Nigerian rapper, Babalola Falemi a.k.a Sauce Kid or Sinzu who relocated to the United States but bagged a 2 years jail sentence, after he obtained stolen bank card numbers and information from their owners to reportedly steal $15,388, has been released from a federal prison in the US.
Sauce Kid reportedly withdrew cash from bank ATMS and bought merchandise from stores between July 23 – 26, 2016, using blank plastic cards which he encoded the account numbers to.
When Sinzu first hit the ground running, no one would have projected that he would hit these low levels of alleged criminality, and lose focus on his music. And that’s because he showed so much promise. Everyone believed in his talent because he had it in him.
The first time Nigerians were introduced to Sauce Kid was in 2005 – his first ever single ‘Omoge’ featuring the legendary Mike Okri and was a mild hit. It was fresh, different and had the ‘swagger’ Nigerian artistes had been mimicking for years.
The following year, he dropped his first mixtape ‘Best of Both Worlds: Money Long The Mixtape’. The idea of the mixtape was to deliver Nigerian lingo on Western beats, with Western flows. And it worked, the mixtape is still regarded as one of the best.
The mixtape changed the music culture. Previously, rappers had focused on releasing albums, with only Modenine ruling mixtape world by recording over popular beats. Sinzu’s mixtape impacted on the culture. And it wasn’t even free. Alaba made some money on that one.
The lead single from the mixtape was ‘Yebariba’, a cover of Remy Ma’s ‘Conceited’, which was more than significantly popular and was followed by a video of the remix. His talent was exceptional. Before M.I Abaga came with the Hip-Hop renaissance in 2008, Sinzu had already started to breathe in some fresh air into the game.
