Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex

What this video is

Released in August 1991 amid the height of the AIDS crisis and a national debate over sex education and media censorship, 'Let's Talk About Sex' arrived as an audacious public health intervention disguised as a pop-rap anthem. Salt-N-Pepa — one of the first commercially dominant all-female rap groups — used the platform of MTV and Top 40 radio to normalize frank conversation about sex at a moment when mainstream…

Why it matters

A landmark in female hip-hop, 'Let's Talk About Sex' demonstrated that women could command the commercial center of rap while delivering substantive social commentary. Its success on MTV helped normalize safe-sex messaging in youth-targeted media and set a template for activist pop-rap that…

The director

Millicent B. Shelton (born January 29, 1966) is an American director and alumna of Princeton University and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She began her career as a wardrobe production assistant on Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), then became one of…