Salt-N-Pepa’s Cheryl James Was Asked To Have An Abortion For Career’s Sake
Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton of Salt-N-Pepa sat with Tamron Hall for a heart-wrenching conversation on Tuesday (May 9) in which James revealed she was asked to get an abortion for the sake of her career.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud—but I was asked to have an abortion,” said James, 57. “I won’t say by who but to your point, yeah. You just have to know that it’s something that you’re capable of handling, if you want a kid and you want to have a career and it’s definitely harder. Having my daughter was, besides finding Jesus, was the best thing that I’ve ever experienced. Like I needed that little baby in my life. You know, she kept me company on the road.”
The female Hip-Hop pioneers also spoke about how record labels didn’t feel women could balance a career and motherhood and oftentimes panic about how the latter would affect record sales. “They [the record labels] do get scared,” added James.
Denton, 56, chimed in and addressed how they got through the criticism, “They still sayin’ that? That was why we are true to who we are. They could recognize ’cause we wanted to be moms and we was moms. We said, ‘We can do it’ and whatever came my way, I handled it, which was taking the good with the bad … ’cause someone has to do it! When they think it can’t, they panic, the labels and people. ‘Oh my god, how are you gonna? The sales! Sales, sales!’ But you know, we did it.”
Later in the segment, the duo quipped about the high expectations they faced as female artists and their smash hit, “Shoop.” Watch that clip below.
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