ABSTRACT
Salt-N-Pepa’s 1993 single “Shoop” was a veritable smash: the song reached number four on the Billboard “Hot 100” and was in large part responsible for the group’s album Very Necessary going five times platinum in the United States. But what does it mean to shoop? In this essay, I use this question to interrogate the context and substance of the song, arguing that Salt-N-Pepa’s song takes a seemingly nonsense word and gives it meaning: shoop comes to mean desire, power, and success. This essay explores each of these definitions in turn, using them as a framework through which to interpret this song, to listen carefully to its artistry, and to think through its impact more broadly.
