Salt-N-Pepa: We Talked About Sex

I Couldn't Throw It Out, Season 3, Episode 36
Salt-N-Pepa: We Talked About Sex

Michael Small:
On this episode of I Couldn't Throw It Out, we'll hear from two performers who have a major excuse for a party. On November 8th, 2025, they will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This duo, who are known worldwide as Salt-N-Pepa, sold millions of records by bringing a whole lot of fun and their feisty outlook to rap and hip-hop. In 1991, when their career was taking off,

They spoke with me about many things, sex, obscenity, abortion, motherhood, friendship, and the special message they had for women.

[Recorded interview begins]

Salt:
I tell the ladies that this is 1991, time we stop crying over these men and start having some fun, hanging out and doing our own thing and making our own money, being like one of the boys like they are.

[Recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
For more spice from Salt-N-Pepa -- sorry I had to do that -- keep listening. 

[Song excerpt begins]

I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
Before I turned to dust I've got to throw it out

[Song excerpt ends]

Michael Small:
Hello everyone and welcome to I Couldn't Throw It Out. I don't think it's going to surprise you. I've got a couple items here that I've saved since 1991. And the reason I held onto these things is because they come from a time when most Americans knew almost nothing about hip-hop and rap music. It's two cassettes, got them right here. And on these tapes you're going to hear in their own words from two women who changed everything.

Their names are Cheryl James and Sandra Denton, but they're best known as Salt-N-Pepa. To give you a little hint of what they accomplished, before streaming music was a thing, Salt-N-Pepa and their DJ Spinderella sold 15 million albums, which was a huge amount, breaking records at the time. Since then, their song Shoop has streamed on YouTube 140 million times and their song Push It has streamed 202 million times. They've won two Grammys, one of them for Lifetime Achievement. At one point, they were ahead of Michael Jackson on the European pop charts. They've got a star on the Hollywood Boulevard. They've had their own reality TV show and their own Lifetime biopic about them. And their music was even on a Geico commercial.

But just one thing about them that really blew my mind. A few weeks ago I was talking with a cousin of ours who is in her 20s and she had not heard of Salt-N-Pepa. I couldn't believe it, especially when you consider that they're getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So this is definitely a good time to look back on their career. But we need help with that. And right here and now we have just the right person for that.

Her name is Clover Hope. She's a music journalist who has written for Vogue, Billboard, Vibe, The New York Times, and many other publications. But most important for today's discussion, she's the author of the 2021 book, The Motherlode, 100 Plus Women Who Made Hip-hop. Welcome, Clover.

Clover Hope:
Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Small:
I'm so glad you're here. Clover, for starters, if you came across someone who had never heard of Salt-N-Pepa, what would you say about how they were important or what they gave us?

Clover Hope:
To anybody who doesn't know them, I would present that very, very early on before we got the Cardi Bs and the Megan Thee Stallions who were kind of pushing the limits, you had Salt-N-Pepa who was pushing the limits. Here's another way to view the world that's not male-centric. They're doing the opposite of what we're used to seeing in rap music videos. It's like all these guys that they're ogling. We are women and this is how we see things.

Michael Small:
If you had to talk about distinguishing them from other female rappers, is this the distinguishing factor or are there other things?

Clover Hope:
I would include, yeah, like their kind of feminist stance as a distinguishing aspect. Other things might be like style, fashion. Nobody looked like them. Like if you kind of just did a silhouette of Salt-N-Pepa, there's still no other group that looks like that. You don't even have to see their face, just a silhouette of what they were wearing and their hair. They were just like, eye-popping. They were not afraid to wear these colorful, like, very 80s athleisure outfits, like an eight-ball jacket, asymmetrical haircuts. Pepa always had the braids. They were able to be sexy, but also show that women have all these kind of shades of ourselves. Sexy, street, edgy.

Michael Small:
Is it correct to say that they did more than most performers to bring hip-hop to a larger audience?

Clover Hope:
They were among that group of artists who made rap pop just by making rap songs that happened to have like more of a melodic nature to them and wound up on the radio at a time when that wasn't really as widespread as it is now.

Michael Small:
Recently, they sued Universal Music Group for the rights to their songs. And it seems like Universal responded by retracting some of their music from the streaming services because I couldn't find their first album on Apple Music. I know it's complicated because their producer, Herbie Azor, wrote some of their early songs. Do you have any thoughts about the situation?

Clover Hope:
I just find that disheartening. Like I want their music to be available, you know, in the same way we have like any kind of 80s act. Those early contracts were so muddied. And it is wild to think that after all these decades that the rights didn't at some point revert to them. But I know that there were issues between them and Herbie about ownership with him having written a lot of the material.

Michael Small:
They were sort of presenting themselves and known as the in quotes clean rap group. But their songs were the sexiest songs and the most about sex. They even have a song, Let's Talk About Sex. If you substituted the F-bomb for Shoop or something like that, that would be the dirtiest song ever written.

Clover Hope:
So it's weird that they're both known as the group that moms and kids like, and it's very, very sexual. When they would talk about it in interviews, they'd make it clear that, OK, like we're not trying to kind of be offensive or like we don't have this intentionally provocative stance. We just believe these things. And we're talking about it. A song like Let's Talk About Sex, even though sex is in the title, it's also a PSA about HIV AIDS. It's maybe putting a little candy in the medicine.

Michael Small:
Would you say that in general, they opened it up so that women could be more explicit about sex or take a more powerful role?

Clover Hope:
Oh, yeah, definitely. They did open the doors for this conversation about sex, women having sex, and women engaging in the same activities as men.

Michael Small:
Are there any new performers whose style owes a debt to Salt-N-Pepa?

Clover Hope:
You could draw all these parallels from a Cardi B back to Salt-N-Pepa, or from Megan Thee Stallion. You can see a parallel between like a Doja Cat and a Salt-N-Pepa, I think, because their influence is so powerful.

Michael Small:
In 1991, when I asked them both the exact same questions, separately, I wasn't talking to them at the same time, they sometimes answered with literally the same words. I said to them both that others had indicated that they were getting by on their looks. And here's what Salt responded.

[Recorded interview begins]

Salt:
We always resented that people, a lot of female rappers said that we got over on our looks. First of all, I didn't realize that I looked that good. You know, I think there's a little bit of talent there.

[Recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
And now here's what Pepa responded.

[Recorded interview begins]

Pepa:
People say we've gotten over on our looks for so many years. I'll be like, thanks for the compliment, because I didn't know I looked that good. I know it's a little bit of talent there.

[Recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
So you listen to that and you know somebody's coaching them or they're coaching each other. They literally said the exact same thing. Does that surprise you?

Clover Hope:
No, some aspects of it was like planned or whatever. But it also shows that they generally aligned on their way of thinking. This shows me that they were super organized these two. They knew what the questions were going to be and they knew how they were going to answer it and they agreed on it.

Clover Hope:
Their self-awareness did strike me.

Michael Small:
It's interesting they had five albums between 1986 and 1997 and then their career slowed after that. I know in the music industry 11 years is a long time to do anything no matter hip-hop or rock or probably even classical. But it seems pretty abrupt.  Was it because they switched to a record label that couldn't promote them? Or was it because they changed producers? Or something else?

Clover Hope:
It might be a combination and also the industry changing around the mid to late 90s. That was the explosion of hip-hop into the mainstream. And so it could be a matter of more competition.

Michael Small:
And also, I mean, let's face it, they could afford to retire.

Clover Hope:
Yeah, they could just bow out.

Michael Small:
So now that we've got some context, I'm ready to play my interview with Cheryl James, otherwise known as Salt. This interview was done for my book Break It Down, which came out in 1992, and Salt stayed on the phone with me for more than an hour. But because of the phone connection, it's hard to understand some of what she said, so I brought it down to about 22 minutes. And that clicking you hear in the background, that was me typing as she talked because I didn't trust the tape recorder that was attached to my phone. And remember, she is only 24 years old. She'd already had a platinum album. So I started by asking her what she thought Salt-N-Pepa had contributed to hip-hop music. Clearly she was ready for that question too, because here is her answer.

[Recorded interview begins]

Salt:
As far as what we've brought to rap, we've been able to give a female point of view. And we've brought sexuality into rap. Like a lot of rappers that first started, a lot of female rappers, they were all against wearing makeup, sexy clothes, and they were more or less trying to be like the men. But you are a female, you know? And the difference between men and women, that's what makes the world go round.

Michael Small:
You were saying how you wanted the freedom to be able to dress up and look good and stuff like that. You know, I think a lot of the reason why women object to that is because they say the reason why we don't want that is because then they say women have to be a certain weight or they have to wear certain clothes and they have to dress up for men.

Salt:
See, I can't get into all of that because I like to be slim. I don't like to walk past the mirror and go, 'My god.' I do it for me. And I like the men to look at me and go, she's beautiful or she's sexy because then also that makes me feel good. If you feel good being fat, then fine. If you feel good not being able to wear a cutoff t-shirt, have a little belly showing, then if you feel okay about that, then fine. It has to do with the individual. you feel that makeup is phony or fake or whatever, don't wear it. I personally don't like to walk out the house without a little lipstick.

Michael Small:
A lot of male and female rappers now are saying your rap has to be street. It has to be hard. What's your feeling about that? Do you think Salt-N-Pepa is street and do you think it's important to be street?

Salt:
Well, Salt-N-Pepa is not street. Salt-N-Pepa started out to be street. Somewhere along the way, Salt-N-Pepa crossed over. We got a wider audience. People's mothers listen to us. And kids listen to us. Not only just a black teenage thing. We go pop a lot. That's another thing that happens. We'll make records here, right? They'll remix them for the European taste, which is much more poppier than the United States. And what will happen is... power radio here in the United States will hear the European mix and they'll like it better. Sometimes it's really beyond our control. Sometimes I'll hear a Salt-N-Pepa record and go, shoot, and had never heard it.

Michael Small:
You might not even hear the remix done in the studio, right?

Salt:

I would just like for people to know that that is not intentional. It is not our aim and it is not our goal. "This is going to cross over." We go in the studio, whatever comes out of us, it must be what's in us. I would hate to lose my urban audience. And if I can go harder and please them next time, I will do that. As a matter of fact, that is something that I want to do.

Michael Small:
Do you feel you've been criticized by other rappers for being too pop?

Salt:
Yes, we've been criticized. We've been criticized a lot.

Michael Small:
Does it upset you?

Salt:
Criticism doesn't bother me so much as looking into my audience and not seeing enough black people. The criticism I can handle, you know, because I could really care less. If you ain't doing nothing for me, I don't care. You know what I hate? I hate hypocrites.

Michael Small:
Yeah, me too. So tell me about it.

Salt:
A lot of these people who criticize us so much, they're trying to sneak their little crossover stuff in there. Either they'll go make a record with a singer or they'll put in some new-jack Teddy Riley stuff in there and some choruses with some girls singing and turn around and get mad at us and tell us we're in that hard. A lot of them are hypocrites.

Michael Small:
Since we were talking about that song, Let's Talk about Sex, what I'd like to do is talk about sex. You say, "Don't avoid the topic because that ain't going to stop it." So I don't want to avoid the topic. I want to ask you a few questions. You briefly hit on teenage sex. What needs to be said about it?

Salt:
Since we've gotten older and since we've had kids of our own, I mean I've always noticed the children in my audience. A lot of times it bothered me when we weren't really saying nothing, nothing that they could take out into the world and use. Once I started producing and writing more, there's been more of a message. Teenage girls listen to us and me being a woman, I know that they fall under the stress and strain of having sex before they're ready. "Do You Really Want Me" is more or less catering to the girls. I tell them that, you know, you don't have to if you're not ready. You can kiss them, you can hug them, you can tease them, or whatever you want to do. You don't want to give it up -- you don't have to. You know, all you have to do is say no and say it firmly. So they understand that no means no. And the guys hate us in concert.  They're like, "Boo! Shut up!" Also, I tell the ladies that this is 1991. Time we stopped crying over these men and start having some fun, hanging out and doing our own thing and making our own money. Being like one of the boys like they are.

Michael Small:
Yeah. I interviewed Michelle of Bytches with Problems and they even have a song saying, "No Means No." You have chosen to go a very different direction from that group. What is your feeling about women using obscenity the same way the male groups like NWA use it?

Salt:
The only problem, okay, this is America, freedom of speech and all that, the only problem that I have with songs like that is that they get to the children, children hear them. If there was a way that it could be kept from the kids' ears, because I don't think that they're ready for that, and I think that they're growing up too fast, and to be hearing things like that and seeing things like that, to me, I think it confuses them. Otherwise, I think they're funny.

Michael Small:
One of the things that both the male and female groups said is that kids are a lot more mature than you'd expect. They know lot more about all this stuff. They could teach you and me a lesson or two. And what they argue is this is the way kids talk and we have to talk to the kids this way so they'll hear us.

Salt:
Why do kids talk that way? Because of what they hear and what they see. Because everything is so much faster now.

Michael Small:
It's sort of like you don't want to be the one to teach him that stuff, is that right?

Salt:
Right, I don't

Michael Small:
Do you know anyone who had a child too young and really got trapped? Did this touch you ever?

Salt:
Yeah, where I come from, it's like very, very common -- teenage pregnancy. Either you have an abortion or you have a kid and you drop out of school, get on the system or you go out there and you work very hard, not make that much money to take care of, of your kid. But your child, of course, is starting off wrong because there's not a mom and a dad in the house. You know, I'm not saying that a woman can't raise a child because she can. It's done all the time. I feel sorry for their mothers who've already had their kids, you know, and their kids are grown up and now their kids are having kids and bringing them more kids. Usually it's the mothers that are doing all the work and taking care of the kids.

Michael Small:
What is your feeling about abortion? Are you pro-choice? Are you anti-abortion?

Salt:
That's hard because when you're really young, 14, 15, 13, 12 sometimes, and you are sexually active and you make the mistake of getting pregnant and you are in a situation where you have no money, your mother is working two jobs and she has three other kids and you have nowhere to go and your little boyfriend is saying, 'That's not mine,' I mean, what do you do? It seems like it's almost a no-win situation. And I really think in cases like that, it should be up to the individual. I mean, I hate abortion. Really, to be honest, I really do. But certain, I'm not God. I'm not the one to say whether it should be legal or it shouldn't. Because some people, like I said, are in situations where they really can't win.

Michael Small:
Have you seen double standards where men were allowed to get away with things that you wanted to get away with and couldn't get away with? Or has there been any sexism that you've come up against?

Salt:
The most sexism I found is when we made a record called I'll Take Your Man. People found when we made it at the time, too bold for a female. We were saying a lot of pretty rude things in it, and it wouldn't play on the radio, but I felt that if a guy made a record like that, it would have been okay.

Michael Small:
How are you treated? Are you treated okay by men?

Salt:
I think the way you're treated by men or by anyone depends on what you demand from them. And if you carry yourself right and you speak intelligently and you let them know that you're no dummy and you're no get-over, they'll treat you accordingly. So we've never had any problems.

Michael Small:
There is a lot of sexism on records. I actually listened to that one NWA record and I don't know, it just got me very upset. Listening to it, it's frightening and it's scary when they knock the woman over and all that. Do you have a reaction when you hear sexist rap records?

Salt:
When I hear that, the only thing I can say is people, I think they talk either from things that they've done, been through, or have seen. And when I go on the road and it's really sad because I see a lot of girls and they're young girls who come to the hotels and, and, be with these guys and take anything that they dish out. And when we go to concerts and these people are on stage or in the audience pumping their fists and going, "Yeah!" what are you going to do? There's an audience for this type of thing. And guys go through this type of thing. And I think it's up to the women to stop giving them so much to talk about.

[Pause in recorded interview]

Michael Small:
Quick interruption because it's hard to hear what Salt says next. When I asked if she and Pepa ever got intimate with their male groupies, she told me they'd feel like sluts. Here's what she said.

[Recorded interview resumes]

Salt:
The guys come backstage, but a girl on the road can't be like a guy on the road. A guy on the road can have a different girl every night. We would be sluts. Guys come backstage, they more or less say hello, then go on their way. Not only that, we don't want to do it because we would be labeled sluts. We would feel like sluts too. No, men are different in that way. They can go on and have sex with 100 different girls, but I don't think a woman would feel too good about herself.

Michael Small:
You're a mother now of one child? How old is your child?

Salt:
Five and a half months.

Michael Small:
Wow. And are you married?

Salt:
Nope.

Michael Small:
Are you still friendly with, living with, romantic with the father of your child?

Salt:
Yeah, yes I am. At first there was problems and then I realized that there's nothing else out there. So I would rather just settle down and just have a family.

Michael Small:
So you're the one who had some doubts in this case. The father of your child, is this someone you've known a long time?

Salt:
We were dating for not really a long time, for just a few months actually.

Michael Small:
Did you know that you were going to get pregnant? Was it a surprise? Did you feel that you made a mistake?

Salt:
God. Okay, I'll tell you. Was everybody else bearing their souls like this? I wanted to.

Michael Small:
I go right for it.

Salt:
Okay. It was on purpose. It was a planned thing because I wanted to for a long time, but it was always... I was in a relationship for a very long time and the relationship didn't work and I always had a certain age that I wanted to have my kids by and when that relationship fell through, I had hit that age. So instead of me waiting and trying to find Mr. Right, I just kind of picked somebody.

Michael Small:
That takes a lot of courage. You were really taking control of your life.

Salt:
No regrets, I really wanted a child. I'm as happy as I've ever been, really.

Michael Small:
Before you decided to have a baby, AIDS was already an issue. Were you someone who carried condoms to have them there, to be safe? Like, my girlfriend has condoms. I mean, she had them ready and that's the law. Did you do that or did you rely on the man?

Salt:
Well, especially since this happened to Magic Johnson, I've been very, very strict about that, and I wish I always was.

Michael Small:
Has it come to the point where any of the three of you know someone who actually has AIDS? Has this touched your lives?

Salt:
No one like really close or personal, but people I've grown up with. They'll say, "Remember so-and-so got AIDS and so-and-so died from AIDS." And it's scary because it's so close. People don't realize that it's such a vicious circle, the sex ring. People in this business, people in neighborhoods, they don't realize when you sleep with Mary, just because Mary's a good girl and she's only had one boyfriend doesn't mean anything because that one boyfriend he has slept with a hundred different women and it goes around and around and around and who was sleeping with girls that their buddies slept with you know and it's just, it's it's a circle, it never stops.

Michael Small:
In terms of being a mom now, you can't control your life anymore when you've got a baby with you. Have you had any incidents where you had to go to a photo shoot or something and she just freaked out over hunger or tiredness or something?

Salt:
I had to have her rehearse with me for like 10 hours and it was hard to rehearse. You have to stop everything, the music, band and everything, and everybody had to wait for me to feed her or change her. But she's a good baby so it's really not that hard.

Michael Small:
If she's that young, when you were in Europe, was she with you? Did your mom take care of her?

Salt:
My mom quit her job, thank goodness, 'cause I don't know what I would've done.

Michael Small:
Is there something wonderful that's happened that makes you go, oh my God, I'm so glad I'm a parent.

Salt:
I can't say anything specifically because everything she does is just so great. She's standing here on a table. Her father has her sitting here looking at me right now. And she's kicking her feet and I think that's wonderful. So it's like everything, when she smiles, everything. When she gets sick... like, she was sick, I had to go to emergency two nights and I was there from the night to like four and five in the morning. It's tiring and all of that but it's... it's so rewarding that you can even handle those things.

Michael Small:
Do you have any feelings like marriage is not an institution that really makes a lot of sense or what's your feeling about marriage?

Salt:
I believe in marriage because I come from a family where my mother and father have been married 25 years and they're still very happy. So I know that it can work. That's why I believe in it. But I don't believe in enforcing because there's a child or for any other reason.

Michael Small:
But you could see it down the road with you.

Salt:
Yes, definitely. With my baby's father, hopefully.

Michael Small:
Are you at the point where think a woman can propose?

Salt:
Yeah. If she's in the position to buy that ring.

Michael Small:
I guess you are. What did your mom do before she quit to do this?

Salt:
He was a bank manager at a branch of a Citibank.

Michael Small:
And then, what's your dad do?

Salt:
My father is a... well he was a train conductor for the New York City Transit but they have him doing something else now but it's still for the City Transit. My father's a handyman, he refuses to stop working.

Michael Small:
Do you have any idols or mentors or people you really look up to who let you get where you are?

Salt:
I it's cliche and it's corny but my mother.

Michael Small:

Why did she inspire you?

Salt:
I've always looked up to my mother. I've always thought my mother was like the epitome of strength. She always kept going, always taking care of her kids. She has a lot of pride and always kept her family together.

[Pause in recorded interview]

Michael Small:
One more little clarification. Some of you may have heard of Bushwick, Brooklyn because it's full of hipsters now, but when I interviewed Salt in 1991, Bushwick was seen as one of the more dangerous parts of the city. That explains my reaction when she told me where she grew up.

[Recorded interview resumes]

Salt:
I grew up in Brooklyn. Bushwick.

Michael Small:
Bushwick is pretty tough, isn't it? That's very urban.

Salt:
Yeah, it's urban, but growing up in a certain place, you never think of it as being tough.

Michael Small:
MC Lyte grew up in Flatbush I guess and she said that towards the end of high school the drugs started to move in, there were dealers on the street. Was there stuff going on around you that you saw?

Salt:
Yeah, I was involved in a lot of stuff in my neighborhood, but like I said, when you're there and you're in it, it's just normal. Because when you're a teenager, you're invincible. I used to walk through abandoned lots by myself at 2 o'clock in the morning. God takes care of fools and babies, I hear.

Michael Small:
Yeah. The reason why I ask you that is because, you know, they make such a big deal, these guys from Compton, about the 'hood and what they've been through and what they came out of. Well, from what I know of Bushwick, I would say Bushwick is as rough a spot and you're not out there screaming 'Straight outta Bushwick.'

Salt:
I'm not ashamed, I'm not gonna go 'Yeah, we used to kill each other and my brother got into this and his friend got killed.' I think it's a bad situation actually. It depends on whether you bragging about it or what.

Michael Small:
Did you graduate from high school?

Salt:
From Grover Cleveland. Well, I went to City College, Queensboro, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, to tell you the truth. I didn't really want to be there, and I was just going there because it was so important to my parents that their kids go to college. I never did. And I really was more or less trying to please them, and I was miserable. And I was taking liberal arts.

Michael Small:
You would have ended up like me!

Salt:
I was so happy when this came along and I put my heart and soul into it, trying to make it work.

Michael Small:
Is there a moment of triumph you remember, a moment where you were on the stage or in the studio or you read something in a magazine or you just like got that rush like I've made it or you know, I can't believe this.

Salt:
The first time I really felt it, it kind of brought tears to my eyes. We got our first platinum album. When I got the album I was happy, I was like, oh wow, but when I took it home, my father and my mother made such a big thing out of it. And my father was like, for 20 minutes trying to figure out where he was gonna hang this. The excitement in his eyes make me feel so good, you know, that I did it. It was more like for them that I made something of myself.

Michael Small:
What about a moment of fear when you thought, shit, I'm not going to make it? Or was there a struggle?

Salt:
It was, it's constantly a struggle, it's still a struggle.

Michael Small:
In what way? It sounds so great, I mean...

Salt:
Well, you constantly have to please, you know? You can always fall out or fall off.

Michael Small:
Why do people fall off?

Salt:
Well, it can be a number of reasons. Sometimes people refuse to change their style. I mean, I take my business seriously, but sometimes people take it too seriously. They don't know how to kick back and go 'whatever' sometimes. Sometimes it's just a bad attitude. Period. With press, with record companies, you know, people that they work with. Most of the time is when a group can't get along, when everybody wants to be the leader or nobody wants to be the leader.

Michael Small:
So you've all been together quite a while, especially you and Pepa. Was there ever a point where the friction got so much you thought maybe you couldn't continue together?

Salt:
Well, when we first started, God, I don't want to get into that because she might get mad at me. Friction, we get friction sometimes, but we know each other. We've grown to know each other. We know when to stand back. We know when to shut up. When a problem is not going to get solved, we know when to cope. 'Look, we got to talk about this.' It's communication between me and Pep that we constantly keep open. No matter, I know she's gonna get mad if I say something about her performance or if she says something about mine or, you know, even touchy little sensitive things. Whatever needs to be done, we just, for the sake of the group, we get done.

Michael Small:
The election's coming up; Are you someone who's going to get out there and work for a candidate? What are your feelings about it?

Salt:
I'm not political and I never have been really. It's sad because I really need it to be one of my things. I'm the type of person that's constantly working on her fault. That's one of them. Really not into politics and I really need to be. So maybe this year, my New Year's resolution.

Michael Small:
I've been reading all these articles that say rap music is dead now. Part of it, what they say is that it's turned into like pop music that caters to white teenage boys. Do you think that rap is dead or dying or do you think it's more lively, more exciting than ever?



Salt:
Rap's not dead. No, I don't think it's dead. The people that say rap is dead, ask my little cousins. Any little five, four, two, three-year -old, they know all the words and they're being born into this. They're gonna grow up with it.

[Recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
So those are the highlights of my interview with Salt. Clover, did she say anything that surprised you? Anything you hadn't heard before?

Clover Hope:
Yeah, yeah. You know, what she was talking about with "stop crying over these men" and about them doing their own thing. Just interesting to hear her say it outside of a song. It's almost like someone saying their mission statement and then going about to actually do it. You know, so that is impressive.

Michael Small:
One thing that I wondered about sharing, but I decided to share since it was honestly what she said, were her thoughts about abortion because that was 1991. She may have changed her mind completely by now, but also I decided to include it because it was so representative of what people thinking about at the time.

Clover Hope:
It's almost like she's of two minds. I believe she might've even said that, where it's not for her to say women should not have abortions. That did strike me as interesting. She is saying I shouldn't have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. On the other hand, this is what I think just morally.

Michael Small:
I think it took a lot of courage for her to answer that question and others so directly and so honestly, telling me what she felt without being cautious about how people would react.

Clover Hope:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
These are people who had a platinum album, which was a big deal. And she was so friendly and natural.

Clover Hope:
To be unfiltered and to not think about the blowback first does take a certain risk. Creatively, they were risk takers. So it doesn't surprise me that she would just kind of generally feel that way in a natural conversation.

Michael Small:
So I want to play my interview with Pepa now. But first, I want to mention a little bit more about her. I just read her memoir. It came out in 2008, and it's called Let's Talk About Pep. And in the book, she talks about being abused by a friend's grandfather when she was seven, being tricked into losing her virginity when she was 13, getting beaten up by a high school boyfriend, and on and on, experiences that are really pretty horrifying. And she experienced scenes in real life that were like out of an NWA song, I mean, with drug dealers and bad actors who put her life at risk. And she lived that, that you don't get that from the happy-go-lucky Salt-N-Pepa sound, but she lived a life that was on the edge at various times in a way that's really extreme, but Salt-N-Pepa did not do songs about that. My reading, which could be totally wrong, is that the music was an escape from that, and she wanted to be happy, which is what she was naturally, and she expressed that in her music. Anyway, let's listen to about 12 minutes of my 1991 interview with Pepa, starting with her response to my question about her fan mail.

[Recorded interview begins]

Pepa:
We have like army duffel bags of fan mail. Some of them are addressed Salt-N-Pepa, but see, and some of them are single. See, we kind of like single ones. The personal ones like to Pepa.

Michael Small:
If a letter really gets to you, do you answer it?

Pepa:
Yeah. You know, I've answered quite a few, you know. I sat in the office and wrote back. Or I'll drop a line, a thank you line. You know, I wouldn't actually probably write a whole letter.

Michael Small:
Is there any great story about you meeting a fan somehow?

Pepa:
Well, actually, one day, it was in New York. I was driving and this little kid ran in the street and I almost hit him. And when he realized it was me, he was like, oh my God, he went crazy. Then I just kind of took to him and I took him to the movies. I was on tour at that time and I took him with me.


Michael Small:
That kid must have been so happy. Do you get any fan mail from men by the way?

Pepa:
Oh, yes. A lot.

Michael Small:
I was with Too Short and they use in his songs all the time. You got bitch and ho and all this. How do you personally feel about the use of the words bitch and ho?

Pepa:
Just like a couple sides to that. Now, first thing, when they direct bitch and ho and stuff like that, I don't get offended because I know they not talking to me. On the other side, other than that, what I don't like is your younger audience. Like little boys who think they can just call another girl a bitch. You know, because I've heard that in the streets. And rappers, especially rappers, thing is, because rapping is so big, it's like role models. And when they say that, that's the only thing that I don't like.

Michael Small:
I didn't get a very good answer from Too Short when I said to him, don't you think you encourage men to abuse women when you talk about hitting bitches and all this stuff? He was like, well, they do it anyway. It happens all the time. It's out there. I'm just writing about what happens. And I said to him, Well, why don't you write about the nice women? And he was like, well, this sells more.

Pepa:
See that underground music, that type of stuff sells! It's been so forbidden, so long. When these people came up, all of them came out, back then you would never hear anyone cursing and actually making a record about and saying curse words and saying things like that.

Michael Small:
So have you ever been tempted to sell more by putting that in your music?

Pepa:
Sometimes in everyday life, in reality, like when you express yourself, you might swear a little. You know, when you express yourself and you're angry or something, you be like, hey. Sometimes, you know, in a song, like I would've put "So-and-so, he ain't shit," you know. But I know I can't because of the audience that we have. Our producer looks like he's trying to stir up something. We've gotten some couple of songs now that... you're like, "Oh my God." But it's tasteful. But one song is called You Played Your Funky Butt. Really, I wanted to say you played your funky ass, but... 

Michael Small:
And what's it about?

Pepa:
Well actually it's just about a guy, like you go out with a guy and it went straight to their head and you know they get slack. Well this is the part I wrote.

You can't school a schooler
No you can't fool a fooler
Try to talk to one of my girls.
Did you forget that I knew her?
A beeper with no phone
Still living at home with your parents and your brothers
Damn, aren't you grown?

There's another little part that I go, like when he calls me up on Friday night...

He says, "Yo, Pep, what you doing?
I said, "Chillin' in the crib
Paintin' my nails, you know, coolin'.
He wants to take me out
I said, all right, without hassle
Supposed to go to dinner
Ends up at White Castle.  (Laughter)

Michael Small:
I don't see any rappers or very few deciding to get married. Why did you decide against it?

Pepa:
I wasn't asked.

Michael Small:
What is your role as a parent? Your mom takes care of your son. What are your things you do as a mom?

Pepa:
Love. A lot of that.

Michael Small:
Did you decide like Salt that you just, it was time to have a child and this was going to be the father, or was this something where you found out "Oops! I'm pregnant?"

Salt:
Yeah, "Oops, I'm pregnant. But I wanted it so bad. I knew it was time. I knew it. Because right when he was coming out, the doctor said before he comes, what do think it is? I said it's a boy. He came out and he's like, it's a boy. I was like, I'm gonna have my son.

Michael Small:
Is it tough for you when you have all these women watching you and they've got their eye on you and they're seeing, "She went ahead and had a child. Just, you know, why can't I?"

Pepa:
But you know what? Look when I had it though. Because I mean, probably everybody wants a baby when I was younger, teenager, I was like, "Damn, it's nice to have a baby, isn't it?" But I knew then, that's a no-no. Let me get in school. Let me depend on only myself. You know, I don't want to depend on the father or my parents or whatever where I got to ask them for money.

Michael Small:
Is it tough for a kid not to have his father around every day?

Pepa:
It's tough, but that is just hard on the mother, because she got to play the mother and father role. She got to be strong, especially if you got to support him, gotta make him strong.

Michael Small:
Is there someone that you consider to be sort of a hero of yours or someone who really had a big influence on you?

Pepa:
I can say my family and Salt. She talks to me a lot. That's like my best friend. We went through a lot and we know each other. You know, we know each other well.

Michael Small:
Was there a time where she really was there for you when you needed her?

Pepa:
I can think a lot of times, yes. Yeah, when I've been dumped before. Definitely there for me. Man, she helped me through that, boy. She was like, you don't need him. Every time she talked to me, really helped because she cried with me. And then, and I remember another time, long time ago. Like, I'm friendly. I never forget. Hurby was like, people be saying you be up in they face when it don't look good. It's like you flirting. And I was like, "Damn, I'm not flirting. I'm just talking." And I started crying. then, you know, I was crying because I was fed up. Everything was coming on me. And I never forget she was like, how it's not fair. And I know that you really trying to be nice to people.

Michael Small:
She's so great, I want to call her back and have her be my friend.

Pepa:
She's great with me. She doesn't smile a lot so people think she's mean. But she smile with me. See me and her when we're around together we talk for hours.

Michael Small:
You have changed your look tremendously over the years. Originally you started off sort of breaking the female stereotype saying we can be as street as these guys and now you've gone back to some of the really pretty standard ideas of what a woman should look like.

Pepa:
We made the changes to have versatility, but we still do that. Like the other day when we had our concert. We were just in overalls and Doc Martens. We still look feminine, but we were still hard. See, we changed up.

Michael Small: In terms of your music, I have heard people say, they've gone pop. Do you have an answer for them?

Pepa:
Oh, that pop thing, right? I'm sick of that pop shit.

Michael Small:
Yeah, I don't blame you.

Pepa:
You know why I get mad? Because I take my music and I take other rappers' music and I don't see a damn difference. Let me tell you what the difference is. They'll just put out hip-hop, then pop, hip-hop, then pop. So they mix theirs up. And what happens with Salt-N-Pepa is just like a couple of records that we put out, we don't never go in the studio and go, all right, it's gonna be a pop jam, alright? It just goes, then it goes gold, then goes platinum. I swear to God, I'm not lying. Like, these last records, Do You Want Me? and Let's Talk About Sex. We even tried to make a different version of Let's Talk About Sex, but they still play the other, the album version. I don't know, we just have a wide audience. I mean, like in Europe. Right now, we're number one, and Michael Jackson is staying at number two. I have to be proud of that. And Michael, like, trying to get there.

Michael Small:
Do you think that your going around the world, touring, meeting all these people has sort of changed some things about you?

Pepa:
Yeah. Oh God, has it changed. It made me old. It ain't as peachy and cream as people think it is.

Michael Small:
To me it does seem pretty peaches and cream. What is tough about your job?

Pepa:
It's so funny. Just the other day this guy went, "I've been working all day. I mean, I'm not lucky like you." I'm, like, I work. First of all, practice for hours. And then you're always trying to better yourself, making your shows better. Then you have management. You just have a lot of little things, negotiate things you want to be better and someone's giving you a little problem. 

Michael Small:
So you're working all the time.

Pepa:
Yes, I'm working all the time.

Michael Small:
Do your exercise?

Pepa:
I exercise but I have stopped for a little bit for like the last month or so. I promised myself that I'm going back in the gym.

Michael Small:
What do you do in the gym?

Pepa:
I work on my stomach a lot and legs and everything.

Michael Small:
So you're not into taking the classes or anything like that?

Pepa:
Uh, Salt is in there. She loves that stuff. I go late at night, like one, two in the morning, and it's empty.

Michael Small:
I didn't know it would be open. 

Pepa:
Yeah, this is 24 hours.

Michael Small:
Is it in Queens?

Pepa:
Yeah, it's in Queens.

Michael Small:
Do you have a weight that you usually work out with?

Pepa:
It depends on the machine. I'm pretty strong now.

Michael Small:
What are you aiming for? I'd love to hear something to tell people how strong you are so they'll be scared of you.

Pepa:
I just bought a bathing suit that's like real small. And I'm just saving it for summer because I said I'm getting in this one. That's my goal.

Michael Small:
Was your family struggling at the time when you were in Jamaica or when you were in the Bronx?

Pepa:
My mother actually came to America and left my sisters down there. She had to set up a home first and then sent for everybody. So it was hard for a while for her and my father.

Michael Small:
Were you living in a place where there were like drug dealers outside and shoot-ups and things like that?

Pepa:
Yeah, in the Bronx.

Michael Small:
I listen to you and I go, okay, now here's somebody who really went through something.

Pepa:
Yeah, mean, shoot, I could only get five dollars every two weeks. That's tough. Never forget all other kids had money. And I had this five dollars that I spent only like 50 cents.

Michael Small:
And what would you buy with your 50 cents?

Pepa:
I bought potato chips, and, you know, soda back then. Now I look back, that was rough. Then that's all I knew. It didn't seem bad. I didn't know any other life back then.

Michael Small:
Didn't you see other people on TV or whatever, you know, and go, why don't I live like that?

Pepa:
Yeah, but I just I just I swear I always used to say just that I'm gonna make it someday, whereas I'm gonna have money.

[End of recorded interview]

Michael Small:
I decided to end the excerpt there partly because, well, whatever else happened in her life, Pepa did live up to her dream. She made lots of money. Clover, do you have any thoughts about what Pepa said to me?

Clover Hope:
There was one thing that struck me about her take on using "bitch." Just this recurring idea that I would hear over the years was like, "I know they're not talking about me." Or when rappers, like the men kind of like using it, would make this distinction between like, well, "I'm talking about this bitch," or, like, "not you." And that is an interesting separation. It is kind of an excuse. Her kind of mirroring that did stand out to me.

Michael Small:
Another thing that surprised me about what they said was that both Salt and Pepa had babies without getting married. And they were two very attractive women with lots of money. It just seems so odd to me that they could not find husbands who would live up to their standards.

Clover Hope:
It struck me that it didn't bother them, that they weren't kind of like solely focused on partnership or marriage as like an ideal. And that strikes me more as a kind of modern day way of thinking. Like back then in the nineties, it was still like, marriage is the ultimate like thing that you have to kind of like pursue and like you have to find this partner.

Michael Small:
Possibly at that time, there was a feeling that if they got married, they would be subservient to their partner and they wanted the lead role.

Clover Hope:
It's interesting how they kind of have this balance of like conservative thinking and like progressive kind of pushing this progressive kind of thought of like, yes, independence and like ownership and equal rights. And then like, there's just this maybe conservative views that are still held over.

Michael Small:
I think we should clarify one point, which is that both Salt and Pepa got married several years after they had children. As many people know, Pepa married Treach from the rap group Naughty by Nature. He's the one who brought us the chant, "You down with OPP, Yeah you know me." But he and Pepa broke up after a few years and Salt married her baby's father, Gavin Wray, but they divorced after 19 years. And with that out of the way, I think we've reached the moment of truth. I have here two cassettes in my hand. Now I have to say that these have a lot of stuff on them that you can't really hear what's being said. You have me going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, a thousand times, which I tried to cut out. Do I dare to say that I'm keeping what I shared on this podcast and I'm throwing out these tapes? What's your thought on that?

Clover Hope:
I'm always for keeping. I still have CDs, tapes from that time. I do think it's worth holding onto. Even if it's sentimental, I'd rather have someone else throw it out. I wouldn't say do that act, especially if it means something. Make space for that and throw something else out.

Michael Small:
Okay, so now you're my best friend. Well, I have one more thing here actually. This is a copy of my People Magazine review that I wrote when I worked there of Hot, Cool and Vicious, which was their first album. So I was ahead of the curve on some of these things. It's funny, I gave them a mixed review. I said I loved the sound, but I thought that the lyrics were some of rap's usual boasts and putdowns. And I actually said the problem could be that they let their male producer Hurby Luv Bug help write their words. "If Salt-N-Pepa want to be shaken on every turntable, they'll have to spin out lyrics as spicy as their beat." But you know, that's kind of what happened. They ended up writing their own lyrics.

Clover Hope:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Small:
I had to say at the beginning of this review, "But the genre is getting a new kind of seasoning from Salt-N-Pepa."

Clover Hope:
Using the puns.

Michael Small:
That was the way I had to go. But anyway, People Magazine used to have a very complete archive of everything and then since Dotdash bought them, they've cut back on the archive. This review may be not available anywhere. Do you think I should save it?

Clover Hope:
Yeah, if it's something where you have like a booklet you can kind of like have on display and it's just a collection of like printed out reviews that would be cool. I still have some of my earlier clips in a little binder.

Michael Small:
Did you save the interviews from your book?

Clover Hope:
I did, yes. Those are like digital and I still have all of them. And so there is a lot of material. I have interviews from like the 2000s. A lot of journalists should kind of do some of this excavating and see what we have because you never know like what you find. Kind of reassessing history. That's part of why I like to hold on to that type of media.

Michael Small:
Did you collect any other treasures that relate to women and hip-hop?

Clover Hope:
There's one thing that I've kept over the years that is like a rap memorabilia. It's from Eve. 'Cause I went to a signing of hers for her second album. I was like 14-ish, like a teenager. And I went to the record store and bought her CD and then she signed it. Still have the CD. I still have the poster. That is something that means something to me. I would never throw that out.

Michael Small:
Where is it? Is it in a box or is it on display?

Clover Hope:
It's not on display. It's in my CD collection crate.

Michael Small:
I'd like to see you take that cover out. Put it someplace where you can see it to make yourself happy.

Clover Hope:
Thank you for giving me that idea. I could frame it in a cool way.

Michael Small:
It makes me so happy that even though I am probably the world's biggest failure at Swedish Death Cleaning, I was able to give some of the concepts to you so you could be better.

Clover Hope:
Pay it forwards. I appreciate that.

Michael Small:
Remember everyone, you can still buy Clover's book, The Motherlode, 100 Plus Women Who Made Hip-hop. You can support local bookshops by buying it at bookshop.org. Or you can support a huge monopoly by buying it elsewhere.

Clover Hope:
And there's an audiobook version on Audible. It's my voice and a few other famous names that you might know, including Remy Ma, and MC Light is a narrator.

Michael Small:
So I think it's time to bow out before we try to throw out anything. If you enjoyed this episode and want to know about future ones, please sign up for our newsletter, which you can do at throwitoutpodcast.com. You can also link to the videos for Salt-N-Pepa's most famous songs, and the song we discussed by Bytches With Problems, on the page for this episode at throwdownpodcast.com. And last of all, Clover, if I were to ask you what you plan to do for the rest of your day, what lyrics would you quote to me from a Grammy winning Salt-N-Pepa song? 

Clover Hope:
Let's see.

Michael Small:
All right, I'm just gonna tell you, you'd have to say, It's None of Your Business.

Clover Hope:
You know, that was the first one I thought of and I was like, that's too rude. It's None of Your Business.

Michael Small:
Well, you're right. OK, bye, Clover.

Clover Hope:
Bye. Thank you so much.

Michael Small:
Thank you.

[Theme song begins]

I Couldn't Throw It Out theme song
Performed by Don Rauf, Boots Kamp and Jen AYehs
Written by Don Rauf and Michael Small
Produced and arranged by Boots Kamp

Look up that stairway
To my big attic
Am I a hoarder
Or am I a fanatic?

Decades of stories
Memories stacked
There is a redolence
Of some irrelevant facts

Well, I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
It all seems so unjust
But still I know I must
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out

I'll sort through my possessions
In these painful sessions
I guess this is what it's about
The poems, cards and papers
The moldy musty vapors
I just gotta sort it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out
I couldn't throw it out

[Theme song ends]

END TRANSCRIPT