Tracks 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 from Very Necessary (1993)

Tracks 17, 18 and 19 from Brand New (1997)

I feel like it's been forgotten a little just how big Salt-N-Pepa were at the time. Hot, Cool & Vicious was the first rap album by women to go gold and then the first to go platinum, and the 5x platinum Very Necessary is arguably the highest selling hip hop album by women depending on how you factor the gray area of the many songs with no rapping on the 8x platinum The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (for perspective, the next closest competition is Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, who each have one 3x platinum album). They were the most prominent women in hip hop for almost a decade straight, at a time when longevity was much rarer in rap than it is now -- they were pretty much the only act besides LL Cool J and Beastie Boys who were going platinum in the mid-'80s and the mid-'90s. Unfortunately, by the time they followed up their biggest album, four years had passed and I guess the world had moved on -- Brand New was released after the debuts of Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and Missy Elliott, and got lost in the shuffle, and they never made another album.