TAKE TWO: SALT-N-PEPA

Back in the early days of hip-hop and rap, it was dominated by male artists who regularly used ugly, sexist lyrics in their songs and commonly objectified women in their their music videos. But Salt-N-Pepa came along to combat that with positive messages in their music involving female empowerment and sexual liberation to become one of the first commercially successful all-female hip-hop acts.

While they were both attending nursing school in Queens, New York, Cheryl James and Sandra Denton met and became fast friends. They later met Hurby "Luv Bug” Azor who was studying music production and asked them to provide vocals for a class project. Calling themselves, “Super Nature” along with DJ Latoya Hanson, the track was called “The Showstopper”, an answer song to Doug E. Fresh’s 1985 single, “The Show”.  The record received enthusiastic response after some airplay at a local New York rap station and an indie record label, Pop Art Records released the song with it becoming a modest national hit.

This lead to the group being signed to Next Plateau Records and was renamed “Salt” (James) and “Pepa” (Denton). Hanson decided to leave the act and was replaced by Deidra Roper aka “DJ Spinderella” and the trio released their debut album, “Hot, Cool & Vicious” in 1986. With production by Azor who was now the group’s manager and dating James, the record had a few minor hits on the r&b chart but after some DJs in San Francisco remixed the B-side of the single, “Tramp”, “Push It” (featuring lyrics that were considered very risque at the time) became a smash hit reaching the top-ten around the globe with the exception of U.S. where it only reached number nineteen on the pop chart.  Salt-N-Pepa continued to have chart success with the singles, “Shake Your Thang”, “Expression” , “Do You Want Me” and “Let’s Talk About Sex” but it would be their fourth studio album that would take them to the next level.

For the first time, the ladies worked along with Azor to write and produce "Very Necessary" in 1993 and it paid off with three major hits; "Shoop", "Whatta Man" (which featured vocals by En Vogue) and "None of Your Business". The album went on to sell over seven million copies worldwide and the group won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance.

However, by the time of their follow-up release, "Brand New" in 1997,  James had ended her relationship with Azor and the group completely severed ties with him due to them feeling cheated out of royalty payments. The trio worked with other writers and produced the album largely by themselves yet it failed to generate much attention. Feeling burned out by the music business, "Salt" decided to leave the act in 2002 which seemed to bring an end to Salt-N-Pepa.

But some things weren't meant to last and after coming together to perform on VH-1’s Hip Hop Honors program in 2006, Salt-N-Pepa have officially reunited. Although they still have not recorded any new music, the trio have appeared on their own reality show in 2007 and continue to perform in several concerts and tours including being a part of a current world tour called “I Love The 90’s”.

Let’s see this legendary hip-hop act in action with some videos featuring two of my favorite tunes by Salt-N-Pepa: