Leshaun

LeShaun is an American female rapper who is known best, for her sexy voice and for creating songs of explicit sexual nature with a humorous twist. She is considered to by some to be the first woman in hip hop to create songs with such content, predating the likes of Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown. Formerly known as Almond Joy, LeShaun burst upon the scene in 1988 along with her DJ Short Cut, on the track Wild Thang as the vocal half of a group called 2 Much. The song is seen by some as a female response to Wild Thing by Tone Loc; reminiscent of Roxanne Shante and The Real Roxanne's response records to a popular song by UTFO. Instead of attacking Tone Loc, LeShaun takes on the female's perspective of his song, and in the end makes it her own. However, it is not clear whether LeShaun's "Wild Thang" is truly a response to Tone Loc's "Wild Thing", since the former was originally released one year before the latter. A remixed and re-recorded version of Wild Thang resurfaced again in 1993 on the Ready or Not single. Around this time LeShaun was signed to Tommy Boy Records and involved in Flavor Unit, whose most recoginable face is that of Queen Latifah , appearing on a track on the posse album "Rollin' Wit Tha Flava" in that same year. Over the next few years LeShaun released a few other songs or collaborations, such as Wide Open in 1994 which was produced by D Nice, an influential former member of the crew Boogie Down Productions that was led by KRS-One. Wide Open along with her old hit Wild Thang is most likely what led to her collaborating with other popular artists like Coolio and LL Cool J. LeShaun received a surge in popularity when she collaborated with LL Cool J on the track called "Doin' It" that appeared on his album Mr. Smith. The song can be seen as a remake or an update to her song Wild Thang and even keeps the trademark synthesizer licks of the original. This popularity would not come to full fruition due to controversy about her not appearing in the Doin' It video. LL Cool J made claims that it was due to LeShaun's pregnancy at the time, rather than any other of her physical features. The video instead has a different woman for each of the verses in the song. This seemingly does not deter LeShaun from working with LL Cool J, since she has teamed up with him on songs after these events.