FEATURE:
No One Does It Better…
Why Salt-N-Pepa’s Very Necessary Needs to Be Reissued on Vinyl
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WHILST you can get…
Salt-N-Pepa’s 1993 album, Very Necessary, on vinyl, it is very expensive and will probably be out of most people’s reach. Maybe not as known and celebrated as its predecessor, 1990’s Blacks’ Magic, Very Necessary lives up to its title. Salt (Cheryl James), Pepa (Sandra Denton) and DJ Spinderella (Deidra Roper) are phenomenal throughout! Featuring some of Salt-N-Pepa’s best tracks – including Shoop and the cover, Whatta Man, that featured En Vogue - , this is an album that ranks alongside my favourite of the 1990s. I know it is expensive and not viable to put every great album onto vinyl, but it would be great to see Salt-N-Pepa’s full catalogue in record shops. As much as anything, the sheer quality of the Very Necessary album is amazing. Even deeper cuts like No One Does It Better and Big Shot show what an amazing group Salt-N-Pepa are. The importance of Very Necessary should mean it gets a new vinyl pressing. Very Necessary peaked at number four on the Billboard 200. It has been certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting sales in excess of five million copies in the United States. Just before coming to a couple of positive reviews for the legendary Very Necessary, I want to bring in parts of a feature Udiscovermusic.com published last year. They wrote why Salt-N-Pepa are such an important Hip-Hop trio:
“There are few hip-hop acts who have maintained the kind of longevity and stamina as Salt-N-Pepa did throughout their career. Cheryl James and Sandra Denton started off as the duo Super Nature and recorded a single called “The Showstopper,” which garnered attention from local New York radio stations. Before long, listeners were calling in to request the track. By 1987, the duo recruited Deidre Roper to join as Spinderella, and the three women were prepared to pounce on the hip-hop industry with a new name: Salt-N-Pepa. The same year, they released “Push It,” their first big hit. The single was certified platinum, reaching No. 19 on Billboard, and wrote the group into history as the first female hip-hop act to hit platinum status. Their path to hip-hop royalty had been laid. By the time they released their fourth album, Very Necessary, Salt-N-Pepa had become the most successful hip-hop album by a female act.
Creating a cultural legacy
“Shoop” was the album’s first single. While the group tasted hits before, this became one of their biggest to date. The single sold 1.2 million copies, already indicating that the forthcoming album would be a chart-topper. “Whatta Man,” the album’s second single, featured R&B group En Vogue and boasted lyrics describing various versions of an ideal man. Meanwhile, “None Of Your Business” found the ladies chanting about their sexual agency and won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group.
Very Necessary had no shortage of head-spinning, snarky lyrics about sexuality, and loyal fans ate it up. But Salt-N-Pepa’s range didn’t stop there. Though many of the tracks off Very Necessary favored more salacious lyrics, others, like “Heaven Or Hell,” found the MCs delivering verses about police brutality, drugs, and other threats against the black community. “I’ve Got AIDS,” the last track on the album, is a PSA skit from Weatoc, a non-profit in Boston that sought to inform youth about physical and sexual health in black communities.
Salt-N-Pepa are pioneers, undoubtedly influencing many of the acts that followed, including Missy Elliott and Trina. These first ladies of hip-hop created a cultural legacy with Very Necessary and pushed the genre forward when many music critics shrugged off hip-hop as a trend that would soon lose its steam. Instead of losing momentum, however, hip-hop dominated, with Salt-N-Pepa holding the reins”.
In order to back up my assertion that Very Necessary needs to come to vinyl soon, it is worth dropping in a couple of reviews. I want to start with AllMusic’s take on an album that, in 1993, made an impression on my young ears:
“Salt-N-Pepa exhibited a lot of growth on Blacks' Magic (1990), their third album and, by far, best to date. For their follow-up, Very Necessary, released a long three and a half years later, in 1993, the ladies delivered a fairly similar album. Like its predecessor, Very Necessary boasts a pair of major hits ("Whatta Man," "Shoop") and a lot of fine album tracks. Also like Blacks' Magic, Very Necessary is filled with strong, prideful rhetoric: femininity, sex, relationships, romance, respect, love -- these are the key topics, and they're a world apart from those of the gangsta rap that was so popular circa 1993. And as always, the productions are dance-oriented, with a contemporary R&B edge. Most tracks were produced by Hurby "Luvbug" Azor, though Salt is credited on a few, chief among them "Shoop." Very Necessary is just as impressive as Blacks' Magic, if not more so. The key difference is, Blacks' Magic was a striking leap forward for Salt-N-Pepa, who were somewhat of a novelty act up to that point, whereas Very Necessary is a consolidation of everything that had worked so well for the duo previously. Hence the lack of surprises here. Still, the raised expectations don't change the fact that Very Necessary is one of the standout -- and, for sure, one of the most refreshingly unique -- rap albums of its era”.
Before round off, I am interested in Pitchfork’s assessment of the spectacular Very Necessary. Such a hugely influential group, Salt-N-Pepa’s albums are a thing of beauty and huge power. They have inspired so many artists - and they will continue to do for a very long time:
“So much of the first decade of Salt-N-Pepa forged a path for women to follow for the next twenty years, both in rap and pop music, as well with social and sexual mores. The whole map of their conquest is laid out on their 1993 album Very Necessary. The confidence of “Push It”—which Pepa has insisted is about dancing, not about sex—and the emotional intelligence of “Let’s Talk About Sex” are present, but the womanly conviction here is far more plentiful than it had been in their music before. It was a palliative to the hyper-misogyny spewing from their male contemporaries. If Snoop Dogg and friends were going to harangue hoes, then in Salt-N-Pepa’s world, words like “hoe” and “hooker” were just as applicable to men. They maintained their themes of sexuality and empowerment—and were in good company with Queen Latifah’s “U.N.I.T.Y.” and TLC’s “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”—but it got a new look. Whether in combat boots or pum pum shorts, their message was still clear: women need to have agency over their sexuality and, if she’s safe, she can express it however the hell she wants.
On top of the beats, it was Salt-N-Pepa’s relentless campaign for social and sexual agency that drove the album. “Sexy Noises Turn Me On” may sound a little bit dated in 2017, but the frankness with which the women express their needs is anything but. It is the precursor to so many Foxy Brown one-liners and songs like Rasheeda’s “My Bubble Gum” and Nicki Minaj’s “Get on Your Knees.” There are calls elsewhere on *Very Necessary *for reciprocity, like when Salt raps: “You’re under my control/I got your heart and soul/Go down and take your time” on opener “Groove Me” but they were pushing to do even more than just smash the insidious taboo that women can only perform oral sex, not receive it that many of their descendants have rallied for (see: Lil’ Kim’s entire 1996 debut album Hard Core).
This attitude bleeds through to tracks like “Step,” which uses a hefty sample of Hank Crawford’s jazzy “It’s a Funky Thing to Do” and comes off optimally unbothered. “Somma Time Man” is reproachful of male promiscuity (just like their 1986 Otis Redding-interpolating song “Tramp”), but so much of the critique is about infidelity and the lack of safety. Ultimately, Salt-N-Pepa’s mantra when it came to AIDS was, “If you don’t get it, you can’t spread it.” It is their entire ethos: sex is happening everywhere and it cannot be ignored because like all other thrills there are risks—risks you take with your heart and risks you take with health. If you’re doing it right, there’s no shame attached to it. It’s why they wrote “None of Your Business,” but also why they spent many of their television appearances talking about how easy it is to put on a condom.
Salt-N-Pepa, however, do not explicitly call themselves activists or even feminists. In the same interview with Mary Wilson from the Supremes, Salt also said: “I think we’re feminists to a certain degree. But I have no problem with the man being the man, as long as the man knows how to be a man.” The biggest song of their career, “Whatta Man,” is a paean to good-looking respectful guys. Peaking at No. 3, the track united the trio with En Vogue, who were still riding high off of their star-making sophomore album Funky Divas, released the year before. Although the song’s ballast may be “good men are hard to find,” the use of Linda Lyndell’s classic “What a Man” and Spinderella referencing Whitney Houston deep cut “My Name is Not Susan” in her verse still keeps it a celebration of womanhood. The video co-starred Naughty By Nature’s Treach, Pep’s IRL man at the time, and remains one of their fluffier offerings. In the context of the album, however, it rounds out the robust portrait of women’s romantic interiors: Not all love is fleeting and when it is good, it is so good”.
Although you can get it on streaming services, it would be better to have an affordable version of Very Necessary on vinyl. Such an essential album does deserve a reissue. Maybe that will happen on its thirtieth anniversary next year. I love Salt-N-Pepa a lot, and Very Necessary ranks right up there with their absolute best work. So many people would love to hear this classic album…
ON vinyl.