{"id":281806,"date":"2019-10-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b1083006"},"modified":"2019-10-16T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T13:00:00","slug":"how-salt-n-pepa-turned-a-diss-from-russell-simmons-into-fuel-for-their-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/how-salt-n-pepa-turned-a-diss-from-russell-simmons-into-fuel-for-their-success\/","title":{"rendered":"How Salt-N-Pepa Turned a Diss From Russell Simmons Into &#8220;Fuel&#8221; For Their Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/akns-images.eonline.com\/eol_images\/Entire_Site\/2019915\/rs_600x600-191015093211-600Salt-THS103.jpg?fit=around|600:467&amp;crop=600:467;center,top&amp;output-quality=90\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"video-int-txt-0\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"41.269988412514\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-video-text\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"23.582850521437\">\n<p><strong>Salt-N-Pepa<\/strong> have been changing the game since the beginning.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So, even after receiving less-than-positive feedback from &#8220;Father of Hip Hop&#8221; and Def Jam Recordings founder <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/russell_simmons\">Russell Simmons<\/a><\/strong> during the earlier part of their career, <strong>Cheryl James<\/strong> and <strong>Sandra Denton<\/strong> (<strong>Salt<\/strong> and <strong>Pepa<\/strong>, respectively) continued to do things their own way.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Someone happened to ask [Simmons] about the Salt-N-Pepa girls, &#8216;What do you think?&#8217; And Russell gave us a thumbs down,&#8221; Salt recalls in this clip from Sunday&#8217;s new <em>True Hollywood Story<\/em>. &#8220;And I remember feeling like I can either listen to the father of hip hop and fold, or I can use that as fuel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Suffice to say, they didn&#8217;t listen. Trailing their first album&#8217;s debut success, Salt-N-Pepa went on to become the first female rap act to earn a platinum certification and later, in 1995, the first female rap act to win a Grammy Award.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"text-2\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"65\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-text-only\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"20\">\n<p>&#8220;We were never intimidated,&#8221; Pepa recounts fondly. &#8220;When they said we couldn&#8217;t, we did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That was true for the pairing in several respects. As a female-fronted &#8217;80s hip hop group, Salt-N-Pepa were pushing boundaries just by existing, and p-pushing them real good. When Simmons reached out with a revised attitude and Def Jam recruitment offer years later, they declined.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being ourselves and being free in this male-dominated field was always very important to us,&#8221; Salt tells the camera. &#8220;Just the boldness, the fashion, the things that we talked about\u2026empowered women.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hear more from both legends in the clip above!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tune-in-3\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"33\">\n<p class=\"tune-in__text\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\">Watch a brand new episode of <i>E! True Hollywood Story<\/i> Sunday at 10 p.m., only on E!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1083006\/how-salt-n-pepa-turned-a-diss-from-russell-simmons-into-fuel-for-their-success?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&#038;utm_source=eonline&#038;utm_medium=rssfeeds&#038;utm_campaign=rss_topstories\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: E! Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Salt-N-Pepa have been changing the game since the beginning.&nbsp; So, even after receiving less-than-positive feedback from &#8220;Father of Hip Hop&#8221; and Def Jam Recordings founder Russell Simmons during the earlier part of their career, Cheryl James and Sandra Denton (Salt and Pepa, respectively) continued to do things their own way.&nbsp; &#8220;Someone happened to ask [Simmons] [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-17 20:08:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIDN - The Lift FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}