Roxanne Shanté Knows That Living Smart Is The Best Revenge
Roxanne Shanté is very, very, very smart, and I’m not just saying that because of her advanced degrees. The MC—who burst on the scene in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge,” an answer song to the UTFO classic “Roxanne, Roxanne”, which in turn sparked its own flurry of answer records—used her street smarts to help polish her academic bona fides; after a thorough read of her record contract with Warner Music Group, which she signed long ago, she realized that there had been a clause in there where WMG said that it would foot the bill for any and all educational pursuits she decided to embark upon. Score! She didn’t stop after one degree; Warner footed the bill all the way through her recently acquired Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell. When all was said and done, Dr. Shanté got WMG to fork over $217,000. And she’s a therapist, too, although something tells me that she’ll be getting a lot of requests for legal advice as a result of this story coming to light…
Rapper behind ‘Roxanne’s Revenge’ gets Warner Music to pay for Ph.D [NY Daily News] The Complete Story Of Roxanne: The Album [Bust The Facts] Roxanne Shanté: Roxanne’s Revenge [YouTube]