LISTEN: Salt-N-Pepa ditched rap and stepped up their advocacy with this “Very Necessary” ‘90s track
very necessary moment on the album for the way it highlighted the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the time and framed the conversation around the virus as something that can affect everyone—not just gay men.
Cheryl James, the Salt to Sandra Denton’s Pepa and Deidra Roper’s Spinderella, introduces the masterminds behind the track as WEATOC of Boston, Massachusetts: “A group of young people who are also involved in the fight,” she says.
What follows is a dinner theater-level skit between characters Mario and Cathy, who has just found out that she has been infected with HIV.“Hold up, wait…wait, wait… You got AIDS?,” Mario asks, thinking Cathy was initially pregnant.
Confirming, Cathy says, “I have the virus, and I don’t know what we’re gonna do.”Mario answers, “Hold up, what we’re gonna do?” Later in the skit, he says, “I mean, you might have HIV, I guess, but not me.
