Salt-N-Pepa Outsold Wu-Tang, So Why Don’t We Talk About Them More?
The continued resurgence of Salt-N-Pepa’s back catalog is a testament to their remarkable career. They haven’t released an album in almost 20 years, yet their music endures. With 8 million in sales between their five releases, they’ve outsold hip-hop luminaries like Wu-Tang Clan by 1.5 million units. While Wu-Tang has them beat in streaming, this is still an impressive feat.
Unfortunately, commercial dominance hasn’t reserved them a guaranteed spot in the rap canon. Despite breaking down barriers for female artists, selling millions of albums, and finding continued success outside of rap in the years since their last release, the ride to the top hasn’t been easy for the group.
Before selling a single record, Salt-N-Pepa paid dues in some of the least-glamorous venues imaginable.“Schools in the middle of the night on lunchroom tables,” Pepa said in a 1988 issue of Spin when asked about their earliest shows. “Thank god we never got booed.”
“It definitely is difficult and it always has been, because it’s such a misogynistic, male dominated field of music. It’s just difficult for a woman to push her way in.”- Salt
From there, the group had to navigate the sexism they faced in a male-dominated music industry. The rap game can be notoriously cut-throat and their status as the most successful female act from the genre’s early years didn’t make it any easier. “It definitely is difficult and it always has been, because it’s such a misogynistic, male dominated field of music,” Salt told MC Lyte in an interview for Global Grind. “It’s just difficult for a woman to push her way in.”
Their first big break came with the release of their “Tramp/”Push It” 12” single. Though “Push It” started out as a b-side, the Cameron Paul remix became a massive hit and helped the group’s 1986 debut Hot, Cool & Vicious sell over a million copies, making Salt-N-Pepa the first female rap group to go gold or platinum. 29 years after the song became a surprise hit, the longevity of “Push It” is beyond the group’s comprehension. “We like to say that song is possessed because it’ll never go away,” Pepa told AdWeek. “It has a life of its own.”
They followed up Hot, Cool & Vicious with 1988’s gold A Salt with a Deadly Pepa and returned to platinum status in 1990 with Blacks’ Magic — thanks in part to the hit “Let’s Talk About Sex”. During the three year gap after Blacks’ Magic Salt-N-Pepa worked on their fourth album, Very Necessary. When the album dropped in October of 1993, it spawned the hit records “None of Your Business”, “Shoop”, and “Whatta Man”, went five times platinum, and won them a Grammy.
“Fans make you understand it was more than music to them. It was a movement, a voice they felt they didn’t have that we expressed for them.”- Pepa
Despite the album’s massive success, some critics were stingy with their praise. Famed music journalist Touré wrote, “Only the album’s closer, ‘I’ve Got AIDS,’ is intellectually challenging…It seems to be Salt-n-Pepa’s way of making a statement without saying anything,” while reviewing the album for the New York Times. He goes on to call the album “nearly messageless.”
Album reviews are subjective, so it’s hard to criticize someone for writing a less-than-glowing review of an album. But music journalists deserve their fair share of criticism for doing a dismal job of covering the album in the years since its initial release. Rap writers have penned lengthy thought pieces on every album imaginable from the early 90s, but Very Necessary often gets left in the dust. Look at different website’s “Best of the 90s” or “Best of 93” album lists and Salt-N-Pepa’s best-selling effort is usually nowhere to be found.
To give a frame of reference, let’s compare Salt-N-Pepa’s album with another famous album from 1993 and look at the subsequent media attention. Very Necessary outsold Snoop’s Doggystyle by one million units, but if you look at Doggystyle’s Wikipedia page and Very Necessary’s side by side, you’d have no idea. Snoop’s page has 80 reference articles while Salt-N-Pepa’s has two. The length of both pages is also telling. To deny that gender plays a role here would be dishonest.
“Schools in the middle of the night on lunchroom tables. Thank god we never got booed.”-Pepa describing the earliest Salt-N-Pepa shows.
If an album sells five million copies and wins a Grammy, it doesn’t guarantee that it’s the best album from that year, but it does mean the album has cultural significance. Very Necessary remains the highest selling album for a female rap group almost 25 years later. At the very least, this should make music journalists stop and reflect on how well the album holds up from time to time. In a male-dominated art form covered by a male-dominated world of music journalism, we’ve collectively failed to do this.
Though the press may not always give Salt-N-Pepa’s previous albums the appropriate amount of credit, the lack of praise doesn’t seem to phase the group. They care more about what their music means to their fans. “Women come up to us all the time and give us the most amazing compliments like ‘Salt-N-Pepa was the soundtrack of my life,’” Pepa told Billboard. “When you talk to fans, you get in touch with your legacy. Fans make you understand it was more than music to them. It was a movement, a voice they felt they didn’t have that we expressed for them.”
Connect with Salt-N-Pepa on Facebook, Instagram, their website, and on Twitter @thesaltnpepa.
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