Those who saw Frito-Lay’s Super Bowl Commercial might have recognized Megan Thee Stallion’s voice as the red songbird singing a rendition of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It,” but do they know that Megan recorded a version of the 1986 hit? That fact even caught the trailblazing rappers by surprise. “I knew there was the commercial, but I didn’t know she actually made the song over, so people were sending it to me,” Cheryl “Salt” James tells HollywoodLife during her and Sandra “Pepa” Denton’s EXCLUSIVE interview. “And I was like, ‘I know we’re in a commercial, ‘Push It’ is in a Frito Lay commercial.’”
“They were like, ‘no, she did a song.’ So then I listened to the song and it was hottie and it was hot. It was good,” adds Salt. “Cause we’re the original hotties!” adds Pepa with a laugh. “That’s true, actually,” concurs Salt.
“We are hotties,” continues Pepa. “And the whole Frito Lay and the campaign, it’s more than just being a spicy flavor. It’s what it’s representing to the fans, to embrace your hottie-ness, to be a little edgy, and that’s what it was [like] teaming up with Megan and us. It was a perfect fit with that as well, to get that point across because like I said, we are the original hotties,” she says with a laugh.
The bond between these iconic hip-hop stars first formed at the 2021 Glamour event honoring Megan as the publication’s Woman of the Year. “[Megan] wanted Salt and Pepa to present the award to her,” Pepa tells HollywoodLife. “Salt couldn’t go for personal reasons. But I ended up going to the Glamour Award and really understanding what she was about. What she speaks for, [the] things that she stands for, is what Salt-N-Pepa represents. We’re very about empowering yourself and understanding your worth and go for it.”
“And keep pushing it,” adds Salt. “And keep pushing it,” says Pepa.
“When you’re down, even when life gets hard as a woman you have to overcome so many adversities and us raising children in the business, but we just kept pushing it forward because we knew that we had something of a passion and a purpose, which was Hip Hop and representing rocking the bills today too,” says Salt. Pepa pointed out how the duo was always “proving ourselves and fighting for our place” in a male-dominated hip-hop landscape, and their hard work is paying off with this new generation of female rappers.
“I see the growth, which is good, but you got to keep passing on the torch and we got to use our platform to keep empowering and lift the next one up, [and] just keep going,” says Pepa. In HollywoodLife’s EXCLUSIVE video interview, Salt-N-Pepa discuss how Nicki Minaj “really kicked off” the recent explosion of female-driven hip-hop, while giving love to originators like Roxane Shante, Sparky D, MC Lyte, and more.