Word: salts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...result is an album that feels exceedingly...comfortable. There is no "first listening" of Brand New, because chances are that somewhere, sometime, you've heard most of it before. But isn't that true for most music these days? What makes Brand New such buoyant, brassy fun is that Salt 'N' Pepa are savvy enough to market their own dues-paying and past success as an uptown version of street cred: call it Workhorse Chic...
...Salt 'N' Pepa are, L.L. Cool J excepted, the only working rappers who were prominent, even crucial, within rap's original rise to prominence. As such, they actually belong to the legacy of grooves, modes, and old-school stylings that upstarts like Puff Daddy are tripping over themselves to sample. If nothing on Brand New is as beguilingly woven or as, well, brand new as the best B.I.G. or the slinkiest Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot, almost every song is imbued with Salt 'N' Pepa's inimitable and hard-earned funky charisma...
Plus the damn things groove. Artists seeking more control of their music often forget what first made them appealing. Witness Janet Jackson's cringingly self-conscious The Velvet Rope, an album so calculated to seduce that its emotional accessibility is roughly that of your average glacier. The last thing Salt 'N' Pepa would do is forget to have...
...example, Salt, Pepa and Spin cruise the city in a drop-top convertible cruising for Mr. Irresistible: "I need to make you happy/You just so black and nappy/Come here, and make it snappy." For the sequel to that excursion, skip forward to "Gitty Up," in which the requisite beefy baritone promises to make our girls "sweat till you drench your blouse and your skirt." Our Salt 'N' Pepa do not "perspire...
...producers, Salt 'N' Pepa do not yet have the stylistic daring of longtime helpmate Herby "Luvbug" Azor, often settling for a silky but mostly anonymous layering of vocals and synths. Salt, though, crafts a trio of bracing cuts to close the album. "Silly of You," a fairly tired "I-earn-the-dough" ego track, does boast an insinuating opium-den vibe; "The Clock Is Ticking" incorporates electric guitars and vocal distortions more freshly than any R&B since En Vogue's "Free Your Mind"; and "Hold On," the final track, makes the unlikely choice of Brandy's lightweight hit "Baby...