Sandra 'Pepa' Denton

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If you're a product of the '80s, then you'll be big fans of Salt-n-Pepa's iconic tunes. We chat to Sandra - better known as Pepa - from the hip hop trio.

Should we call you Pepa, or Sandra?
You can call me Pep, it’s ok. It’s funny, people call me Pep or Pepa more than my real name.

Are you excited about coming to Australia?
I’m really excited, especially because our Australian fans have always been so good to us over the years and always been so supportive of Salt N Pepa. Last year when we were supposed to come and we had a dodgy promoter so we weren’t able to come over, and we got all this bad blog attention. So I’m happy to come, this time for real.

You and Salt met when you were doing nursing training back in the day, right?
Yeah, that’s right – we were in school together. We started hanging out when she was working at Sears [department store] and I needed a job so she told me to come on down and fill out the application. So I did, and we worked side by side at Sears.

Did you just click straight away?
Yeah, we were just good friends. You know, our producer worked with us, too, he was Salt’s boyfriend at the time and he had the vision that we should put a group together.

Wow, it sounds like Sears was like a fame school!
I know! Who would have ever thought? And you know who else worked at Sears with us? Martin Lawrence. All of us worked together. Oh and Kid N Play, too.

Are you all still friends now?
Kid N Play, definitely, but I haven’t seen Martin in a while.

Are you going to be doing any more acting?
I would love to. I have my TV show now called Let’s Talk About Pep, and that’s been keeping me pretty busy, but I definitely want to get into more acting. That’s something that I really want to do.

What would be your dream role?
Ooh… I’d wanna be in one of those, like sci-fi or horror movies [laughs]. I’d want to try and make a vampire movie. I would love that.

Have you ever been mistaken for another celebrity?
I’ve got a couple of good ones. A while ago I used to get Mary J Blige, and believe it not, when I had my blonde hair – and I take this as a compliment, of course ­– people used to say, “Is that Beyoncé?”. Only when I used to have my blonde hair and it was curly and in a similar style.

Have you ever been arrested?
No, thank God, I haven’t. Salt had a fight and got beat up one time, so she got arrested. Her and a guy got in a fight so he pressed charges against her even though it was really his fault. But I haven’t. You’d think it’d be Pepa more than Salt, right? But she got in trouble more than me.

Have you ever been hit on by another celebrity?
Yeeeeeess… [laughs]. Oh, I can’t say. I wish I could say, but I better not.

Oh, go on, tell us.
Oh, I can’t say their names. Adam Rodriguez from CSI Miami tweeted that he thought I was very beautiful and he wished he could have met me, so I took that as a compliment.

There must be others!
Well … a long, long time ago Will Smith hit on me once. When he was Fresh Prince, before he became Will. I was flattered by it, I’ll kiss and tell – we shared a little peck. But this is way before Jada, this is way back a long time ago.

And now he’s the King of Hollywood.
I know, and he’s such a nice guy. He’s like, wow. Great guy.

Have you ever Googled yourself?
[Laughs.] Yes! I can’t lie, I’ve started Googling myself to see what outfits I can’t wear any more. I do that a lot, it’s like, 'Let me see what I wore to that party?'

What’s been the most embarrassing moment of your life?
I remember being on stage one time, I did a little move and my pants, for some reason the zipper and the button popped. Because my pants were extremely tight, obviously. And I was trying to play it off, but they were kinda coming down, and I had to actually go off stage and find a safety pin and put them together.

 Haha, that’s great. Awful but great!
[Laughs.] And you know what else was kinda embarrassing? You can pick which one you want to use. This was sad but embarrassing – it was in Sydney actually, the last time I was there, I fell off the stage. And then I got back on the stage and I was crying but I was trying to finish my rap. And the audience was looking at me like, “Is that blood?”.

That must have been in the days before YouTube?
Exactly, exactly! It was before YouTube, so it could have been worse, but it was so embarrassing – and it was in Australia!

Have you ever pretended to love a gift when you’ve actually hated it?
Well, I love gifts, so I like to get things all the time. Oh, but on my dating show, one of my dates gave me this, well, it’s like a dream catcher but he called it a sceptre. He made it, he welded a dream catcher onto an iron pole and he was like, “This is for my queen, you are my queen”.

Haha, creepy!
Yeah! I didn’t want to take it because I didn’t know if he’d cursed it and it would make me love him. That was creepy because he’d made this for me and said he was my knight or something.

The poor man…
I know, the poor man, and I feel bad because he took the time and made this dream-catcher-sceptre and I didn’t want to keep it just in case he put a spell on it.

What did you say?
I was just looking at it like, “Okaaaaay, thank you”.

Make sure you check out Salt-n-Pepa when they play in Australia for Good Vibrations 2010.