I heart the 90s. It was a time when music made sense, singers could actually “BLOW,” and female groups dominated the airwaves. It wasn’t enough to simply be an entertainer; these sistas actually had raw, effortless talent. The majority of my adolescent years were spent humming along to songs that lauded black womanhood and dripped with more sensuality than sexuality. 

The female vocal group is now as close to extinction as any beautiful rare bird.  Killed off by commercial demand and video vixens, for me, and my girlfriends, they will live on forever in our, “Girl do you remember…” conversations. It is their voices that made us proud to be young Black women coming of age in the 1990s and this is what they meant to us…

Salt-N-Pepa = Swagger.   Do you remember where you were the first time you hummed along to “Shoop?”  I was in 7^th grade and I spent long afternoons praying that someone would order the video on The Box.

The lyrics dripped with confidence mixed with just the right amount of sex appeal and a dash of cocky, giving birth to the idea of the female mack.  Shoop was the epitome of “go for yours girl, because I’m surely going for mine.” These ladies made respect a requirement, not an option.

En Vogue = Sophistication.  Who didn’t want to be Dawn, Terry, Cindy, and Maxine all at the same time?  I practiced “Hold On” on a daily basis in my bathroom mirror in preparation for my sold out concerts on the playground during the summer of 1990.  I wanted to emulate everything that I perceived En Vogue to be, beautiful women with extraordinary vocal talent.

Their words reflected self-esteem, self-worth, independence, and empowerment, all wrapped up in four lovely packages. True, I was only 8 years old and I couldn’t conceive the weight of the lyrics of “Hold On” until adulthood, even today, there still hasn’t been a group that’s had the same impact as En Vogue.

TLC = Sass. Crazy….Sexy…Cool…put ‘em all together and what did you get …T-Boz, Left-Eye, and Chilli. These sistas combined their individual talents to inspire girls all over the world to embrace their uniqueness and dare to be different. T.L.C. was unconventional in a funky and classy way.

While I love everything that T.L.C. has ever given life to, “Baby-Baby-Baby” will always be my number one. Talk about making somebody love you on your terms. You’d have to be dumb, deaf, and blind to miss the meaning of… 

“Cause a girl like me won't stand for less I require plenty conversation with my sex…” enough said. 

EXPRESS YOURSELF: Which of these female vocal groups did you wish you belonged to? Tell us why in the forum?

S.W.V = Soul.  No talent show of the early 1990s was complete without at least two groups of girls performing one of S.W.V.’s songs, and it may have even been the same song. Sister’s With Voices stepped up the female vocal group game when they introduced emotion into the equation.  To this day, I cannot sing “Weak” without closing my eyes and losing myself in the words of the song. We may not have understood what true love was, but baby we knew what it was supposed to feel like.

Destiny’s Child = Style. Before there was “The Beyonce”, there were four beautiful girls that sure could “sang” and looked good doing it.  “No, no, no” was innocent and playfully flirty. Say what you want with your mouth boy, but your eyes are really telling the truth. Destiny’s Child (the first edition) was stylish without being tacky, seductive without being raunchy, and youthful with just the right amount of maturity. The last great female group of the 90s, Destiny’s Child will always be my very own dream girls.

And the tombstone reads, “R.I.P. Female Vocal Groups: Gone But Not Forgotten.”