Sometimes someone will complain about a lyric or want to discuss something, but that's unbelievably rare."įor both performer and listener, the music is an escape, not a solution. "The other 10 percent is about a specific song. "Most, 90 percent, of the fan mail we get is, `Send me a T-shirt, picture, autograph,' and `I love you and I want to be a rapper,' " James says. It's here where many young black women live, wrestling with the same questions-sex, sexism, pregnancy, the fear of AIDS-that Salt-N-Pepa face in their private lives, but which their songs address only on the surface. In its joyous depictions of lusty interludes between consenting adults, it occupies a middle ground between Arrested Development's high-minded soulfulness and gangsta rap's nihilism. It's a buoyant pop record that sounds clunkiest when a social consciousness intrudes. I don't want her to think that's all that Mommy is about."Įven listening to "Very Necessary" in its entirety only gives a limited glimpse into Salt-N-Pepa's world. I raise my own child (daughter Corin, who will be 3 in July) and I don't let her watch my videos because I feel they would confuse her. You do have a responsibility to your listeners, but I don't feel that artists should raise people's kids. "When you have to confine yourself to other people's ideas of what you should be doing, it makes it tough. "It's hard on artists, because you just want to make music and sing about what you feel, just be creative," she says. If James is troubled by the don't-do-as-I-do, do-as-I-say approach, it emerges when she discusses the idea of artists as reluctant role models. We don't condone teens having sex-I think teens should wait." We're grown women, and when we're talking about sex, we're talking about our lives. "They know we talk about and stand strong behind safe sex, using condoms and even abstinence. "People know what Salt-N-Pepa stand for," she insists. Abdul Williams, for example, admits that while James and Denton were invaluable resources, he also would have loved to speak with Hurby Luv Bug Azor (played by Cleveland Berto), the Haitian music producer that discovered the hip-hop girl group in 1985 while dating James, as well as the real Treach. Four albums later, the duo became the first female hip-hop act to go double-platinum with the 2-million-selling "Very Necessary." The once-clumsy rap style has given way to a pungent mix of hard-edged attitude and sensuality, melodicism and grit. The tape became a local hit and James stumbled into a career. James says she didn't drop her first rhyme until she was in college and Azor, then her boyfriend, asked her to help him complete a school music project. They didn't wrest creative control from Azor until their fourth and latest album, "Very Necessary" (Next Plateau/London).Īnd as women in a male-dominated genre, and as rappers who incorporate sung choruses and other pop sugaring in their songs, Salt-N-Pepa are hip-hop outsiders. As women who have constantly railed against thuggish male attitudes in songs like "Independent," "Do You Really Want Me" and "Express Yourself," James and Denton found themselves until recently under the thumb of their own producer, Hurby "Luvbug" Azor.
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