Roxanne Roxanne, I wanna be your man. A simple enough line from a classic song.
Who would have thought that this would be the beginning of such a storied tale in hip hop?
As I’m writing this it’s women's history month so let’s take it back to a historic moment in hip hop
especially for women. That being not only one of the first rap beefs ever but also one of the first
and youngest females mcs to drop a hit record. This is the beef that essentially set off
dissing on wax and showed that it can actually be marketable. Before we get too deep, make sure
to click those thumbs up and subscribe buttons to help the channel grow. You saw the title, you know
the drill, let’s get into it. In the early 1980s the Brooklyn group Untouchable Force Organization
or UTFO for short formed. They were originally called UFO but had to change their name as a rock
band already existed with that name. The quartet composed of Kangol Kid, EMD, Doctor Ice, and
Mix Master Ice released a single in 1984 titled “Hanging Out” which had the song “Roxanne Roxanne”
as the B-side which became their highest charting song and was the kickoff point for what we call
the Roxanne Wars. “Roxanne Roxanne” was all about a woman who each member of the group tries a
different approach at getting her attention but fails. Funny enough the third rapper,
Doctor Ice, gets a phone number from her but she stands him up. According to Roxanne Shante,
Marley Marl who lived in the building across from her in the Queensbridge Projects had approached
her about recording a response record to Roxanne Roxanne. The reason for this being that Mr. Magic
had played UTFO’s song on his radio show which was one of the only hip hop radio shows at the time
but when UTFO were scheduled to appear on his show they didn’t show up. That led to Marley
Marl who was his assistant and DJ on the radio show enlisting Roxanne to respond and also led
to her joining the Juice Crew. The response song to “Roxanne Roxanne” was aptly named “Roxanne’s
Revenge” and the single was a hit which wound up selling roughly a quarter million records.
They initially used the beat from “Roxanne Roxanne” on the song but this prompted Select
Records, a label that UTFO had signed to, to send a cease and desist to Pop Art Records which is the
label that they released Roxanne’s Revenge on and that required them to use a different beat
for subsequent pressings of the song. “Roxanne’s Revenge” is a scathing diss track by Roxxante
Shante who was about 14 years old at the time and one of the youngest female rappers on wax.
Shante responds to UTFO’s song Roxanne Roxanne taking on the role of the Roxanne that rejected
their advances and proceeds to respond to each of the UTFO members that rap on the track,
Kangol Kid, the Educated Rapper, and Doctor Ice. For example she refers to Kangol Kid as a dude
named after a hat and claims that Doctor Ice doesn’t know how to operate.
She also attacks their rapping skills and claims herself as the better MC. It’s kinda funny, just
imagine making a song about a fictional chick that rejects you then getting dissed on wax by someone
pretending to be that same chick, and the song becomes a hit. Things didn’t stop there though,
following the Roxanne’s Revenge track and the positive reception that it received
UTFO decided to respond on wax. They found a woman to play the part of the “Real Roxanne”,
that being Elease Jack who recorded the song “The Real Roxanne” for them; however she was
soon replaced by Adelaida Martinez who took on the mantle of the Real Roxanne from then on.
Like Shante she takes on the persona of Roxanne from the original song explaining her side of why
she rejected each one of them. It basically does the same thing Roxanne’s Revenge does which is
diss UTFO. I guess the group wanted to capitalize off the attention that the previous records had
brought and didn’t mind getting dissed again as long as they were behind putting out the song.
This is the other most well known response track regarding the whole
Roxanne Wars situation. This beef is known as one having the most tracks going back and forth
as according to Roxanne Shante there were over 55 different response records. Given the sheer
amount of tracks and lack of information available regarding some, especially the lesser known ones,
this video will not be going over every single song. Some of them were responses to Shante and
some were responses to UTFO, while others were responses to the various other artists who got
involved over the course of the beef. This is basically a proxy war that branched off into other
people seeing an opportunity to get involved and drop a record, whether to show off their skills,
get their 15 minutes of fame, or sell some records. I can’t think of another beef
that involved so many artists that essentially had nothing to do with one another. In response
to “The Real Roxanne” Shante released the songs “Queen of Rox” and “Bite This”. On “Queen” of Rox,
Roxanne tells a story about making Roxanne’s Revenge with Marley Marl as well as dealing with
Pop Art Records and other things going on around the time. On “Bite This” Shante raps about biters,
whether it’s beats or rhymes. The song basically goes out to all of those who were copying Shante.
Considering how many response records came out around this time I don’t blame her if she felt
copied. Also around this time the beef between Boogie Down Productions and the Juice Crew which
Shante was a part of was starting up as well. On top of that the beef between LL Cool J and MC
Shan, a fellow member of the Juice Crew was also live. Both of those beefs I’ve covered previously
on this channel so check those videos out as well for the details on those situations.
Another rapper that responded to Shante at the time was fellow female MC Sparky D. Like UTFO,
Sparky is from Brooklyn and took it upon herself to respond to Shante for the “Roxanne’s Revenge”
track with her own response titled “Sparky’s Turn” (Roxanne Your Through) taking aim at
Shante in defense of UTFO. She makes a reference to Shante’s young age with lines like “It’s good
you stood them up or they’d be in jail cause you sound like you’re fresh out of junior high school”
as well as claims that without UTFO she wouldn’t be famous. After this Shante and Sparky D released
a song together titled “Round 1” capitalizing on the success of their individual records.
Round 1 had Sparky D and Shante trading verses back and forth dissing one another,
essentially battle rapping on record. Until then it was something that was pretty much only done
live. Once again a breakthrough in hip hop. On the track Sparky D disses Roxanne for having braces,
being young, having small breasts,and being petite. She even talks about Roxanne having an
STD. Some pretty brutal words to go at a 15 year old but this is battle rap after all. Aiming at
someone’s insecurities is bound to happen. Roxanne shoots back at Sparky with similar
insults like calling her fat, a ho, and propping up her own rap skills compared to Sparky’s.
In the Roxanne Roxanne film, the beef between Shante and Sparky was touched on briefly.
One scene has them recording this song in particular actually. The beef between those two
probably wasn’t anything deep and comes across as more of a record label business situation
considering the fact that they even recorded a song together dissing one another. Now I will
cover a few of the other tracks regarding this beef, as I said earlier there were quite a lot
of them. One such song being “Roxanne’s Doctor” by Dr. Freshh once again another rapper with the
Dr. title. As you could probably guess this guy claims himself to be Roxanne’s doctor,
specifically her psychologist. He starts rapping about sitting her down in his office
and talking to her and continues with the doctor stuff for the first verse but it quickly spins
off for the rest of the song into him dissing her for the typical things once again like her age,
and her skills with men. Kinda odd how most of these people are a bit older than her
and keep dissing her regarding her sex life. But once again this is rap beef so there’s not many
things that are off the table I guess. Shock value goes far when it comes to dissing on wax. Another
track that came out of this is “The Parents of Roxanne” by rappers Gigolo Tony and Lacey Lace
who rap from the perspective of Roxanne’s father and mother respectively as you probably can tell
by the title of the song. They go at UTFO for dissing them on the “Roxanne Roxanne” track,
directly responding to lines like calling Roxanne’s father a fairy, calling their kids
Tom and Jerry, and calling her mother Mary. It’s a pretty good response, I like the creativity behind
it and the fact that they respond to the original song. I guess this is basically rapping roleplay.
This is also interesting for the fact that these two aren’t even New York rappers,
apparently they’re from the South along with some of the other artists that have released responses
in this beef. So I guess you could say this is also one of the first beefs that really traveled
outside of the NY area. Yet another Roxanne response that came out was “I’m Little Roxanne”
by Tanganyika who portrays herself as a younger version of Roxanne. She makes claims that
she’s 7 years old and she responds to UTFO for “dissing her”. It’s another funny response and
if she really was only 7 then that’s the youngest rapper I’ve ever heard on a track. Another track
that came out around this time was “Yo, My Little Sister (Roxanne’s Brothers)” by the group Crush
Groove, with a C not a K like the film released that same year about Russel Simmons and Def Jam.
On this song once again they’re doing family roleplay, they take on the role of Roxanne’s
brothers who respond on her behalf. They diss not only UTFO but Sparky D and Dr. Freshh as well.
The family roleplay isn’t even done yet though, we covered the parents and brothers but there’s
also a track “Rappin Roxy” by D.W. and the Party Crew featuring the titular Roxy taking
on the role of Roxanne’s sister and once again dissing UTFO and Sparky D for dissing Roxanne.
I find something about 80s rap diss tracks to be so different from more recent ones.
Probably the lack of extreme threats to one another, they often were a bit more focused
on dissing each other for their rapping ability and the like. I still think it’s kinda funny all
this back and forth over a fictional character. Speaking of funny, one of the other diss tracks
and most humorous ones in this back and forth would have to be “Roxanne’s A Man” by Ralph Rolle.
As you can probably guess this one is about Roxanne being a man, simple enough. The song
starts off with two guys talking with one of them telling the other that Roxanne is a man.
It continues then with a story about how Roxanne was a guy but then got into trouble, went to jail,
was violated and then came out as a brand new person so to speak. He goes on to talk about the
change in his dress and hairstyle like putting on skin tight jeans, makeup, and wigs. It’s
some pretty typical 80s humor which I find pretty funny but I’m sure it’s something a lot of people
wouldn’t find as humorous more recently. During the song he also disses UTFO as well once again
and tells them that they’re stupid for trying to holler at a man that they think is a woman.
One of the other tracks to come from this beef is “The Final Word - No More Roxanne (Please)” by the
East Coast Crew which might be self-explanatory but the song is all about how they’re tired of the
Roxanne beef and don’t want anymore diss tracks send back and forth between rappers about Roxanne.
It’s a catchy track with a call and return telling the community “No more Roxanne”. One line in
particular was pretty funny, basically saying that all the Roxanne responses sound the same
and they didn’t even bother to change the name. A pretty good track overall and probably one of
my favorites that I’ve heard from the bunch. Of course there’s plenty more response tracks
regarding this as I said there’s over 50 according to Shante herself and this was mostly all over the
course of a year or so. One of the first rap beefs ever on wax and it was a historic time for hip hop
and women in hip hop especially as although it might have been a proxy beef of sorts
started between UTFO and DJ Magic and Marley Marl, women like Sparky D, both the first and second
“Real Roxanne’s” and of course Shante herself were the main ones the eyes were on in this conflict
and sold plenty of records because of it as well. Business aside, this paved the way for many other
rap beefs we would go on to see in hip hop like MC Lyte vs Antoinette which also happened in the 80s
as well as Lil Kim vs Foxy Brown which started in the 90s and continued on for decades both of
which I’ve also covered on this channel. So I’d like to say thanks to all the hip hop pioneers,
without them the genre wouldn't have grown to be what it is. I’m glad I’m even able to cover
so many beefs and we’ve gotten so much music from them. What do you think about this beef?
What track is your favorite from it? Is it one of the ones I mentioned or another? Leave a comment
in the comment section below and thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys in the next video.