Image via Karl Ferguson Jr.
Tracy Kawalik‘s poisonous paragraphs smash your phonograph in half.
To understand Roxanne Shanté at 53 requires you to understand Roxanne Shanté at 15. And to understand Roxanne Shanté at 15 means that you have to understand Queensbridge, the neighborhood famously described by MC Shan as “the place where stars are born.” If you scan a list of hip-hop immortals that emerged from the largest public housing project in North America, you might easily mistake the blocks between Vernon and 21st Street for an expansive metropolis. But for all of its influence in popular culture, the QB is comprised of only 3,100 apartments that house 7,000 residents.
The list of natives deserves its own hall of fame: Marley Marl, Nas, Cormega, Mobb Deep, Tragedy Khadafi, Craig G, Big Noyd, Screwball, Blaq Poet, MC Shan, and of course, Shanté – who was called the “Queen of Rap” by the New York Times at her height of her mid-‘80s fame.
Shanté once tried to explain how such a staggering level of talent flourished in such a famously grimy environment. “There was definitely something in the water,” Shanté once said. “Though that something in the water was probably pollution—we lived right next to the damn power plant! We probably all got a little bit of Incredible Hulk in us.”
That’s probably the best way to describe how ferocious and savage “Roxanne’s Revenge” seemed when it dropped in 1984. Exactly 40 years later, the response to UTFO’s “Roxanne Roxanne” remains one of the greatest debut singles and most iconic diss songs ever made. In seven minutes and just one take, Lolita Shanté Gooden became hip-hop’s first major female solo star and the first breakout artist from Marley Marl’s Juice Crew.
It was no surprise to anyone who was already familiar with Shanté’s preternatural gifts. She’d been winning battles since 10 years old, going bar-for-bar and besting male MCs more than twice her age.
“Growing up in the projects and in the group home you always have someone who could throw a beat up for an emcee to rhyme over,” Shanté tells me. “Hip-hop was our way of coping with our situation and our circumstances. Battling was an alternative to fighting.”
It was fitting that when Marley Marl was searching for the right fighter to go toe-to-toe against UTFO, all he had to do was holler out the window to Shanté. The Brooklyn group had cancelled their appearance on a show that Marley and Mr. Magic were promoting, and the latter sought vengeance. Over the original song’s instrumental, Shanté unleashed an arson spree that torched UTFO’s lyrical skills, looks, lack of game, and even their fathers’ masculinity.
No one had ever heard anything like it – especially not from a baby-faced girl with a ponytail – who had recorded the song a few weeks before her 15th birthday. But this was classic Queensbridge. Long before Nas went live from the BBQ; long before Prodigy and Havoc described this “hell on earth,” Shanté brought the serrated grit and raw lyrics that defined QB rap.
“Roxanne’s Revenge” was a viral sensation before the phenomenon existed. It kickstarted the “Roxanne Wars,” in which anywhere from 30 to 100 diss records were created by rappers trying to earn secondhand clout from Shante’s initial incineration. None came close. The “Roxanne’s Revenge” single sold a reported 250,000 copies. A massive underground hit that reached #22 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart before the hip-hop rankings even existed.
Shanté’s profane warfare and clever wordplay flipped UTFO’s lecherous narrative on its neck. She became rap’s adolescent empress – one too smart and confident to fall for her prospective suitor’s lame come-ons. She proved for the first, but certainly not the last time, that female solo MCs could be as aggressive, lyrically sharp, and dominant as their male counterparts. In fact, her cuts left such severe scars that an embarrassed U.T.F.O. reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to Shanté’s team.
”I called people out directly as a sign of respect,” she explains. “You can’t go through life sending subliminals; you need to be direct,” Shanté told me when we spoke last month. “If I’m going to express my feelings about someone, the best thing to do is to say names go directly to their face. So that way, there’s no mistaking who it’s intended for. No one could ever say, ‘I think Roxanne is talking about me.’ With Roxanne Shanté, you know exactly who she is talking about.”
Like so many of her peers from the first decade of recorded hip-hop, the business was never handled properly. The industry was designed to exploit and it moved swiftly. It would be four long years before Shanté released her debut album on Cold Chillin’, 1989’s Bad Sister. The Marley Marl-produced LP received rave reviews, but it topped out at #52 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Her second and final album, 1992’s The Bitch is Back, was similarly slept on – despite production and guest raps from Kool G, the Large Professor, and Trackmasters.
Demons accompanied her hip-hop trajectory. Shanté was partially raised in a group home. She’d stolen clothes to make money, dealt with a mother battling alcoholism, and suffered emotional and physical abuse. She’d been cheated out of money by managers and others whom she trusted. At 25, she’d had enough. After dropping a greatest hits album, she retired from hip-hop to focus on motherhood and her own healing process.
In 2024, Shanté seems sanguine about it all. There is no more need for revenge. She’s a happily married mother of two and hosts a daily radio show and podcast on the Rock the Bells SiriusXM station. She’s been inducted into the National Hip-Hop Museum Hall of Fame and even was the subject of a 2017 Pharrell Williams-produced biopic, Roxanne Roxanne. This weekend at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas, the Paid in Full Foundation will honor her with their Grandmaster’s Award, which guarantees a $100,000-per-year stipend for the next half-decade.
“My life is an open book; it’s just not an easy read,” Shanté says. “But I couldn’t write a better ending. I don’t know how everything would have played out for me if they had paid me what they owed me back then. I don’t know how it would have been if I was able to move in the big house, have the pools and have the money to do whatever at the beginning of my career when I was still so young. When it comes to fairy tales, it’s always better to have the happily ever after.”