In the mid-1980s, Cheryl "Salt" James met Sandra "Pepa" Denton, and the two young students became friends and co-workers. Another co-worker, Hurby "Luv Bug" Azor, James's boyfriend and a recording production student at the Center of Media Arts, asked James and Denton to record a song for him as a class project.
Under the name of the duo Super Nature, the girls recorded "The Showstopper", inspired by "The Show" by Doug E. Fresh. Luv Bug brought the song Super Nature to Marley Marl, who began to include it in his programming for the weekend rap show he hosted on a New York radio station. The song gained a following among the rap audience, but was not available for sale, being only a school assignment: the independent label Pop Art Records had the duo record the song and released it as "The Show Stoppa (Is Stupid Fresh)", produced by Luv Bug, mixed by Marley Marl with a rap intro by Kid of Kid 'n Play, also a colleague of Luv Bug, James and Denton.
The single reaches the rnb chart (#46) and launches the career of Super Nature: the girls drop out of school and Luv Bug decides to change their name to Salt 'n' Pepa, based on the fact that the duo was recognized with this name for the lyrics of the song "The Show Stoppa". In the fall of 1985, Salt 'n' Pepa signed with Next Plateau Records, intending to release only one single: the duo created "I'll Take Your Man" using part of a hit by Parliament, the tune convinced the label executives to request a full album from the girls. Luv Bug intended to expand the group to include a third member, creating a female version of Run-DMC. Just before starting to record the album, Luv Bug hired DJ Latoya "Spinderella" Hanson. After nearly a year of recording, the album was released in December 1986: shortly before its release, Hanson left the group due to a lack of rapport with James and was replaced in early 1987 by student Deidra Roper, who took on the same moniker as "Spinderella" and became known as the group's DJ.
The album was infallible. You've got your favorite singles ("I'll Take Your Man" and "The Showstopper"), a Fulson & McCracklin cover, a Pointer Sisters cover, a Kool G Rap-penned track ("I Desire"), over half an hour of exquisite quality as the girls brazenly slug their way through without ever really saying anything over the funky production designed by Luv Bug, sometimes slow, never excessive, with light rhythms. The work of the beatmaker is discreet, never intrusive, but of an almost crucial property and importance: the duo never exceeds with the delivery, if not in terms of lyrics, always carrying a simple and bold rapping, they're therefore the rhythms and especially the samples to carve out a nice slice of the cake. Here you can listen to James Brown, George Clinton, The Yes, The Pointer Sisters, "La Di Da Di / The Show" by Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh and a fantastic sample of Grover Washington, Jr., namely his classic "Mr. Magic".
Salt 'n' Pepa went down in history as the first female duo, if not the first female group, to have appeared in the hip hop genre, with all due respect to the Sequence of sugarhillian memory and the other unknown female pioneers of the early mid-eighties, and it grinds out good numbers in sales, which improve a few years later, when at the end of 1987 Next Plateau puts on the market a reissue with the remixes of two songs and includes in the tracklist the remix of the single "Push It". The album reaches number 26 in the pop chart, enters the top ten of the rnb albums, becomes one of the best-selling efforts of 1988 and enters the charts in two other continents, being certified gold in Canada and platinum in the USA. The album rides on the duo's biggest hit, "Push It", frequently hailed as a classic and soon certified gold record in Canada and Sweden, platinum in UK and US.
Rating: 7/10.
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