Roxanne Shante: An Incredible Journey
By Nolan Strong

Roxanne Shante’s name recently surfaced and grabbed headlines due to a recent lawsuit she filed against R&B diva Janet Jackson.

For those old enough to remember, Shante was [is] one of the most well known and well respected early figures from rap. As part of Marley Marl’s Juice Crew, Shante, at the tender age of 14, caught everyone’s ear in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge.”
The record contained the 14-year-old delivering an amazing verse in one of the first of many responses to U.T.F.O’s hit “Roxanne, Roxanne.”

The hit took her for a ride on the rollercoaster of the music business and the experience was so difficult, Shante hopped off the bizarre ride by the time she was 18-years-old.
She compares Hip-Hop to a ‘bad boyfriend’ and reveals that the rap game didn’t treat her as well as “he” could have.

Despite the pitfalls, Shante held on and now runs a successful psychology practice in New York. Her story is inspirational, at the least.

AllHipHop.com: Why are you suing Janet Jackson?

Roxanne Shante: Personally, I don’t have a problem with her. I just figured, maybe it was just an oversight that they didn’t pay the invoice for using my voice on the record. I figured you know, maybe this is something that she over looked with the breast popping out, it just caught up in the mix. So I fell back off of it, like when they get around to it, they’ll get around to it. But then someone contacted me from their office, trying to say that it wasn’t my voice, which really infuriated me.

AllHipHop.com: What song is it?

RS: It’s song #13 on Damita Jo, "Like You Don't Love Me." It’s the familiar “So Fresh” words that everyone samples. Any true hip-hop head is gonna say, when we hear those words “so fresh,” we know that’s Shante.

AllHipHop.com: Do you own the rights to those earlier recordings now?

RS: Yes I do.

AllHipHop.com: That came out on the Pop Art record label out of Philadelphia, right?

RS: Yes. I’ve owned the masters for over 9 years. What people will try to say is that they took it from the Biz Markie record, “Nobody Beats the Biz,” but it doesn’t come from that, it comes from “The Def Fresh Crew.” Biz was on the Pop Art label too.

AllHipHop.com: Is this the first type of lawsuit you have had to go through like this?

RS: Usually it doesn’t have to go as far as a lawsuit. Usually they rectify it and admit that it’s my voice. All it takes is one true hip-hop head in the circle to say “you know what, that is her voice.” I don’t care how many times you try to say it’s not; you know that is her voice. So let’s just pay her for it. She could pay me for what she would pay for one of her handbags. It wasn’t a big deal. I don’t feel like I am being wronged by the industry or anything like that though.

AllHipHop.com: So you’re happy with life?

RS: Out of all the old school rappers that I quote unquote know or socialize with, I am ok and I am fine. Shante is happy. Life after Hip-Hop for me has been better than Hip-Hop had ever been to me.

AllHipHop.com: What are you up to know?

RS: I am a psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan. I also do a lot of voiceovers for certain cartoon characters, I do a lot overseas.

AllHipHop.com: What cartoon characters?

RS: I can’t really discuss it yet, but I can say is that it’s three little girls who are superheroes involved.

AllHipHop.com: With your private practice and your other endeavors doing well, do you ever plan to come back to Hip-Hop?

RS: I love Hip-Hop. It will always be a part of me. But Hip-Hop is like a bad relationship for me. When I dated Hip-Hop, it didn’t buy the things for rappers that it buys now. I talk about Hip-Hop like it was a relationship. It was like a man. It wasn’t that good to me. I enjoyed it, but everyone else was making me a commodity and really taking advantage of me. It turned it into something I didn’t like. So it would have to be incredible for me to come back.
AllHipHop.com: How did people take advantage of you?

RS: Well, you know my age.

AllHipHop.com: How old were you?

RS: I was 14, with no parents, no guardian, and no accountants.

AllHipHop.com: What happened to your parents?

RS: They weren’t around. I was on my own. I didn’t really have any guidance. So I was just going and doing as I was told. So when you had people like Marley Marl telling me after a show that I am supposed to split the money evenly, I believed that.

AllHipHop.com: Was your relationship with Marley Marl more than a friendship and business relationship?

RS: Umm..uhh..My relationship with Marley was, I don’t know how I can explain it. My relationship with Marley wasn’t as good as it should have been. I am not a scorned woman or a mad girlfriend.

AllHipHop.com: You were only 14 when this all happened? When did you know you wanted to get out of it?

RS: When I was 18.

AllHipHop.com: So what did you do, take the money that you made from the rap game and go back to school?

RS: No. When I left the rap game, I left with absolutely nothing. I left with nothing. I couldn’t even get books. They would say "Don’t worry about it Shante, I’ll meet you at Barnes and Nobles and we’ll get the books.” I couldn’t even get them to help me with books. They supported the negative things, but they couldn’t support the positive.

AllHipHop.com: How did you make it through school?

RS: There was a clause in my contract that said they had to pay for my education. Regardless of how far it went. And what happened was, they felt like she’s 14. By the time I was 15 I was pregnant with my son. They felt like they could through that in there because they thought I would never use it. I mean they were like “look at her now.” They thought I was going to get on drugs. I didn’t. And as long as they had my school covered, I was good. I didn’t get school loans, so I had to copy pages out of other people’s books. I would stand in front of the machine with a bunch of nickels and make copies. Page for page for page for page. And every time I copied a page, my love for Hip-Hop was going away, more and more and more. My story isn’t a happy one, but it had a happy ending. I was straight out of the group home; they dangled the custody of my son over my head because I was so young, so Hip-Hop became a labor of love. If you don’t do this, this is what’s going to happen. One day I was finally like you know what? Forget it. It was right around the time I became a Vegan.

AllHipHop.com: How old were you when you decided to be a Vegan?

RS: 18. I would see people devouring meat and then acting like animals. I just figured it had something to do with the food.

AllHipHop.com: Did it help calm you down? Did you notice a change in your own behavior?

RS: I noticed that my own anger subsided, incredibly. I wasn’t as hurt or as mad as I was in the beginning. What’s gonna be is gonna be.

AllHipHop.com: What were you hurt and angry about?

RS: I was hurt and angry at the fact that it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. We were all supposed to come out of the projects together, go buy houses together, go buy cars together, we were supposed to do it all together and be a family unit, which is what I thought we were. When your young and you’re getting $5,000 a show and no one says to you, you know what? You’re the headliner. So, you need to pay Marley like he’s your DJ. [Fly] Ty like he’s your manager? I didn’t do that. They came to me and would say ‘you did a show and there are 5 of us. We’re all supposed to get $1,000 each.’ I believed that.

AllHipHop.com: Do you still talk to any of those guys?

RS: I still talk to Ty. I realized that anger isn’t going to get me anywhere or for me to hold grudges. I don’t talk to Marley. I talk to Biz everyday. They were my siblings in the family, so you can’t hold them accountable for what the mother and father did. You can’t be mad at your brother’s and sisters. You can’t start hating your label mates. Even when they start to learn more. It does hurt when they learn, but don’t share.

AllHipHop.com: Psychology. What made you go into that profession? Was it because of what you had been through in your life?

RS: I know what made me choose psychology was the fact that I knew where my loyalty lied. I knew why I felt what I felt. But I couldn’t understand why they did the things they did. I needed to know to be able to foresee this, should this ever happen again. I never saw the signs. I never saw them for who they were. It’s just like how you can be in a relationship with someone, and you say “I know we can make it, I know it can work out.” But in all reality you may be seeing what you want to see and you’re hoping that person feels the same. I had my good times and my bad times. Had something’s that I wanted to do and a lot of things I was supposed to do.
As time went on, you set yourself up for certain positive entities in your life. And one of the most positive entities I have come across in my career in Hip-Hop is The Royalty Network. The Royalty Network is something that every Hip-Hop artist should be familiar with them.

AllHipHop.com: I know them, my friend Alyssa used to work there.

RS: Well they picked up where Suge’s intentions left off. When Suge came along in the industry, he came into the industry like a savior for us. And I mean the artists who were being slaved out of their royalties, their writing and publishing. It was like there’s this guy named Suge getting people out of their contracts and making deals.

AllHipHop.com: Did Suge help you get out of your deal?

RS: Laughs…You know? He didn’t. But everyone was trying to find Suge, because he was doing what we needed at that time. People were being abused. The Royalty Network came along at the right time. They work for me or other rappers and entertainers. You can fall back and they can help you get what’s yours. Sometimes the percentage that you get is better than sitting home and not getting anything. There’s a lot of people and artists out there who have Royalties out there, but do not know how to go get them. They just chalk it up as a loss. The Royalty Network doesn’t accept losses. I was I would have found them 20 years ago.
One last thing. I can still rhyme with the best of them. I never lost that. If Roxanne Shante was to do another record, know that the people involved are going to be incredible, their persona, the budget, the producers, their offer was incredible.

AllHipHop.com: So if everything is incredible you’ll come back?

RS: Definitely.
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Pay respect to the Architect. She laid down the formula all Femcees have followed. From Queen Latifah to Crunks stars Princess and Diamond. all of them oh her a favor for telling it as it was.
-R J Noriega