March 8th – Salt of Salt-N-Pepa was born Cheryl Renee James in Brooklyn, New York, on this day in 1964.
In 1984, Salt formed Super Nature with Sandra Denton and released the hit “The Showstopper” on Pop Art Records.
“The Showstopper”, an answer song to Doug E. Fresh And The Get Fresh Crew’s “The Show”, was produced by Herby “Luv Bug” Azor, who was Salt’s boyfriend at the time.
Shortly thereafter, the group changed their name to Salt-N-Pepa with Deidra Roper replacing LaToya Hanson as the group’s DJ Spinderella, the DJ name used by Hanson previously as well.
Salt-N-Pepa released their debut album “Hot, Cool & Vicious” on Next Plateau Records in 1986. The album spawned the hits “My Mic Sounds Nice”, “Tramp” and “Chick On The Side.”
Salt-N-Pepa though would only really explode on the charts big time when San Francisco DJ and producer Cameron Paul created his own remix for the album cut “Push It. The remix would propel “Hot, Cool & Vicious” to platinum sales, making Salt-N-Pepa the first female rap artists to do so and garner the group a Grammy nomination in the process.
Salt-N-Pepa would go on to release four more albums throughout the years, most notably 1988’s “A Salt With A Deadly Pepa” which contained the hits “Shake Your Thang” (featuring E.U.) and “Everybody (Get Up)”, 1990’s “Black’s Magic”, which produced the safe sex anthem “Let’s Talk About Sex” and 1993’s multi-platinum selling “Very Necessary” which spawned the smash hits “Whatta Man” (featuring En Vogue), “Shoop” and “None Of Your Business” which would win a Grammy Award.
Salt also appeared on the hit “Stomp” by Kirk Franklin And God’s Property in 1997.
In 2007, Salt starred with Pepa and Spinderella for two seasons on the VH1 reality series “The Salt-N-Pepa Show”, which documented the group in their present day following Salt’s departure from the group for religious reasons.
In 2008, Salt-N-Pepa began performing and touring the world again.
On October 12, 2010 Salt-N-Pepa received the “I Am Hip-Hop Award” at The BET Awards.
In 2011, Salt-N-Pepa toured with Naughty By Nature, Whodini, Kurtis Blow, Chubb Rock, MC Lyte, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Biz Markie and Rob Base as part of the national “Legends Of Hip-Hop Tour.”
Later that year, the group performed “Push It” on television’s “The X-Factor Australia.”
