Roxanne Shante Well Back Once Again by Popular Demand
At simply before 2 a.thousand. one December night in 1984, the phonation of a immature but tenacious-sounding girl broke across the New York airwaves on Mr. Magic's Rap Assail, one of just ii radio shows devoted to rap in the city. At that place was nothing slick about it: no claw or tune over the crunchy nail-bap beat — just four straight minutes of rhyming from an MC who called herself Roxanne. "I hope you got that on tape," said host Mr. Magic, "because you might never hear it once more."
He couldn't take been more incorrect. "Roxanne Speaks Out," the debut unmarried from fourteen-year-one-time Lolita Shanté Gooden — before long to become known equally Roxanne Shanté — would ignite both the career of rap's first female person star and hip-hop's get-go recorded beef: the Roxanne Wars, a yearlong saga that would follow Shanté and her rivals from 12-inch records traded effectually New York to opening slots on arena tours. A new biopic, Roxanne, Roxanne, co-produced by Pharrell Williams and debuting March 23 on Netflix, explores the at present-48-twelvemonth-former MC's improbable story, including the abuses she had to overcome as a precocious teenager growing up in Queensbridge, the largest housing project in America, and as a child in a ruthless industry.
What's only implied in the picture show, though, is how Shanté's overnight success marked a turning point in the early days of hip-hop — the outset time a woman forced the male-dominated genre to listen upwards and pay respect. Before Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, Eve and Lil' Kim, MC Lyte and Queen Latifah and Table salt-N-Pepa, Shanté battled her fashion to the tiptop of the game by fearlessly going toe to toe with men onstage and on wax, all while moving hip-hop further toward the mainstream.
?"Information technology was the inciting incident for popular attention [to focus] on a female MC not as some decorated improver chick, merely as the main attraction," says Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. Only despite their impact, the Roxanne Wars — and Shanté's pivotal part — began underground and have since receded from all just the nearly dedicated hip-hop fans' memories, partially considering the genre itself was and so young when she emerged.
On a recent afternoon, Shanté is seated within New York'southward genteel London hotel, ready to go deep on her personal chapter of rap history. "Fifty-fifty before they decided to call it 'hip-hop,' I think I've always been a rapper," she says, halfheartedly stirring Splenda into a cup of green tea before confessing that she prefers the existent thing. Her hair is in a polished pouf echoing her formerly signature ponytail, and she wears a pinkish floral sweater and black leather leggings — a sophisticated look punctuated with one hint at her heyday: a gold chain with a pendant of a homo performing cunnilingus.
Growing up in Queensbridge — the Long Island City dwelling to later hip-hop legends like Nas and Mobb Deep — was virtually "being able to rhyme all the time virtually anything," she says. "Hearing other people battling from the window and thinking, 'Just wait until my turn comes.'"
It didn't take long: Shanté'due south natural flair for freestyling and competitive border quickly became apparent in battles on the cake, and family and friends started taking her around the city to compete for coin at other housing projects, community centers and clubs. These supporters would forepart the entry fee, and her mother would give them a committee later she inevitably won. "I'd near become this prizefighter," says Shanté. She was still in middle school, and regularly winning confronting older boys — and men.
"The fact that she was a woman was nifty and exciting. No 1 had washed that on record before," says author and filmmaker Nelson George, who was so Billboard'southward R&B columnist. Some even insist that no beef — on wax or off — has since matched the Roxanne Wars. "Nobody could touch Shanté," says Tyrone "Fly Ty" Williams, Mr. Magic'due south producer at the time. "Equally first-class a performer equally [pioneering Brooklyn rapper] Big Daddy Kane was and is, he'south not Shanté."
Merely as far as Shanté was concerned, resting on her laurels was never an choice. "Even after I started making records, I still had such a battle mentality," says Shanté — who now lives in New Jersey, co-running an education nonprofit, and occasionally performs. "I didn't desire to exist second best, I didn't desire to be the best girl — I wanted to be the best."
While Shanté was becoming 1 of New York's most feared freestylers, her lifelong neighbor from across the mode, Marlon Williams, aka DJ Marley Marl, was learning to mix records, scratch and brand beats on his Roland TR-808 drum machine, DJ'ing for Rap Attack on WHBI.
Though "you had to put a hanger on meridian of the antenna and make sure that information technology pointed the right way" to hear the show, according to producer Tyrone Williams (no relation), Mr. Magic's pay-to-play show was a must-listen. "They talk almost Kool Herc and [Afrika Bambaataa]," says Williams, referencing the Bronx DJs nigh oft associated with hip-hop's genesis. "Yeah, they gave parties. But Magic took it to the airwaves and put it where everybody could hear information technology. All of a sudden, information technology wasn't just a block or neighborhood thing anymore."
Equally such, Mr. Magic, Williams and Marley Marl wielded remarkable influence. When the fledgling Brooklyn rap group UTFO came with its first single, "Hangin' Out," just before Thanksgiving in 1984, the Rap Attack crew decided they would rather play the B-side — a song called "Roxanne, Roxanne," near a fictional adult female who had somehow resisted all four members' advances, and which Mr. Magic thought had hit potential.
"It blew up," says UTFO'southward Kangol Kid, aka Shaun Shiller Fequiere. "While everyone else was talking most how much money they had and how many cars they endemic, nosotros said that no thing how hard nosotros tried, we couldn't get this young lady. That was keeping it real — anybody had a Roxanne in their earth."
UTFO offered to exercise a Harlem concert promoted by Mr. Magic, which, given the song's success, promised to exist a much-needed financial benefaction to Magic, Williams and Marley Marl, who were still barely making ends meet. Just when the city's other on-air destination for rap, Kool DJ Cerise Alert's show on the old WRKS (Kiss-FM), added "Roxanne, Roxanne," UTFO backed out — the indicate at which the story becomes legend.
"We were expecting this Christmas coin, and now we ain't got it," says Williams. "We're discussing this problem in front of Marley'southward building, and some little girl says, 'Why don't you let me make a tape dissing them?' I say, 'Get abroad, little girl, nosotros got bigger problems.'" The girl, of course, was Shanté. The next 24-hour interval, Marley Marl recorded her freestyling over the "Roxanne, Roxanne" trounce in his apartment, in exchange for jeans from his then-employer Sergio Valente.
"Since information technology wasn't a battle, I didn't think that anything was going to come of it," Shanté says now. "In battles, I was rhyming for 30 to xl minutes, so four minutes was nothing for me. I stuck with the storyline, and the side by side morning time I was 'Roxanne.'" She never needed the jeans: Later Mr. Magic'due south coiffure played "Roxanne Speaks Out" — before long officially renamed "Roxanne'southward Revenge" — on their show, all 4 of them instantly became local celebrities.
As Shanté systematically dissed each UTFO member in plough, raunchy lines like "All he want to exercise is just-a bust a cerise" helped camouflage her youth. Within weeks, the scratchy tape that even so had Mr. Magic's signature on-air tags was pressed into a 12-inch by Philadelphia's Pop Art Records — i that somewhen had to be rerecorded with a new beat later UTFO'southward label, Select, sent a cease-and-desist alphabetic character. But there wasn't time to get clearances: The combination of "Roxanne, Roxanne" and "Roxanne's Revenge" proved irresistible.
"Male person rappers felt like I was throwing things off," says Shanté. "If the best in the game is a little girl, then rap is no longer going to be seen equally this masculine thing." She wasn't just subverting the hierarchy of hip-hop, but the genre's gender norms as well. Men felt threatened; fans loved the novelty of hearing a girl take such an ambitious opinion. "That'due south what made information technology," adds Williams. "If it was some guy dissing another guy, information technology would not take had the aforementioned effect — merely nobody had ever heard a girl rap similar that earlier."
Roxanne Shanté performed her first bear witness under her new proper noun that December, at a grungy Brooklyn gild called Bee's Castle. She was on enemy turf: This was UTFO's borough. "There were so many people who I felt didn't like me," Shanté recalls now. "Just somebody was similar, 'Oh, she's pretty,' and I was like, 'OK, that's one person.' I opened upwards my oral fissure, and after that I never looked back."
By January 1985, Shanté was getting booked alongside UTFO. "We're saying to ourselves, 'You're not even the daughter we're talking well-nigh — she doesn't be!'" says Fequiere, laughing. "But she called usa out by proper noun on the tape, and we do be. We took that personally." The group plotted its ain answer record, finding another female person MC, Adelaida Martinez, to authenticate as "The Real Roxanne." Meanwhile, Brooklyn rapper Doreen "Sparky D" Broadnaux decided to come to bat for her friends in UTFO with a song called "Sparky's Turn (Roxanne You're Through)": "Information technology'due south practiced you stood them upward, or they'd be in jail/'Cause y'all audio like you're fresh out of junior high schoolhouse." Only even Broadnaux was a Shanté fan. "We just heard this lilliputian squeaky, crackly vox, and nosotros were similar, 'What in the world?'" she recalls of hearing "Roxanne's Revenge" for the starting time time. "But it was very catchy."
At a moment when it was side by side to impossible to even get rap on the radio — and when the industry yet lumped it in the category of "black" music — UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne" managed to break through to theBillboard Hot 100 at No. 79 in March 1985. That same calendar month, "Roxanne'due south Revenge" peaked at No. 22 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart (and so called Hot Black Singles). At effectually the same time, the sales-driven Hot Trip the light fantastic toe/Disco 12-inch chart debuted, with "Roxanne's Revenge," "Roxanne, Roxanne" and "The Real Roxanne" all in the top x. The feud was a sensation, and new answer records flooded in from around the land: "The Parents of Roxanne," "Yo, My Footling Sister (Roxanne's Brothers)," "Roxy (Roxanne's Sister)" and "The Final Give-and-take — No More Roxanne (Please)."
"Information technology became a hip-hop soap opera — everyone had an episode," says Fequiere. Of the responses, which some estimates put at most 100, Shanté has a soft spot for "Practice It Ricardo (Roxanne's Man)" by Ricardo & Chocolate Boogie. "Information technology was one of the beginning records that defended me," she says. (To Sparky D, Ricardo rapped: "Compared to Roxanne, you're a dragon queen.") "So what that the other 85 were against me? There was one that was for me."
During the course of the year, the hit led to national tours featuring Shanté, first in skating rinks, and and then, within months, in arenas: Mr. Magic's Rap Attack meets New Edition, and Fresh Fest, i of hip-hop's first major festivals. Shanté, UTFO, The Existent Roxanne and Sparky D were often a package deal, and soon, Biz Markie, Large Daddy Kane and MC Shan would join what became known as The Juice Crew. The Roxanne feud, though, remained the initial draw, one that both Shanté and Fequiere compare to wrestling. "Similar the WWE: That's all fake, only information technology'southward amusement," says Fequiere, though he clarifies that during the Roxanne Wars, much of the offstage tension was real. "There was no chat, goose egg between us. Simply a lot of glares and snarls."
Whether because of her proclivity for dissing anyone and everyone or her condition as the lone girl among a coiffure of older men, Shanté emerged as the heel of the tour, but she embraced the part. "For some reason, the bad guy'southward entrance is always better," she says. "If I'm the villain in this, so yeah, I'm the motherfucking villain! That was the just mode to overcome that feeling of being a footling girl, of feeling like it was me against the globe." And it was, often literally: An LP chosenThe Consummate Story of Roxanne…The Album included a "Rap Your Own Roxanne" rails, forage for citywide contests to observe the local Roxanne. The winner was awarded the unpleasant chore of battling Shanté onstage. "Shanté would tear them autonomously," recalls Williams.
Shanté returned to what was so known as the Hot Black Singles chart in 1988 with a guest poesy on Rick James' "Loosey's Rap," and she released ii studio albums on Warner Music. But by the mid-'90s, her star had faded. Mainstream hip-hop expanded across interborough scrapping, and Shanté'southward style — coming out swinging every single fourth dimension, dissing just about everyone in the business — isolated her, while outside the studio, the pressures of being a young mother in an abusive relationship (equally detailed in the movie) weighed heavily. "Because how skilful she was, I'g lamentable she didn't have a bigger career," says George.
But today, as hip-hop'southward approved recordings and trailblazers get the bookish and pop-culture handling, Shanté is finally receiving some long-overdue recognition. At a time when rap was simply getting started, her imagination, spontaneity and seemingly unbreakable confidence made her the ideal MC — and the pattern for whatever woman who would come after. For Shanté, the ultimate prize was never chart position, merely pride. "I wanted to be able to rhyme about anything, at any fourth dimension," she says. "To be the perfect hip-hop soldier."
This article originally appeared in the March iii issue of Billboard.
Source: https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/roxanne-shante-interview-netflix-biopic-rap-star-8221694/
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