

Gucci Mane continues to elaborate on the nature of Sauce, “If you don’t got no sauce, then you’re lost. But you can also get lost in the sauce.… an overdose of sauce. No meat, just sauce.” This statement establishes the critical nature of balance in one’s possession or containment of Sauce, an issue later addressed by the third characteristic of Sauce. In the pause that follows, Gucci Mane is asked if it is possible to “be born with sauce.” A look of sincere, disbelief crosses Gucci’s face before he looks straight to the camera (as if he and the viewer are both aware of something the interviewer is not) and responds, “No, you can’t [be] born with sauce. How you gonna be born with seasoning? You gotta get seasoned. I wasn’t born with all this sauce, I had to acquire this sauce.”

This last passage tells us two things about the ontological nature of Sauce and leads to the second defining characteristic; Sauce is not innate and must be acquired. It has already been established that Sauce operates parallel to economic markets and cannot be purchased (“money can’t buy flavor”), yet Gucci Mane has clearly stated that he “had to acquire this sauce.” Rather than an active and instant process (i.e. economic transaction, verbal agreement, etc.) the acquisition of Sauce is a passive process of exposure. Life experiences, internalized and embodied (in a similar manner as Bergsonian Memory), can be understood as Seasoning; Gucci employs Seasoning to mean both flavor (an established alternative for style) as well as age or experience (i.e. a seasoned veteran). Seasoning expresses itself through the body, manifesting as Sauce.

To establish the third rule of Sauce we will return to the second element of Gucci Mane’s argument, the implications of one’s relative embodiment of Sauce. This relationship can be understood in terms of an equilibrium of Sauce: “If you don’t have no sauce then you’re lost, but you can also get lost in the sauce.” In order to unpack this statement we will first dissect the concept of being ‘lost without Sauce.’ If one lacking Sauce inherently lacks direction, not only must Sauce be acquired, Sauce MUST be acquired.

Unfortunately finding oneself isn’t as simple as acquiring Sauce since, “you can also be lost in the sauce,” and a life lost in the Sauce can be as dire as one lost without Sauce. In this sense, acquiring or embodying Sauce becomes an internal and external conflict. Sauce becomes Tolkein’s ‘One Ring,’ capable of both providing salvation and corrupting the soul. Gucci reinforces this point and provides additional clarity through his continuation, “Overdose of sauce. No meat, just sauce.” The idea of overdosing on Sauce lends severity to the notion of being lost in the Sauce. If being lost in the Sauce means losing one’s life (or losing control of one’s life as the case may be), balance becomes all the more important. The final element of this passage, “No meat, just sauce” can be read as a critique of style lacking substance; a minor literature robbed of its inherent political nature.

The idea of being lost in style did not go unaddressed by Deleuze. Liken this concept to the Deleuzian notion of ‘author-becoming-character,’ attempting to act rather express one’s own style: “Virginia Woolf and her gift of passing from one reign to another, from one element to another; did it need Virginia Woolfe’s anorexia?” (Dialogues II, 51). This argument can be extended to fit our present case — ‘Gucci Mane’s Sauce; did it need Gucci Mane’s traumatic background?’ Was it necessary for Gucci Mane to live the extreme poverty and extreme excess that he describes in his music in order to acquire this Seasoning, in order to express this Sauce. Is this traumatic background the most complex Seasoning? Does suffering yield Sauce? Perhaps this information can’t be derived from Gucci’s brief exposition, and sadly many more souls will be lost in the Sauce (and many many more lost without Sauce) before we have an answer to that question.