60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Shoop”—Salt-N-Pepa

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Join Rob as he dives into his deepest darkest memories of clinging to gymnasium walls as all the other brave middle schoolers got their groove on to some ’90s R&B. Oh and, somewhere along the way, listen and learn about Salt-N-Pepa and their sexually charged song “Shoop.” Later, Pitchfork’s Julianne Escobedo Shepherd joins the mix to answer some of Rob’s Salt-N-Pepa questions (48:00). Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Power Pot pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. I hate to do this to you. I hate to do this to myself, but we got to do it. we got to go back. Sorry. All right, let's go. Everybody on the bus, we're going back to junior high.

We're going back to the junior high after-school gymnasium dance, the archetype. I don't dream about this particular environment. I don't daydream about it. I don't think about it at all, usually. I'm super well-adjusted, I have to say. But in the giant elaborate Hollywood soundstage of my mind, the junior high after-school gymnasium dance. is a set that never quite got torn down.

It's back there somewhere in a shuttered production division of my head in a disused wing off a pitch black hallway, doors are locked. There's beware of the leopard signs posted everywhere. Don't go wandering around back there. There's asbestos and sinkholes and whatnot, but it's there. The junior high after school gymnasium dance set is there. The bleachers all folded up, maybe push flat against the wall, The scoreboard hung up on one wall, maybe in a cage, maybe not, maybe lit up, maybe not.

The dust, the mustiness, the lines of the basketball court. Do junior high basketball courts have three point lines? Any junior high kid who attempts a three-pointer, that's a huge red flag. That kid's probably a jerk off. No offense, don't slow dance with anybody, boy or girl who's chucking up threes as a 13-year-old. It's ridiculous. The DJ, the DJ underneath one basket. The DJ booth scare quotes, maybe.

I don't know. The DJ's got like sirens, right? Police, sirens. The DJ's a professional. The DJ's got a show, a setup, a visual component, a business card, a calling. The DJ is playing every rose has its thorn by poison. And all the cool junior high couples are slow dancing. But I ain't slow dancing because I will grow up to be.

a podcaster Every cowboy seems to say said it's all Every rose as it's thorn came out in 1988 It's on Poison's second album

which is called Open Up and Say Ah That's not how you pronounce that title But that's how I'm pronouncing it That pronunciation is true To my mind state

In junior high I did say we have to go back I'm taking an educated guess here as to your age Your circumstances as your timeline, your personal junior high experience. But if you went to junior high between 88 and 98, I feel good about your chances that you either slow danced to every rose has its thorn

or wanted to. What else, actually? I do recall forlornly chilling out near the bleachers while everybody slow danced to, yes, stairway to heaven from Wayne's World's lips to God's ears. This shit is eight minutes long, but it's timeless. At this point in the song, you still got a minute left. Lovebirds to awkwardly sway back and forth and conceal from your dancing partner the fact that most likely you are sweating profusely.

Hang in there, even if you went to junior high anytime between the fall of 1992 and now, I am 200% certain you slow danced or wanted to slow dance while this guy informed you that he was here for you. Girl. Girl. Girl. Please don't let me make any more jokes about the bass guy from boys to men. Hell yeah, the DJ queued up end of the road.

You know what else? You know what else? Weak by SWV. Oh, hell yes. SWV, Sisters with Voices from New York City. This is from 1992. Weak kicks ass, man. Weak kicks stairway to heaven.

quantities of ass. Craig Seymour, the critic, we talked about C&C Music Factory a long while back. Craig on Twitter one day posts a photo of a 1997 concert program with SWV and Keith Sweat and Mark Morrison and a few other people. And he goes, this was a great show. SWV was swarmed by Nats during week, but they made it work. And I read this and immediately, I'm like, Craig, can you please elaborate on the swarm of Nats, please? And so now whenever I hear weak, in addition to it being in a sneaky way, one of my absolute favorite 90 songs, now I also hear it as a song of valiant, gnat-based resilience. But I can't 100% swear to you that I personally heard a junior high after school gymnasium dance DJ play week. I'm already rewriting history a little bit. Maybe.

I'll tell you what I do remember. I'll tell you what I know for sure. watching everybody dance to the upbeat fast songs made me sadder. I can almost picture the beaming smiles on all the cute junior high girls dancing to D lights, groove is in the heart. I say almost because I wasn't looking directly at them because that would be creepy. And also because the cute girls intimidated me. Instead, I was doing slow laps around the gym, just walking around,

longingly gazing at the dance floor, at half court. but only out of the corner of my eye for the whole two hours or whatever. You ever watch a hockey game and they take one player and just track his movement for a whole shift for 90 seconds of ice time or whatever? And it's just this bonkers circular scribble of the dudes skating back and forth and back and forth. That's me, but way slower and no skates and also ace of bass is playing. You know how sharks die if they ever stop moving? I'm pretty sure it's not true. but you know how people who don't know very much about sharks say that sharks die if they stop moving,

so do timid preteen future podcasters. Put it that way. Early 90s dance music is a trigger for me. Specifically, it triggers uneasy memories of me at 12, 13, 14, not dancing to early 90s dance music, while having the sense, erroneously, I suspect, that literally everybody else was dancing and having a great time and going steady, And frenching one another was the term of art, I believe. At the time, Frenching with their tongues. Don't ask me, though. I do believe I'm on the record as saying that everybody, Everybody by Black Box is a song about how everybody's dancing, but me.

But line dances were the worst, right? Synchronized, communal, joyous, everybody knows how to do this proto-flashmob. type bullshit. Inexplicably, Rob excluding group dancing events. I don't care for it. Electric slide ass bullshit. The country music stuff, your Chattahoochies, your boot scooting, boogies, your achy, breaky hearts. Yeah, whatever. Where'd you people all learn to do this dance? This wasn't covered in class. You guys learn all this the same day you all learned about Frenching. It's rude. And it's especially rude because the Rob exclusionary aspect leads me to who dislike songs that I like, that I love,

songs that are objectively great, just because now I associate them with being sad while watching other people dance to them. I resent the universe's attempt to trick me into disliking, push it by Salt and Pepper. I'm sensitive to the, oh, junior high's the worst, cliche, right? It's perfunctory. As wisdom goes, it feels a little conventional.

I thought I was over all that shit, but my son, my oldest son's going in the sixth grade in the fall, right, in a junior high. And I take him to his new school for the first time to try out to play percussion in the band. And he got in. Lots of kids tried out. He's going to be a drummer. He's cooler than me already. But we just walk through the doors of his junior high for the first time. And I just go, nope, absolutely not.

Fuck no to this experience. I'll be waiting in the car for the next three years. Yo, just a terrible aura. The vibes are trash. Just gargantuan radioactive quantities of 13-year-old angst. Or worse yet, maybe it's all just my dormant radioactive angst reactivated. Shit. Pushit came out in 1986.

This song is not about sex. And Salton Peppa know that you don't believe that. In 2017, Sandra Denton, aka Peppa, she told The Guardian, For 30 years, we have been telling people that Push It isn't about sex, but no one ever believes us. Honestly, for us, as young girls, it was about dancing. And quote. Also, Cheryl James, aka. Salt. She says, it's a very popular song in maternity wards.

An aquarium once told us that when they played Push It, the sharks started mating. End quote. Give me a second to process that information about the sharks. Let's put a pin in that. As a teenager, as a pre-teenager, as straight up just a kid, I used to drive around with my mom with a radio on listening to push it all the time, and it never once felt weird or embarrassing to either of us. Pushit is somehow both incomprehensibly lewd and shockingly wholesome.

It's like Cinemax at 2 a.m. colliding with Nickelodeon at 10 a.m. Very few pop songs of any era by anybody achieve this hallowed, lewd, not lewd, duality. Push it is innuendo for the whole family. Push it is Twister, the party game with the dots, the mat. Push it is simultaneously twister the way a five-year-old understands it and the way a 15-year-old understands it. But so now I'm 13 again, and we're back on the junior high after-school gymnasium dance set, and I'm watching all the cute girls boisterously line dancing to push it,

and I am physically backing away until my back is pressed right up against the bleachers, folded into the walls of the gym. I haven't yet even bloomed enough to qualify as a wallflower. Who taught all these people this dance? To this day, when I hear this song or even think about this song, my vague, confounded, irate-excluded sense of the push-it dance as a tangible component of push-it. it the song. I can hear everyone going, oh, as they do like the wheels on the bus, like spinning hands motion. And then like, I don't know, like the exact moves, but they put their

hands on their butts and take a couple steps forward and then clap and then they're all facing in a different direction. I don't know the dance. If I could describe the dance to you, I'd have done the dance back then. And right now I'd be one of those dudes on YouTube with eight Lamborghinis in his garage. There is a palpable, exquisite sadness. to push it for me. It's a fantastic song. And it's also a velvet rope between me and the dance floor. It's the storefront window glass my forehead is pressed against. I love it all the more for how much I used to hate it. Salt and Peppa didn't much like it either, though. I take some solace in that. They've talked a lot about making push it. So they're in a tiny studio in Brooklyn with a producer named Fresh Gordon.

That's an excellent producer name. You got Salt, you got Peppa, and you got Herbie Lovebug Azor, Salt and Peppa's manager, an impresario, and frequent songwriter and producer. And for a time, Salt's boyfriend. There's a U and Herbie and also in love, actually. So they're throwing together a B-side. No one's taking this song very seriously. Salt, talking to Rolling Stone, she says, we needed a B-side. Herbie, the genius that he is, got us in the studio, and we just really started kind of playing around.

And Fresh Gordon, to his credit, started playing that famous synthesizer line. And the song really built from there, end quote, the loneliness of this famous synthesizer line. For me, and maybe only for me, it's the sound of the dance floor receding. And the cute girls on the dance floor receding. Or maybe I'm the one receding. I'll stop talking about this if you don't make me go to my son's new school ever again. And Salt says, Fresh Gordon's vocal room was a bathroom, a tiny little bathroom with a microphone. It was very hot and sweaty in there.

Pep and I were in there together, and Herbie started dictating some of the lyrics to us. It was very unusual, because when you listen to push it, there aren't that many lyrics. It's mostly music-driven, so it was something different than what we were familiar with. So we just went along and trusted him, as we do, but we didn't really care for it. We were like, I don't get it. We were like, you. But, you know, it's only a B-side, whatever. Me and Pep, I think we're the only two people on the planet that push it is not our favorite Sultan Peppa song.

End quote. She's exaggerating, of course, but Salton Peppa's whole catalog is animated by, is improved by this conflict between Salt and Peppa and everyone around Salt and Pepin, between your favorite songs of theirs, and their favorite songs of theirs, between righteous empowerment and we were like, I don't get it. We were like, you. Push it is not quite where their story starts, but it's an early peak. This song is not quite where their story ends, but it's the peak. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 92nd episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and this week we are discussing Shoup by the Queens rap trio Salt and Peppa from their 1993 album very necessary.

I enjoy that album title very much. You want to know the corneous thing about me? This isn't it, but it's up there. I have this thing I do every time I listen to Shoup right at the beginning when Peppa starts off the song like this. Here I go. Here I go again, girls, what's my weakness, man? And right on that line, wherever I am, whoever I'm with, I'm driving, sitting around my house,

I'm grocery shopping, whatever. When Peppa goes, girls, what's my weakness? I physically point into a corner of the room or point out my car window or point at the frozen food section, as if queuing an invisible crowd of girls to go, man, I do this every time. I listen to Shoup. It is subconscious. It is mortifying. Please do not imagine me pointing to the invisible girls who say men right before they say men.

That shit is wild embarrassing. Here I go. Here I go. Here I go. What's my weakness? Ridiculous. Cheryl James and Sandra Denton first meet in the lunchroom at Queensboro Community College, playing cards, playing spades.

New York Magazine in 1994 did a big Salt and Peppa cover story with the headline straight out of Queens, how Salt and Peppa turned wrap on its head. And talking about Cheryl, it says, at Queensboro Community College, she studied psychology, quote, or something stupid like that, end quote. That's funny. Cheryl disparaging psychology is very funny to me. No offense to psychology. Cheryl and Sandra bond instantly. They bond as polar opposites. In their 1997, Rolling Stone cover story, it says,

Denton had bleached blonde hair, safety pins in her ears, and the attention of everyone on campus. James was an introvert, a self-confessedly somber, almost depressed person. End quote. They bond for life. They start cutting class to spend more time together in the lunchroom. Soon they are also working at the Sears in College Point, in Queens.

Also working at Sears, kid in play. These guys, I like to sing that chorus right before I try to shoot somebody in Fortnite or whatever. That ain't going to hurt nobody from 1991. It would be really funny if that song about dancing was really about sex, but nobody believed them. Also working at Sears, Martin Lawrence, future superstar comedian Martin Lawrence. Also working at Sears, Herbie Love Bug Azor. The original Salt and Peppa was supposed to be Herbie and Martin, but Martin couldn't rap.

And so then Salton Peppa was supposed to be Cheryl and Herbie, but then Herbie got to thinking that the group made more sense as two girls. And so Cheryl becomes Salt, and her dear friend Sandra becomes Peppa. And Herbie is technically in the group at first, and at first this trio takes the name Supernature and debuts with a 1985 single called The Showstopper, parentheses, is Stupid Fresh. The showstopper.

Hot choice. Of course the rest is sore. Set it. Set it. Set it. Set it all. The showstopper parentheses is stupid fresh.

Close parentheses is indeed a lighthearted answer record to the show. The rap pantheon 1985 single from Slick Rick and Dougie Fresh. Who graciously declined to get all salty about it

and answer back? That was nice of them. Meanwhile, Supernature changed their name to Salt and Peppa. Salt-cifin capital N-P-P-A Peppa. I really dig the typographical styling of Salt and Peppa. Herbie is no longer in the group per se, but going forward,

he will take on the time-honored manager, songwriter, producer, would-be man behind the curtain roll, and he and Salt will remain romantically involved for quite a while. And this arrangement will work pretty well most of the time until it don't know more. Salt and Peppa had a third member, a DJ. Her name is Latoya Hansen. Her stage name is Spinderella. That is a fantastic stage name.

I don't mind telling you. Latoya will not be around very long, alas, but the name Spinderella will. Salt and Pepper put out their debut album, Hot, Cool, and Vicious in 1986. Hit the deck. Salt and Pepper's back, and we came to out of rap you. So get out my face before I smack you. Hold on. you know,

yes you understand. If you mess with me, I'll take your man. Yes, I'll take your man. The camaraderie between Salt and Peppa is just instantly extraordinary, right? Just the two best friends

you ever even heard of. Perfect chemistry. And that initial, Queensboro Community College dichotomy that drew them together, Salts, Cheryl is the introvert and Sandra Peppa is the extrovert with everyone's attention.

That dissolved. almost on record where they're both so boisterous and warm and confrontational and charismatic. As individuals, but also, more importantly, together, they take your man but do it with a smile. And you, perhaps against your will, are smiling also as Peppa takes your man. Throw your eyes, suck your teeth. Keep huffing and popping like a dog in heat. You can call me a crook, a robber, a fee, but I'll be your butcher if you got beef. I love the yes owner of a lonely heart

sample there. Just a real treat for all the young dad rockers in training out in the world in 1986. The grit insults voice on the word promise

here. That's a real treat as well. I'll take your man whenever I feel like it this ain't a better or a bad it's a damn promise from me to you and your sex life's through. If you get another.

from me to you your sex slice through if you get another love I'll take him too amazing Peppa talking about this on to Rolling Stone in 2017 she says that was Herbie definitely he was a great writer he wrote well for girls

and then she laughs hot cool and vicious is rad man there's a healthy tension a respectfully combative camaraderie between rap and pop on this record. Here in 1986, we're going to spend the next five, 10, 15 years arguing and litigating and agonizing over where rap music stops and pop begins and how much pop sensibility, scare quotes, real rap is allowed to have. And Salt and Peppa definitely navigate all of that. In addition to

navigating the gender power dynamic divide between Herbie, the writer, writing, I'll take your man type raps for Salt and Peppa, the rappers. So the most recent Grammys, in February, 2023, right, Questla from the Roots, curates this awesome, sprawling generational ode,

the 50 years of hip-hop, and he throws literally everybody on stage, and it starts out with Grandmaster Flash, then run DMC, then LL Cool J, and then hit the deck.

Salt and Peppa hit the stage. My mic sounds nice is another hot, cool, and vicious highlight, and there ain't necessarily no junior high, gymnasium after school dance line dance to this one

at least not in Ohio but this is a rapy rap song for a super high profile celebration of rapidly rap stars who also became pop stars without giving up their status as rapidly rap stars not everybody earns that dual citizenship

rap and pop but salt and peppa belong they belong to both they belong everywhere I'm a queen on the mic And it's you and I say I would sell Because

Hot Cool and Vicious sells 4 million copies worldwide And is in fact The first album By a female rap act To go gold And then go platinum You can attribute

A goodly amount of that success To one song And this ain't the song But I love this As the song Salt and Peppa Wanted to pull out For the Grammys

You do not get much of An We Were Like You Vibe off Salt and Peppa On my mic Sounds Nice You get the sense This song Is the song

is the sort of thing they wanted to be best known for. And you can understand why. Hot, cool, and vicious as another rad, rap-dy-rap song called Tramp. The Tramp, in this instance, being the sort of dude who thinks he's going to grow up to be one of those guys on YouTube

with five Lamborghinis in his garage. I'm getting super into the grit and salt voice on individual words. Listen to the way she gloriously shreds the word rude. Have you ever seen you? a dude stupid and rude whenever he's around he dogs your mood i know a guy like that girl he thinks he's got to the world they put out tramp as a single they needed a b-side for the single remember when salt said

we needed a b-side you remember the b-side they came up with you remember how they didn't really dig the b-side because it was more music-driven and didn't have many lyrics they do get to rap on it a little bit though Can't you hear the music pumping hard like I wish you would? Now push it. It's a song about dancing. All right, I'm ready to talk about the sharks fucking to push it. I have composed myself. Direct quote from salt.

An aquarium once told us that when they played push it, the sharks started mating. Yo, where, what, who, how, how, how, How was this discovered? Did someone just happen to walk into this aquarium with a giant boombox blasting push it? Or were the aquarium people sitting around like, we got to figure out how to get all these sharks horny and push it with some marine biologist's genius idea? Is this what marine biology is?

You know how everyone in high school wants to be a marine biologist for like 10 minutes? I totally have gone through with it if I had known this is what marine biologist did. If I'd known about this, I'd already have a Nobel Prize for playing Luther Vandross for some manatees. You want some variations on that joke? Sure you do. I got a list. I'd already have won a Nobel Prize for playing DeAngelo for some penguins. I'd already have won a Nobel Prize for playing Chadee for some Cuddlefish.

That's the best one. I'd already have won a Nobel Prize for playing Jodice for some polar bears. I'd already have won a Nobel Prize for playing Anita Baker for some seals, a bunch of whales, all humping a coral reef to knock into boots. Marine biology, I'm into it. Push it is the hit. Push it breaks, Salt and Peppa. Hot Cool and Vicious goes top 40.

Push it goes top 20. It may take Salt and Peppa a second here to recalibrate to once again achieve that balance between the rapping ass songs they love and the pop chart ass singles. they are very much now encouraged to churn out. The second Salt and Peppa album released in 1988 is called A Salt with a Deadly Peppa. And first of all, let's appreciate the dad joke pun action in that title. And let's quickly and politely dispense with a matter of twist and shout.

They're trying. Go ahead and work it on out. They're trying to take control of this song. Rolling Stone, that 2017 article, is Salt and Pepper. talking about 15 songs across their career. And twist and shout is one of them. And salt just makes a buzzer noise. Forget it.

Peppa says, I'm like, Herbie, twist and shout? Come on, dude. Really? Come on. We ain't got no business singing that song, end quote. Also, in terms of the live Salt and Peppa experience, Peppa says, we stopped doing it. We stopped.

I don't care. Nope. Nope. doc us go get some money back we're not doing it end quote apparently it was popular in Europe sure shout out Europe if it's a thirsty pop crossover single we're after okay fine but let's give this another shot

stepping on a dance floor but if a guy I touch my body I just put him in check I said we just mad we can't do that yeah shake your thing much better I love we can't do that yet perfect chemistry between these two people we're sampling James Brown here. We're sampling the bejesus out of the Isley brothers. We're playing the Isley brothers for some dolphins here, but we've got the Washington, D.C. Go-Go group Experience Unlimited

EU on this song as well. This shit is delightful. This is pop music, expanding the boundaries of what gets to be pop music. We got a new Spinderella in the group on this assault with a deadly pepper record. Latoya leaves right after the first record and she is replaced by Diedra Roper, a teenager at the time. We taught herself to DJ on her then-boyfriend's turntables. Deidre takes the name of Spinderella, the role of Spinderella. Spinderella 2.0.

She is hereafter the canonical enduring Spinderella. And here, though, is another uneasy divide to navigate. because Salton Peppa is officially a trio. All three on the album covers, all three in the videos, all three on the magazine covers. But it's a trio called Salton Peppa.

If you think of Salt and Peppa as a business, a corporation, it's a good idea to think this. If you're in the group, then Salton Peppa own it, along with Herbie, and Spinderella just works for it. And a long story short,

Spinderella airs many of these frustrations. In that 2007 VH1 reality series, the Salton Peppa show, But she mostly got cut out of the quite popular 2021, Salt and Peppa Lifetime Biopic on and offscreen. And she ain't on that Grammy stage in early 2023. And there's royalty issues and there's a lawsuit. And Salt and Peppa is still a live touring concern,

but as a duo. It's too bad. Okay. That dynamic, at least, between Salt Peppa and Spinderella, is way better in 1990 when they put out their third record, Black's Magic, which is my favorite. And this song is Why. Do you want me?

I loved this song on early 90s pop radio. And then I forgot about it until recently. And I am telling you, probably not for the first time, that there is no better feeling on earth than rediscovering a pop song you absolutely love that you forgot about. I was reminded of this song recently while driving my two sons to a laser tag birthday party, and I am telling you that the minivan

levitated. I'm going to tell you something else. I'm going to level with you. I am not 100% sure who the male voice is here. It is one of two people. It is either Herbie, Lovebug Azor himself,

or it is a rapper named Alpha Omega. Both are credited officially as voices, but neither is definitively cited as the voice. There's a video for Do You Want Me? But the male presence is deemphasized, let's say, in the video, which is the right call. Spotify has a hip-hop heads slackroom. And I asked in there, and some very smart and kind and earnest people started throwing discogs.com links around. And then they started asking chat GPT and a few chat GPT, competitors. We fucking resorted

to AI is what I'm saying to you. I think it's Alpha Omega. I'm like 85 to 90% sure about that. This conversation is ongoing. Do you want me as a truly stupendous male-female pop song duet about

waiting to have sex? Because sometimes when we're alone kissing and hugging it thing, I feel like yo, is this it? Is it really going to happen? Yes. And then pop. Nothing. We're back to the hallowed lewd, not lewd duality. Kissing and hugging in things is such a lovely childlike way to describe ostensibly adult activities.

Here comes salt with her retort, which involves her cramming an entire symphony into the word all. I am telling you straight out. That's not what I'm all about. I'd just be playing myself out if I spent the night at your house. This is the seven-year-old conception of playing Twister arguing with the 17-year-old conception of playing Twister, and I love it. And Salton Peppa's whole glorious mission statement is, this is my life, not just a song. Don't get me wrong, but this is my life. Unbelievable.

We're getting into money issues internally at this point with everybody, with Herbie. We've had money issues the whole time, really. But Black's Magic pushes that. conflict forward and pushes Salt and Peppa as rappers and writers and producers to take a little more control over a group that's widely and rightly celebrated

for being groundbreaking and empowering. Black's Magic starts with a song that was written and produced by Cheryl James, by Salt. It is called Expression. The great writer and editor and critic Julianne Esquibito Shepard will be talking to her shortly. She wrote a great piece about this whole album

for NPR in 2021, and these are the lines from expression that she cites as being a kind of lifelong mantra. Hit the deck. Yes, I'm blessed and I know who I am. I express myself on every gym. I'm not a man, but I'm in command. Hot damn.

I got all-girl band. And then there's a song about talking about sex called Let's Talk About Sex. Let's Talk About Sex. Now, to the people at home or in the crowd, it keeps coming up anyhow. Don't decoy, avoid a big boy, the topic. And it's explicitly a song about talking about it, which is harder than it sounds, or it's harder than it sounds to make a song about talking about it sound like a pop song and a much better pop song than the billions of pop songs that are just about it. You get me? Salt and Peppa

specialize in transcendent pop songs about the eternal battle between love and lust and the superiority of love to lust. But none of these songs, including the one called Let's Talk About Sex Ever sound like a lecture Or a sermon or a junior high health class This song is durable A great deal of that is down to the chorus To the hook

Yes, because the chorus is stupendous Let's talk about sex baby Let's talk about you The hook on the lines Let's talk about all the good things And the bad things Is especially stupendous And that stupendousness

freeze up Salton Peppa to directly address in the song The Bad Things. This song works as transcendent pop music, even when Salton Peppa rewrite it and rename it, let's talk about AIDS. At the behest of Peter Jennings, who included it in a 1992 ABC News special about what was, by then, a harrowing global health crisis shrouded in fear and ignorance and misinformation. There are other majestic pop songs that address the HIV AIDS epidemic by name. You think of TLC's waterfalls, right, from 94. Three letters took him to his final resting place.

But let's talk about AIDS as something else. Man, there's a command here, a resolute and necessary earnestness that vaporizes any fear of clunkiness. Now, you don't get AIDS, forget the touches. You see the bike. So a hugger. You want to see the telephone. bug it you get it for sex or a dirty drug needle annal or oral now people i will tell you that recently i did walk around for like an hour or so maybe 90 minutes with anal or oral now people looped in my head

it was not my most productive hour but i will also tell you that let's talk about sex is still the blueprint the way forward for making great pop music that means something without the eye-rolling poppousness of announcing that this means something. Yeah. All right. It is time for very necessary. The excellently named fourth Salt and Peppa album released in 1993. And it's remarkable, really, that the whole Herbie Lovebug Azores situation worked as well as it did for as long as it did with him writing and producing a great deal of the material and therefore taking a great deal of the money. But money gets to be a huge problem.

And creative control gets to be a huge problem. problem and Herbie and Salt bust up romantically and that of course is a huge problem. Their relationship ended for good when Herbie had a child with another woman and as he explained a Rolling Stone in 1997, quote, I wasn't at the point in my life where I wasn't going to not mess with every girl that caught my eye. End quote. The triple negative there is really doing it for me. But it's like Peppa said. Herbie wrote well for girls. which is not to say that Salt and Peppa loved everything he wrote for them. Very Necessary is a very fun and funny and defiant song called None of Your Business,

with one super contentious line buried in it. Saul to this day has no problem telling anybody that she really did not like if she want to be a freak and sell it on the weekend. As she told Rolling Stone, to me, that's basically condoning prostitution, which I don't condone, and didn't then, and still don't. So that was just something I would never, ever, ever say.

Like, vehemently would never, ever say, end quote. Got it. None of your business did win Salt and Pepper. They're only Grammy, though. Very necessary is split in half. Half Herbie's material,

half Salton Pepper's own material. So this, for example, and this is very funny to me, is a Herbie song. Never disrespectful, because his mama taught him. What a man. Co-starring in Vogue, the Pride of Oakland,

and a fantastic song about an ideal guy who, and I think I got this right, a guy who is at a point in his life where he is going to not mess with every girl that catches his eye. Whatever. This song, Salt and Peppa handled themselves. Lick them like a lollipop should be.

It came to my scissors and I chill for a bit. I don't know how you do The voodoo that you do so well This is a spell hell makes me want to shoot, shoot, shoot. I submit to you that Peppa's line delivery of Don't Know How You Do, the Voodoo that you do Is the single most delightfully obscene moment

In the Salt and Peppa catalog Shoup is a marvel of male objectification, a gender-swapped cat call summit, a rigorous stress test of the hallowed lewd, not lewd duality. Talking to Rolling Stone and Peppa says, Shoup was my baby. I remember sitting,

writing these lyrics in my Jamaica Estates apartment. That's in Queens. Everybody goes, what does Shoup mean? And I say, Shoup is whatever you want to do. I just want a shup, baby. End quote.

Shoup is intriguing and ambiguous, but it also pretty much just means the one thing. It's super obvious in a not obvious way. Right. Right? You get it. Salt totally got it too. The punchline here being that Herbie didn't like it. Talking to New York magazine, Peppa says he was shooting shoot down. He said it wasn't going to go gold. I wrote it. I wrote it. He kind of fought us because it wasn't one of his song. He kind of fought us because it wasn't one of his song. I guess. End quote.

And then after shoot peaked at number four, Salt and Peppa's first top five hit ever with what a man coming right behind it, Peppa says he had to eat those words. End quote. We probably ought to let Salt's verse keep going, huh? All right. And easy over shotgun bang.

What's up with that thing? I want to know. How does it hang? Straight up, wait up. Hold up. Mr. Love up. Like Prince said, you're a sexy mother.

Prince Swamp. so you don't have to. Shoup is an absurdly fun song. It is silly and it is free of consequence. And that freedom is all the sweeter for how hard Salton Peppa have always worked to teach us that free of consequence isn't a real thing.

They know what they're getting into. They know what to protect themselves in mind and body. Not that you have to think about any of that amid the giddy carnality of Shoup itself, but you know that they know it because they taught you. There's a dude who wraps on Shoup eventually,

but I wish he didn't. Men should be objectified but not heard on Salt and Peppa sauce most of the time. I submit to you that Salt's line delivery of I like what you do when you do what you do is the second most delightfully obscene moments in the Salton Peppa catalog. I love you in your big jeans.

You give me nice dreams. You make me want to scream Oh, I like what you do When you do What you do You make me want to shoot There's one more record to go Brand new from 1997

And Herbie's out of the picture But salt is inching out of the picture as well She is further embracing her Christian faith We got a semi-lewd song called Giddy Up On this record But we also got Kirk Franklin We got Salt and Pepper finally on the cover of Rolling Stone but we also got salt saying she doesn't want to make any more shoops.

She says she told Peppa, if you can respect me, just wanting to do inspirational and or gospel music, then I would do another album. End quote, Salt and Peppa don't do another album. Instead, they move on to reality TV, a lifetime biopic, 90s package tours, and the occasional Grammy tribute. It works for them. It works for me. Let me politely suggest you that Shoup does have an inspirational quality, a spiritual quality to it.

My wife loves Shoup. That's the other thing. In the morning, we'll be stumbling around the kitchen, getting our kids fed and clothed and acceptably groomed and out the door for school. And my wife will sometimes wrap Shoup quietly to herself, or better yet, she'll not so quietly wrap it to me. And if looks could kill, I don't think I'd be an Uzi necessarily, but I still happily regress in these moments to my timid adolescence. As my wife dances around our kitchen, I feel myself backing up, giving her space, pressing against our refrigerator, which might at any point transform into one of my junior high gymnasiums, fault in bleachers. It's just a song, but it's also my life. The nervousness around girls is an old feeling.

The utter contentment is a newer feeling that never gets old. Our guest today is the great Julianne Esquibito Shepherd, a contributing writer at Pitchfork. She's written it edited for tons of places. She is working on her first book, Bakera, which will be out via Penguin. Julian, it's great to talk to you. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Hello.

Hello, it's been too long. It's been too long. It's been too long. It's great to talk to you. You wrote a great piece for NPR. about Salt and Peppa, I think, in 2021. And you talk about being 10 years old growing up in Wyoming and hearing push it and Tramp, like their earliest stuff. In your experience, what does Salt and Pepper do to a 10-year-old's brain? What's the appeal? What do they teach you? Well, I mean, I think I was probably a little young to understand everything that was going on in the lyrics. I think I really liked the way that they attacked the mic. I don't think. I don't think. I think I had ever really heard women speaking in that way.

And obviously, their production was incredible, and I was in dance class. So, like, that appealed to me greatly. But, you know, I mean, one of my first, like, kind of hardcore rap memories was, I think I was, like, around the same age. And I heard, let's get been naked at fuck. And, like, you know, it was obviously very illicit. because it was like, ooh, obviously didn't know what the fuck was going on there either.

But I think just like hearing women or girls in my young estimation, like kind of rap as hard as that was really just move something deep in me. Obviously, I wasn't that analytical about it,

though. Sure. I was 10. You're talking about dance class. You talk a lot about choreographing your own dances. And I feel like that's a huge part of the Salt and Peppa experience. Like their dances and also your dancers, the dances, the listeners dances. Like, can you truly appreciate this music while sitting still?

I mean, I think you can, but your experience will be severely truncated. Yeah. You really got to, I mean, they do it for dancing for the clubs. And like, especially in the the era of New York hip hop they came out of. It was all about that. Yeah. You write about how they were pop, but they were hard. They were feminine without necessarily being soft. Like they were rappers, but they also made these incredible songs for dancing. Like, how much harder was it in the late 80s and early 90s to be all those things at once? Like, did they have to blow up all those stereotypes, you know, to really even exist? Yeah. I mean, they were kind of. of, you know, the ones blowing up those stereotypes. Like, you have Lyat and Latifah,

and they were doing, you know, really just, like, rappers, qua rappers, like rapping, rapping. And then to bring in this pop element, which, like,

I think hip-hop in general sort of recoiled at, no matter who was proffering it, but still have respect. Like, they just, they were able to do it in such a way that,

like, I think it brought in this idea of poppiness to, like they didn't have to be soft to be pop and women. I've always kind of liked how much they don't dislike push it, but like it's not emblematic of them or how they imagine themselves. And there's not a lot of rapping. Like it's very musically inclined, but they don't do a lot of rapidy-ass rapping on that song,

but that's the song that still broke them. Do you think that made a difference in how they were perceived going forward? that like for a lot of people push it was the starting point? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think probably a lot of people who bought their albums for, because they had heard push it, probably got a nice surprise.

But yeah, I mean, I think you know, I think they just knew that they had so much more to offer. And I think just because of when that song dropped and because of the dynamic video of them dancing and because it was a club number that like, I think

it appealed to that era and also like snuck them in in a certain way I guess blew them up in it right and I don't recall I feel like they always had respect right like there are some rappers like people they really struggle with going pop and took a lot of shit for being perceived as going pop

but I never got that sense about Salt and Peppa from Push It Forward yeah I mean I think people did respect them because they could rap so much And also, you know, at the time they were being sort of, they were under the tutelage. And a lot of their songs were written by Herbie Love Bug at the very beginning. And so I think, unfortunately, like having a man at your side really engenders respect in that scene in that era. And I do use the word engenders on purpose.

Woo! God. So dumb. Indeed, yes. Their first record is the first record by a female rap act to go golds and then platinum. Like when you listen to music now from that era, starting in the mid-80s of female rappers, you know, Salt and Pepper, you said Queen Latifah, MC Light. Is there a quality or an energy to this music, this era that you don't hear much anymore

in rap or pop made by anybody? Like, is there something distinct and unrepeatable about that first wave of huge stars? Yeah, I mean, I really think there was a sense of innocence in a weird way and playfulness that is less prominent now, I think. And I think, you know, it's ironic because I think there was a lot of, it was really, really bad in New York in the 80s. So perhaps you heard, but, you know, especially for young black women. But I do think that, you know, this was a time before, like, capitalism kind of came and, like, sullied everything. And so you can almost hear that in the music. I think it's just there's there, it's really self-determination.

And even though they're rapping a lot about a lot of really difficult stuff, there's just a sort of weird pre-internet, in a sense that is really heartwarming. There's no M&M store in Times Square when this music is being made. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love the salt and Peppa dynamic so much, like how complimentary they are, like that incredible camaraderie they have. Like, it's corny maybe, but growing up, do they teach you something about friendship or do they give you like a model of friendship to aspire to? Yeah, for sure.

I mean, they were, especially, you know, as like a 10-year-old or whatever, they were just, like the coolest girl gang that ever existed. Yeah. Girl gang is a great way to put it. Yeah. It was like their crew also like, I don't know about now, but back then,

every tween girl wanted to wear matching outfits with her friends. And like they were doing that and they looked so fly and they were having so much fun that it was just like, of course, this is like what I want all my adult friendships. to aspire to you. I don't think that I would wear the same outfits as my friends now, though, like, as an adult, unless there's a specific reason.

Sure, you could bring that back, you know, go to the Metball. You know, I can see it working, but under particular circumstances. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I get you. Well, I wanted to ask you, and this is a very serious question. Julianne, what is your favorite Salt and Pepper fashion era? What is their all-time best look? I trust you, absolutely. Oh, my God. Well, so it's tough because, you know, we're talking about Shoup. And in that video, they were wearing sort of, this is 93. This is like sort of when Grunge goes to the mainstream of fashion. You know, Mark Jacobs puts out the Perry Ellis, the much malign Perry Ellis Grunge collection. And they're sort of wearing these like grunge stripes and like these like Pum-Pum shorts. And in it, it, it's, It's great. I love it. But I have to say, I'm going to have to go with, like, the iconic pusha era. They have the Cuffis. They have the Duky chains. They have the eight ball jackets, leather that say salt pepper on it. It was just like such a strong visual statement. They told you who they were that what they were doing. And like I was so excited when that brief moment in like the early mid-tele. thousands when there were like kids around New York City who were like the retro kids or whatever who were dressing like that. I'm like, yes, this is what it's all about. But it was brief.

It didn't last long, the revival of that. It lasted like maybe a year and existed as far as I can tell exclusively on Vashty's DJ night at Santos Party House. So. Okay, Santos Party House. Oh my God. Yeah. That's a name. Wow. Okay. That's a lot of information. Let's take it back.

You can cut that if you need to. No, absolutely. We will not be cutting Santos Party House. Absolutely not. That is the energy we need. Overall, like, what made Salt and Peppa so special so singular fashion-wise compared to other rappers and other pop stars? Like, what made them stand out always the way that they did? Well, I mean, asymmetrical haircuts, which were an accident.

Right, that's right. It was her like cousin or something tried to, yeah, that's right. Yeah, there was a sort of, I think, a chemical, a perm, mishap. And then it just like happened that way. So that was, I mean, just a beautiful accident because I think that influenced so much that came after. And just that they kind of, they're of the pioneers of when. women doing sort of like street feminine, which like obviously influenced women's streetwear for the rest of the eternity, basically.

Like they were, they were dressing, you know, wearing baggy jeans or actually, I guess, in the 80s era, they were wearing like, like, shiny spandex cat suits, but they were doing so with eight ball jackets and boots. And I think that it really sort of brought that like, sexy feminine, hard tomboy look to the mainstream. Yeah. I'm still

so struck by the bluntness of let's talk about sex. Like how rare that was in 1990 to have pop stars willing to be that direct to talk about sex to talk about AIDS. Like I think of Salt and Peppa, I think of TLC, but were there other pop stars, rappers, whatever, like confronting these issues, this crisis, like head on in song at that time?

time or were salt and pepper really kind of alone in their willingness to do that they were basically alone i mean i think the only other person who really did it was madonna but she was later um she the i was thinking about this recently because i put it in my book but um when madonna was doing those um psas on m tv where she was like hey don't be silly wear rubber on your willy that was like very much about safe sex. You should look it up. It's great. I should. Yeah. I don't have to do that. Also part of the Blonde Ambition tour.

But like as far as I can remember, I mean, can you remember? I don't think that anyone else was. Like really that explicitly. They did an edit of let's talk about sex called Let's Talk About AIDS, which is like, you know, I mean like this is a time when. you know, newscasters can barely talk about AIDS. Like,

um, it was really important that they did that. No, when I think about it, I think about let's talk about sex and I think about waterfalls and then I can't do a third. And I, I always,

I don't know if I'm forgetting something. That's why I keep asking people, but like, I can't come up with a third example of a song that prominent, like a pop song with that much reach that was also just, it just said it. You know what I mean? You know,

I think the, closest to analog, not about HIV-AIDS, but about sex was, I think it was 1986 when George Michael did, I want your sex. But like, that was it. It was those two songs that were like that, like straightforward. There weren't couched in metaphor, like straight up, like, sex. The word. The song title, People Are Still Having Sex just popped into my head. That's Latour, I think. That was like a dance pop song. I just have

a vague memory of like MTV. I do not remember that and I'm going to look that up immediately. I may have just incepted that memory into myself for some reason. I would probably just ignore that. It's for the best. I obviously have to listen to that

like right now. People are still having sex. People are still having. I don't know what the still is about there. Yes. I would I would now like to know the backstory of this, but I have a vague memory of it that is probably real. I'm like 70% sure about this. No, you are correct.

Okay. It seems like an anti-abstinence jingle. Well, it's about time somebody came out against abstinence. Yes. And also, yeah, there's, you're right, 1991 Latour, there's, they talk about AIDS. I don't know if I've ever heard this song, though. Which makes me feel like I need to go into.

Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, excuse me. What you wrote in NPR was mostly about the Black's Magic record from 1990 and about the song expression. Like, I love the way you call out. It's Peppa's line. I'm not a man, but I'm in command. Hot damn, I got an all-girl band.

Like, what makes that song especially so important to you? Well, damn. I mean, I remember hearing it. and just being so moved that, like, I don't know if I had ever heard anyone call out sort of like double standard or, like, put it in those terms and that, like, you could create something artistic with your friends and you didn't need the assistance of a dude.

And that also came at a time where I think there was a sort of more resurgence of feminism in U.S. culture, where it was kind of at the beginning of the third wave of feminism. Whereas, like, in the late 80s, it was sort of like, who cares? You know, that's what it felt like. At least to me, I was still young, obviously. And I think it just was a really, like, big flagpole moment about, like, what Salt and Pepper represented and what they would continue to represent. And just the idea, of like really explicitly saying, I don't need a man to do my work was, I think, revelatory in ways that I obviously probably didn't understand at the time because I was 10 again.

It's important to remember you were 10 while this is all transpired. I was a child. You were literally a child. There is this cool tension for me always with Salt and Pepper because in the early days, as you say, there's this guy writing a lot of their material. on record and on screen, they're just in total control of it. They're doing songs called expression and independent, and they're embodying feminism, but they don't necessarily have the Beyonce, like, giant feminist sign behind them.

They were somehow both blunt and cool about it. Like, while you were a teenager, as you grew up with them, like, what does that approach teach you or show you about how to move through the world? I mean, I think a thing that continues to this day is that I really like songs that are political without being preachy. I don't necessarily want to be edgutained. Yes. But it's actually like the most effective way to get a point across, which like probably any politician can tell you, is just sneak it in and appeal to

appeal to people's emotional emotional and day-to-day instincts. But I mean, I think that like, you know, as the 90s were on, like the early 90s were on, like people who had claimed feminism publicly were suddenly being called feminites by Rush Limbaugh. And there was this huge backlash.

And, you know, in 91, there was, you know, Anita Hill hearings. And I think also, you know, I think that we can't overlook the way that feminism, like, as a brand, wasn't doing great with women of color, specifically black women at that time. And so, like, I don't know how they self-identified if they did. But, like, it was just messages that are feminists at their core in philosophy, but just, like, were really about. like, you know, taking control of your own life, your own agency, and like breaking free, the patriarchy. I like the way you say the patriarchy.

I think you are smashing the patriarch or just in the way you say the word patriarchy. It's very... Thanks. I like to belittle it by a vocal tone. By a podcast. Yes, absolutely. Black's Magic is my favorite record of theirs for sure, but I did want to talk a little about very necessary.

Like when I revisited the song, none of your business. I was like, wow, this is like Missy Elliott's gossip folks from the early 2000s. Do you hear a lot of salt and pepper or see a lot of them in the last 20, 25 years of rap and pop?

Were they super influential? Or do they kind of stand alone because a lot of what they did wasn't really repeatable? I think it wasn't really repeatable. honestly, but I do think that they were still deeply influential as far as, even when it comes down to less so, like, lyricism, but like delivery, I think you can still hear some of, like, PEPA's delivery and, like, Cardi or, like, even a little bit of Nikki, maybe, and, like, and, you know, I think that they were influential for who they were and what they did,

but I think obviously like 30 years later, so much has changed, styles have changed so much that like, you know, obviously Missy, whose like whole thing is like I worship the elements or whatever, the four elements of hip-hop, which younger listeners look at it up. on the internet. We don't have any younger listeners, but thank you for assuming that we do. Okay, tight. So I don't need to explain it. Sorry. But yeah, of course, like, Missy is all about history. And I think that, like, that would make sense. But I don't know. What do you think? That's an interesting question. Yeah, I'm trying to work out whether very necessary in 1993 is the

peak of a certain era or like the beginning of an era the end of an era you know i think that getting from even salt and pepper to missy like that's 97 right like i i feel like in retrospect there's like a drought a little bit in terms of female rappers of that prominence you know until missy and then going forward i guess i just try and work out yeah whether nicky cardi Megan, the stallion, Beyonce, Ice Spice, whoever, like if they are imitating, influenced by Salton Peppa in any sort of explicit way, or if they're sort of, Salt and Peppa is more just emblematic of the 90s, you know, and they're of their time, and you can't really emulate them

because they're so of their time. I mean, I think they're both of their time, but also in the intervening years, I can't think of any like women rap groups that hit that other other than arguably TLC but they never people did not ever

hit that level and part of it is because let me talk about capitalism again. Please. Capitalism again. It's really expensive for labels to promote women artists and I think

there was a drought of like women rappers for a number of years with major label pushes until like, you know, the last 10 years. Like, it's expensive to promote women artists because you have to hire. You don't have to, but like, ostensible you do. You have to hire glam. You have to get a stylist. You have to, it's just, and, and like, labels didn't want to mess with that. And that pisses me off. But, like, I think it's like what it went from. like salt on Peppa to like city girls of like you know I just off the top of my head

it's like that's like the as far as like renowned groups I can think of a few others but like I mean like I don't know outside of like a few people of a certain age like how many of your listeners are like really thinking about the getam mommy is on like a regular basis or like the southern

raw divas. Anyway, shout out to all my faves that no one knows about. Where are you on Shoup, Julianne? Are you pro Shoup? Or do they have better hit songs in your estimation? Honestly, I feel like controversial about it. I love Shoup, but I wish that it did not have the chorus in production it has. The chorus. And then like the sample, the Egg Turner sample.

Right, right. I don't, I just like, obviously it was perfect for that time, but like, and maybe it's because like the radio played it so many times, but like I would be fine if I've never heard the chorus again.

But I love that, I love the rapping and I love like what they're saying. Okay. It's just like, and maybe it's because it's been defanged. because it's been played at like every wedding I've gone to you since 1993. The wedding issue is a serious issue, absolutely. The same with like, you know, poison by Bell Biv DeVot, for example.

I always think of it's like, yeah. I know, like, who is playing? Like, really, though, you listen to those lyrics and you're going to play this at your fucking wedding. Me and the crew used to do her at a wedding. Yeah, that's, wow. It's like, what? you're like, Auntie is dancing to a track about like

like these guys running a train. I'm like, what are you talking about? The magic of pop music. It's the magic of capitalism, really, if you want to know the truth. Yeah.

I love that song, though. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. When the Grammys recently did, you know, their giant star-studded 50 years of hip-hop blowout, I was so happy to see salt and pepper come out almost immediately. Like, do they get the respect they deserve as hitmakers, but also as rappers, as pioneers in that way?

I think they do by people who really care, but I'd think that from the, like, the establishment, like, I mean, first of all, did anyone really get their due at that Grammy's thing? Like, everyone was on there for, like, 20th of a second. But like, I was really psyched to see them, obviously, like, screaming on the couch or whatever. But, like, sure, I would say. Sure, they get there to you. But I don't actually believe they do. But, like, who does, you know? We have no sense of history.

No, we do not. Sure and exactly that tone of voice is the exact right answer. Yeah. This has been wonderful, Julian. I really appreciate you taking the time. It's great to talk to you. It's always great to talk to you. Thanks for having me.

Thanks very much to our guest this week, Julianne Escobito Shepard. Thanks as always to our producers, Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. Thanks for additional production help by Chloe Clark. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now I must encourage you to go listen to Shoup by Salt and Pepper. We'll see you next week.