Cheryl ‘Salt’ James reveals why she left Salt-N-Pepa, music’s top-selling female rap group: to fight an eating disorder and depression. Now she’s healthy and back with Pepa on TV.
To their millions of fans, Salt-N-Pepa were a fierce female presence in the male world of rap, singing about life, love and sex with humor, sass and the same gusto as the guys. “We broke down a lot of doors,” says Sandi “Pepa” Denton. “People started recognizing females can sell records.” But despite that success, Cheryl “Salt” James hid a secret, not only from the public but from her bandmates and those closest to her. She was depressed and bulimic, bingeing and purging up to seven times in a day. “I tried to stop,” she says, “but it was something I couldn’t control.”