The Bitch is Back / Roxanne Shanté / 1992
Roxanne Shanté is simultaneously a controversial and overlooked figure in hip-hop history. She is most remembered for “Roxanne’s Revenge,” a diss track she recorded at the wee age of fourteen. For those unfamiliar with this episode of classic hip-hop history, emerging rap group UTFO made the now regrettable decision to sidestep Fly Ty, Marley Marl, and Mr. Magic, going to a rival radio station to drop their single “Roxanne, Roxanne,” released in 1984. UTFO backed out of a show with the hip-hop pioneers when Marley Marl and the crew were in desperate need of money, and to add insult to injury, it was Mr. Magic who identified “Roxanne, Roxanne” as a crowd-pleaser and made it a hit in the first place. Without Mr. Magic, who knows if UTFO would have ever found their audience.
The otherwise unmemorable track is a diss record to a woman named Roxanne, who rejected the rap crew’s advances. In essence, it’s a whole song degrading a woman because she wouldn’t fawn over them and stroke their egos. At the young age of fourteen, Shanté sniffed out the misogyny in their lyrics and penned a fierce rebuttal. She approached Marley Marl, Mr. Magic, and Fly Ty and asked them to let her rock a diss track against the backstabbers. Mr. Magic leapt the opportunity and soon they were recording “Roxanne’s Revenge.”
“Roxanne’s Revenge” is striking for the directness of its barbs delivered in the Shanté’s childlike high-pitched voice. Her flow hopscotches all over the beat with a flat yet energetic intonation. While the music video above illustrates just how green Shanté’s performance skills were at the time, her upbeat nonchalance and jabbing lyricism evince the unmistakable signs of a young genius. “Roxanne’s Revenge” exploded onto the hip-hop scene, embarrassing UTFO bad enough they even sent a cease-and-desist letter to Roxanne Shanté’s team. Shanté’s track was too popular, however. The controversy Shanté cooked up inspired over eighty known tracks revolving around a so-called Roxanne, by this point elevated to mythical status. “Roxanne’s Revenge” would set the tone for Shanté’s career—full of battles and blowouts with the biggest emcees of her day. It is here where her legacy deserves more shine.
In 1985, Shanté took battle rap to new levels of aggression. Before Shanté, battle rapping was a competition in rocking the crowd. Shanté was the first to make direct attacks on your opponent popular—and she was duly punished for it by rap legend and battle rap judge Kurtis Blow, who complained about not wanting to see the culture head in such a negative direction.
Roxanne Shanté’s first album “Bad Sister”—released in 1989, five long years after “Roxanne’s Revenge”"—features Shanté’s adolescent flow and boldness, full of intonations geared to freestyle ciphers and stage performances. The album includes songs about female empowerment like “Independent Woman” and the sex-positive track “Feelin’ Kinda Horny.” Lovers of the Notorious BIG might be interested in the fact Shanté samples the Isley Brother’s “Between the Sheets” in “Feelin’ Kinda Horny,” the same smooth bass lines that Biggie would later make iconic in his club-banger “Big Poppa.”
While her debut album is fun, it’s her second album “The BItch is Back” that I think hip-hop heads would do well to revisit. By the time “The Bitch is Back” dropped in 1992 hip-hop was past Roxanne Shanté. New queens named Latifah and Monie Love, JJ Fad and the Oaktown’s 357, Salt n Pepa and MC Lyte were dazzling audiences with their innovative takes on hip-hop culture, some with pop beats and dance moves, others with razor-sharp lyrics and unforgettable flows. Always down for a fight, Shanté positioned herself against these new emcees, attacking them all on “Big Mama.” When Kendrick Lamar dissed everyone in his “Control” verse, hip-hop heads celebrated him for energizing hip-hop and carrying on a long bold tradition of namedropping in battle rap. They pointed to rappers like 50 cent and Tupac Shakur, who built part of their careers on their aggressiveness and namedropping on the mic. These same hip-hop heads should have been pointing to Roxanne Shanté, who was dissing fools by name at fourteen and who never backed down from a battle, no matter how popular the foe.
“The Bitch is Back” features solid 90s boom bap production and daggering flows that remind me of Nas on Illmatic. That comparison is not made lightly. Both Nas and Roxanne Shanté came out of the Queens housing projects. Whoever doubts me should compare Shanté’s flows on “Deadly Rhymes” ft Kool G Rap with Nas’s flow “Live at the BBQ.” Compare Shanté’s verses on “Big Mama” to Nas’s verse on “Back to the Grill.” Conversations about Illmatic frequently point to rappers like Rakim and Slick Rick as precursors to Nas’s succinct and image-loaded storytelling. Why don’t they point to Shanté when Nas was clearly borrowing from her weaving rhyme schemes and brash shocking delivery in his early work?
“The Bitch is Back” starts with a female emcee hyping up Roxanne Shanté, as the “woman who pulled herself up by her bra straps and known to let them down occasionally.” It starts out strong with a muscular back-and-forth between Kool G Rap and Shanté on “Deadly Rhymes.” Shanté follows that up immediately with the fiery and controversial “Big Mama.” Shanté’s style has clearly matured by 1992. You no longer feel like you’re listening to a teenager. Her verses are thick with internal rhymes that smack you when you least expect it. The album ends with the fiery and feminist “Brothers Ain’t Shit,” calling out men on all their bullshit.
By 1992, hip-hop was booming with dozens upon dozens of classic albums being released. Heads were growing weary of Shanté’s antagonistic antics, whether it was dissing their favorite new acts or fabricating stories about having her record label pay for her PhD (contrary to the widespread rumors, Shanté does not have a PhD). I shouldn’t fail to mention that by 1987 KRS-One made Shanté’s name equivalent with “Steady Fucking.” Being put on blast by one of the greatest emcees ever would definitely do something to your rep. That alone would make it understandable why Shanté’s sophomore project did not take off as much as it deserves. “The Bitch is Back” is definitely worth a re-listen, however, especially in the moments where the radio keeps us hungry for lyrical, message-driven hip-hop.
I owe a lot of the information in this review to Kathy Iandoli’s new book God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop. A glowing review is on its way once I make my way through the whole book. It’s going slow because Iandoli has me discovering and revisiting many emcees from the Golden Age of Hip-hop. It’s been fun. I recommend this album to anyone interested in golden age hip-hop, feminism, battle rap, and boom bap.