Salt-N-Pepa’s relationship is “like a marriage”.
The duo – comprising Cheryl ‘Salt’ James and Sandra ‘Pepa’ Denton – have been performing together since 1985 but have managed to remain great friends and business partners by knowing when to give other another space.
Salt told Us Weekly magazine: “We’re with each other more than we are with our own families so it’s important to give each other space. It’s like a marriage.
“Sometimes we sleep in the bed together and sometimes Pep sleeps on the couch.”
The ‘Push It’ hitmakers also revealed winning a Grammy Award in 1995 was a career high for them, especially after they protested the lack of hip-hop on the televised version of the ceremony by boycotting in 1989.
Asked their career highlight, Pepa said: “Winning the Grammy in 1995. We boycotted the Grammy in 1989 because we’d been nominated but hip-hop was never televised. We were really fighting for our music to be visual and seen. To go on to win and be received a few years later, it felt good.”
The duo recently admitted they were proud to have “stood out” in a male-dominated genre, even though they were often “skipped over”, despite selling more records than men in hip-hip.
Pepa told Refinery29’s Unbothered platform as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the genre: “For us, coming up in hip-hop as female MCs, it’s a male-dominated field. It was very hard knowing that we were charting so hard and more than the male rappers but still wasn’t getting that respect or the acknowledgment that we deserved.
“We were skipped over when someone was selling [as much as us] so it was frustrating and that hurt. But we kept going.”