Salt-N-Pepa

What are the chances? You're a Brooklyn-born, Queensborough Community College freshman (emphasis on the fresh) majoring in liberal arts in 1985. You're a Pisces so a bit emotional, always thinking she's a nursing major, a Jamaican girl from Queens. All Scorpio. You like something about her. She's easygoing and funny as hell. You don't like something about school. Well, what do you know? Neither does she. Together you skip classes, hang out in the caf, and play partner Spades (I got three and a possible!). Not to be mistaken for slackers, after school two of you get your hustle on selling service repair agreements for a local Sears. But instead of calling customers, you use the switchboard to call who? Each other. Meet Cheryl James and Sandra Denton. The teenagers couldn't have known that a random assignment for a music production class given to Cheryl's then-boyfriend, Hurby the "Luv Bug" Azor, would be the catalyst for an illustration, fantastical career that would span more than a decade and topple boundaries for women in Hip Hop for generations to come. They had fatefully agreed to for a group, to call themselves Super Nature, and to record their first song for Azor entitled " The Show Stoppa" (an answer to Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew's monster jam, "The Show"). Before that, back when the homegirls were smacking on gum and yapping to each other on the switchboard, they never imagined that their 14K-accessorized, 'hood-tinged spin on urban female fashion would soon become the consummate style blueprint for thousands of Black girls across the country. In the time before Salt 'N' Pepa the time of Cheryl and Sandi they couldn't even fathom having fans, let alone devotees.