Salt-N-Pepa – Let’s Talk About Sex (remix) (1991)

Aww yeah.

Yet another box of free cassingles showed up here this week Á¢€” eighty of ’em this time Á¢€” meaning that this series may not end until my grandchildren are in college. I’m ambivalent about this, mostly because I’ve spotted the word “Cher” in the Vault an alarming number of times since these donations arrived; on the bright side, though, I’m now the proud owner of all sorts of late ’80s/early ’90s songs I never bothered to buy or review the first time around (now with 100% more tape hiss!)

Such as this song. It isn’t that I disliked Salt-N-Pepa Á¢€” although I did, at age twelve, find “Push It” to be vaguely threatening Á¢€” but “Let’s Talk About Sex” (download) never really resonated with me, probably because I was somewhere around sixteen and had a Mormon girlfriend, and talking about sex would most likely have caused some kind of explosion.

This cassingle’s A-side, the “Super Crispy Remix” (download), came from the Salt-N-Pepa remix album, A Blitz of Salt-N-Pepa Hits: The Hits Remixed. Many of you are probably too young to remember the remix album craze of 1990 and 1991, and you should be very glad for this Á¢€” just typing the words “remix album” still makes my right eyelid twitch. (For more on these albums, why they sucked, and which one was probably the worst, keep an eye on Jason’s place.)

Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with this song, even if the remix does leave a lot to be desired. Probably the worst thing about “Let’s Talk About Sex” is that it led to Salt-N-Pepa releasing the awkward PSA “Let’s Talk About AIDS,” which shoehorns an explicitly safe-sex moral into a song that didn’t need it. (The best thing about “Talk,” obviously, is the Staple Singers sample.)

A happy postscript for VH1 viewers suffering from Flav burnout: October will apparently be bringing us The Salt-N-Pepa Show, a reality series detailing the trio’s comeback efforts. Will they pull a Mardones, and release “Let’s Talk About Sex ’08”? Cross your fingers!

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Jeff Giles

Jeff Giles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Popdose and Dadnabbit, as well as an entertainment writer whose work can be seen at Rotten Tomatoes and a number of other sites. Hey, why not follow him at Twitter while you're at it?

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