Next year marks the 35th anniversary of Salt-N-Pepa's 1987 RIAA-certified Platinum classic, "Push It," and Pepa remembers the suggestive lyrics almost caused the duo to be arrested.
Pepa, born Sandra Denton, says police often came to their performances to hear if they used offensive language in the song.
"They said if you say a curse word, we're going to take you off the stage," Denton told Page Six at Glamour's Women of the Year Awards on Monday night at the Rainbow Room in New York City.
The hip hop icon, who celebrated her 55th birthday Tuesday, says the cops mistakenly believed she and Salt were rapping a vulgar word, and not "Push It."
“They thought we were saying, ‘P***y, real good.’ So the police were waiting for us. We had to show them the lyrics: We’re saying ‘push it,'” Denton explained.
Four years after Salt-N-Pepa released "Push It," they dropped the groundbreaking hit, "Let's Talk About Sex," in 1991. Pepa loves how the hip hop world has changed since then.
“I was just trying to educate,” she commented. “To teach about the do’s and the don’ts. That’s nothing now! It’s amazing to see how everything has evolved and women are bossing up and taking care of their own business and heading their own empire. It’s a beautiful thing, especially these women in hip hop because it was such a male-dominated field.”
At the Glamour event, Denton, who is featured with her 23-year-old daughter, Egypt, in the series Growing Up Hip Hop, presented one of the Women of the Year Awards to Megan Thee Stallion.
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