Episode 15: Sweet LD [OAKTOWN 357/MC HAMMER]

“I have literally danced my entire life,” says SWEET LD, OG member of MC HAMMER and the POSSE and its pioneering, all-women offshoot OAKTOWN 357. And as a young lady living in the East Bay, CA in the 80s, that was just about all LD aka Suhayla Sabir and her friends ever wanted to do. She especially loved to frequent a place called Silk’s in Emeryville because it had three floors, each with its own jams to get down to. “Silk’s was my spot,” she recalls. “We were always there. We would go and get in as soon as we could—stand in that long line—and then we would stay until the sun came up. That was just our M.O.”

Suhayla was there one night when she noticed MC Hammer, who was just trying to get his feet wet as an artist/performer at the time. He was no joke on the floor, just killing the cabbage patch, a dance she had just learned herself—but not like that! She became so fixated that afterwards she and her friends followed him to a gas station. Hammer, paying himself the compliment that she was trying to flirt, was caught off guard when she simply asked: “Can you teach me to do the cabbage patch?”

Weeks later, she was part of his core clique. “We were literally just hanging out. It was just about the dance. We would just tear that dance floor up.” In other words, she had no thoughts of bustin moves professionally, much less making music herself. But that all changed one night when Hammer asked her and a friend if they wanted to be in a music video. “We were excited because we thought that being in a video meant that we were just going to be cute,” she says. “You know—wear the cute outfit, be the cute girl… He had something totally different in mind.”

So Suhayla found herself at long, rigorous rehearsals, running choreography and sweating from mid-afternoon till midnight. “We were not excited about that initially,” she says. Music videos were still pretty new at that time and she had never thought about what went into making one. “It became like ‘Do we have to keep showing up?’ Cuz we were really showing up out of good faith… It was kind of a confusing time.” Meanwhile, two key sistas entered the scene as well: Phyllis Charles and Tabitha Zee King-Brooks.

Eventually, Hammer did clue the ladies in: he wanted them to be backup dancers for his whole show. They performed everywhere they could as MC Hammer and the Posse, and the ladies—aka Sweet LD, Lil P, and Terrible T—brought their high-voltage, superhype dance style to classic videos like “Let’s Get It Started,” “Pump It Up,” and “Turn This Mutha Out.” Things began to build so fast that Hammer negotiated a deal to partner his Bust-It imprint with Capitol Records. That’s when he began formulating a plan to produce a female rapper. He had been auditioning girls for the gig when, messing around between songs at a rehearsal, Lil P grabbed a mic and started busting the song “Tramp” by Salt-N-Pepa. Hammer liked what he heard and approached P about becoming a solo artist. She agreed—but only if her homegirls Terrible T and Sweet LD would rap with her.

Oaktown 357 was born, and their debut Wild & Loose (1989) was a smash, with hit singles/videos for “Yeah Yeah Yeah” and “Straight at You.” Now the ladies were busier than ever—on the road opening for Hammer and then doing his set, all while training new dancers as they came into the fold. But things took a hard turn when the Posse appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show. Backstage after the taping, everyone was presented with a check—for an amount that actually seemed decent. For the ladies of Oaktown, it was a revelation. With Hammer, they had always been wondering about getting paid, or why they weren’t. This seemed to confirm that their blood and sweat was worth a lot more.

Lil P left outright, leaving Terrible T and LD to regroup amongst themselves. “I could understand why Lil P left,” remembers LD. “But… I wanted to know that I could see it through. So we talked and we determined between the two of us that we would stay… and that we would work well enough together to make them change their minds about how they treated us.” The sistas soldiered on without missing a step, enjoying hit singles/videos for remixes of “We Like It” and the smash “Juicy Gotcha Crazy.” They also appeared on the West Coast classic antiviolence cut “We’re All in the Same Gang” alongside N.W.A., Tone Loc, and Ice T. And the ladies stepped up their game for their follow-up album Fully Loaded (1991), a crowning achievement and one of the most underrated gems of the era.

Today, as a mom, fitness instructor, and published poet, Sweet LD remains proud of Oaktown 357’s legacy. “We did the damn thing—period,” she asserts. “We invested in ourselves to show up and do the work and then we created something and shared it with everybody in this world. And today they still look at us as someone who changed the dynamic for women in hip hop.” Indeed! In this inspiring, behind-the-scenes interview, Sweet LD raps about growing up watching her cousin Choc’let get down with Graham Central Station, how Hammer taught her how to “build” a dance in order to tell a story, and why the deceptive nature of the music industry means you need to ask questions. She also talks about how 357 songs were created in the studio, her recent comeback performances alongside acts like Lady of Rage and 702, and that time Prince personally gave her a tour of Paisley Park and kissed her hand.

Produced & Hosted by Ace Alan
Cohosted by Jay Stone
w/ Content Produced by Patryce “Choc’Let” Banks and Sweet LD
Website & Art by 3chards
In-studio Photos by Debbie Jue
Engineered by Dominic Brown, Alex Scammon, & Justin Ancheta at Soul Graffiti Studios in Oakland, CA
…but we couldn’t have done it without Scott Sheppard