I, like a lot of the 80s Chicago kids, knew Salt N Pepa in part to Yo! MTV Raps and The Box. You literally had to grow up in the woods not to know their sexual education songs like Let’s Talk About Sex or the dance anthem of all anthems Push It. Those were staples that you knew without even looking up. We also knew their infamous producer Herbie “Luv Bug” Azor, because he always popped up in all of their videos and many of their interviews. Up until the Behind The Music I thought he was actually in the group.
A lot of us 80s kids were also avid fans of the MTV show Lip Service; this show was the business when it came to game show competition lip sync battling. It was pure, unadulterated joy playing along with the competition and a staple when I went to my grandmother’s house because she was the only person that had cable in our family before the Chicago Bulls won the third championship. Spinderella was a prominent DJ on Lip Service, throwing out some of the baddest turntable tricks for the competition show that is largely forgotten in a world that thinks Lip Sync Battle is the first time people got together to pantomime records on a game show. So now you can picture just exactly the influence and importance that made the unit of Salt N Pepa a staple.
Enter October 1993, the year they showed they were Very Necessary.
Earlier in the middle part of the summer of 1993 the first video off the album came out, Shoop. Everybody was talking about the video. Salt N Pepa were back in action, featuring a sexier feminine look in the group and definitely upping their lyrical prowess with more tongue twisting songs about getting some than their previous sexual education effort. Most of us were just getting used to Salt’s new short cut, Pepa’s blonde braids, and Spinderella being given a more prominent role front and center when Whatta Man featuring En Vogue dropped that fall. That cut, which is a spirited re-envisoned remix of What A Man by Linda Lydell is pure, raw, visceral FIRE. Between the bathroom scenes that are highly reminiscent of The Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited, a very pregnant Cindy Herron, in the cut cameos by Treach (who nobody knew was kicking it with Pepa at the time) and 2Pac (the guy nibbling all up against Salt), that one song with three kick ass verses and the hottest quartet on the planet carried that album for a good six months in the top ten. Everybody everywhere was singing that song, trust and believe word for word.
Just when the album momentum seemed to be settling down, the third video hit Rap City, which was None Of Your Business. I was hooked. Very Necessary was proving to be just that from the moment Salt starts asking what’s the matter with your life. I knew what was wrong with mine – I didn’t have the album running through my Sony discman.
It took me well into my high school career to finally get the album. The album aged like fine wine.
I was sixteen and really feeling None Of Your Business in a different way than I did at thirteen. I was becoming a woman with a woman’s desires, and that track alongside the standout aforementioned cuts of Very Necessary expressed all those red blooded American hormones sitting on a teenager’s mind at the time. The experience was mind blowing; no one had ever released a hip hop album that embraced female sexuality without the guilt and at a time when women were breaking stereotypes being on the prowl the same as their male counterparts and the calculated risks that came with it. Keep in mind this was the explicit NC-17 era of Lil Kim, so in comparison Very Necessary was just that bit of spice with sensuality that gave the hard with the soft, the lust with the love, the conscious with the primal. The ride was bumpy to start. No lie, I didn’t like Groove Me. It’s a good dancehall beat but it feels like filler and not what I would expect from a first track. No One Does It Better is a far superior cut, filled with the good party vibe of getting your dance and mack on at the same time that was still the fun of the era.
Somebody’s Getting On My Nerves is the epitome of pure hip-hop flavor with a nasty sample beat riding the diss track that you can still blast like you would Millie Jackson’s Phuck You Symphony when you trying to prove a point when people are getting on that last nerve. Step follows that same energy, with a nice funky fun beat that flows the battle rhymes spitting from Spinderella from the first verse. The chorus might sound corny at first but the energy rises like cream to the top and its catchy by the end.
Heaven and Hell is Pepa’s time to shine on the mic, with a beat that sounds like a B-side on Naughty By Nature’s Uptown Anthem that teeters on almost being too light to be too hard like the beat implies but it works! Big Shot is Salt’s hardcore turn at the mic, giving a state of growth and development of her time in the rap game, with backup support from Pepa and Spinderella letting everybody know navigating the pitfalls of the game from the female perspective ain’t for the faint of heart.
Now one of the highlights of the album, Sexy Noises Turns Me On, is a deep album cut. It ain’t the strongest cut on the album but it is the cut that teaches the sixteen year old you may happen to be at the time how to have game with the opposite sex when you need to play mack of the year. And that’s all I’m going to say about that, lol.
The last two songs on the album are filler and just okay, and the I’ve Got AIDS skit is brave to say in the least as an album closer when half the songs are about getting some and getting it good, yet it is a pioneering risk since Salt N Pepa’s form to discuss the consequences of unprotected sex in their peak set the stage and the template for TLC to feel comfortable enough to do Waterfalls on Crazy, Sexy, Cool. It’s worth a listen.
So yeah, the girls on the album cover dressed down in their plaid and jeans really serving up some Very Necessary spices that make this a definite classic hip-hop album that, despite the hits, is sorely overlooked.
