Would you trade worldwide music fame for Long Island domesticity?
That's what Cheryl James Wray did. Formerly Salt of Brooklyn rap's titanic Salt 'N Pepa act, she shook her partner loose back in 2002, calling on the cell phone while Sandy "Pepa" Denton was at the salon getting a pedicure, to say "basically 'I don't wanna be joined at your hips anymore,'" as Denton recalled to TV critics during VH1's session for a fall reality series tracing the duo's current attempt to reunite.
"A lot of things led up to that point," explained Wray, who's found God and now lives quietly with her family in a tidy new Melville development. "It was all fun for her, but I felt like I didn't have control of my life. I felt like I was compromising in a lot of ways, and I was just tired. I needed to do some soul-searching. Then I married my daughter's father. We had another child. I kind of cleaned up my personal life, and I needed that time to do that."
"Which is fine," added Denton [left in Getty Images/VH1 photo], but she expected to have her longtime partner "actually sit down and kind of prep that other person that this is your next step. To me, it was just the way that she did it. I've just been bitter about it, and upset, and we just never really spoke about it."
"And I have apologized for that many times," replied Wray. "Even in writing."
So the tension still simmers, on stage and off, which VH1 is undoubtedly counting on to fuel "The Salt 'N Pepa Show" premiering Oct. 15. In on-camera footage, Wray/Salt expresses her dismay when Denton/Pepa's act gets too wild and sexy for her taste. "I'm a mom of a 16-year-old," Wray told critics. "I feel like I have a responsibility to my daughter to present myself in a certain way." "I'm also a mom," noted Denton, but what Wray viewed as lascivious performance behavior, "I took that as dancing."
Even when (perhaps especially when) they disagree, the VH1 show is "a way to explore to new ways to work together," says Denton, "and also tap into some of those reasons for even breaking up in the first place." Wray says she's "trying to figure out how I can live my life without feeling like I'm compromising the new person that I am, and still work together."
Sounds like a show to me.