Oaktown 357 Digital Biography

Music Video:

Hip-Hop Bio:

Oaktown's 3.5.7 was a rap group formed by MC Hammer in 1989. Its members included Sweet L.D. (Suhayla Sabir), Lil P (Phyllis Charles), and Terrible T (Tabatha Zee King-Brooks).

Music Career

MC Hammer assembled a formidable trio of dancers: Suhayla Sabir, Tabatha Zee King-Brooks, and Phyllis Charles. After hearing Lil' P rapping on the microphone, rehearsing for a dancing show, Hammer decided to present the idea to all the ladies about becoming vocal performers. Shortly after this suggestion, Oaktown's 357 was formed. The name Oaktown is a nickname for Oakland, California and .357 Magnum was chosen to represent their powerful dance moves.

He'd had them audition for a video and soon brought them on as his full-time dancers. He would rechristen them all: Suhayla became "Sweet L.D.," Tabatha was "Terrible T," and Phyllis was dubbed "Lil P." Hammer was already known for his flashy moves, and these women could keep up. The result was Oaktown's 357, a female group some perceived as Hammer's answer to another highly successful female rap team, Salt-N-Pepa.

"I didn't have any training and I got most of my experience in the club, Silk's in Emeryville," Sweet L.D. shared in 2015. "That's where I met Hammer."

"He met me at an army base club in Oakland," Lil P recalled in an interview with Underground Girls Of Hip-Hop. "He heard me playing around on the mic one night doing the Salt-N-Pepa song 'Tramp.'"

Tabatha joined them after P and L.D. were established within Hammer's entourage. The two girls had become close friends, and "Terrible T" was the newcomer. "We clicked easily when we met....we got along like sisters," L.D. said. "When Tab came in, there was a little bit of getting used to, chemistry-wise. We had a new girl."

Hammer dubbed the group "Oaktown's 3.5.7." as both a salute to their homebase and to emphasize the power of the trio as dancers (comparing the girls to a 357 Magnum).

"He taught us positioning. He taught us how to think of a song -- to choreograph a song. Not just out there dancing, but how to listen to it, all of those elements, changes in the music, how to accent that. There were things that he brought to dancing for us. The rehearsals were intense. Non-stop. You could be in there six to ten hours, maybe twelve hours, and you have not eaten. People are coming from work or school or whatever they did and trying to hang. [The rehearsals] were grueling. There was no sidestepping."

L.D. would later call it a heavy-handed introduction to the intensity of the music business. "We kept in each other in check," she says. "We tried to have as much fun as we could, given the circumstances."

Riding high on Hammer's ever-so-marketable name, the group released Wild & Loose to some commercial success, with "Juicy Gotcha Krazy" and "We Like It" both receiving heavy radio rotation. Soon after the release of the first album, Phyllis Charles left the group. Sweet L.D. and Terrible T stayed and continued to show and prove they were more capable of being women hip-hop artists in a male dominated industry. But like all good empires in history, this too has an unhappy ending. As Hammer's popularity slid, so did the rest of his entourage.

Oaktown's 357's second release in 1991, Fully Loaded included more material written and co-written by Djuana J. Johnican, Tabatha King and Treasure Williams. Terrible T and Sweet L.D., along with M.C. Hammer were members of the West Coast Rap All-Stars who sang on the Grammy-nominated single "We're All in the Same Gang." And while the duo released two more records (1991's Fully Loaded and 1992's Fila Treatment), they were never quite able to match the success of the first, and quietly disbanded in 1992.

Sources: Wikipedia, Rock the Bells, TIDAL, Last FM,

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