Roxanne Wars: UTFO / Roxanne Shanté / answer records (1984-1985)

Summary

The Roxanne Wars is the foundational case study of the answer-record format in hip-hop. It began with UTFO's B-side 'Roxanne, Roxanne' (1984, on Select Records), in which three rappers — Kangol Kid, Doctor Ice and Educated Rapper — recounted being rejected by a woman named Roxanne. A 14-year-old MC from the Queensbridge Houses named Lolita Shanté Gooden, later Roxanne Shanté, recorded a response, 'Roxanne's Revenge,' produced by Marley Marl. Per Wax Poetics, the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, and Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop, the track was recorded in a single take and released on Pop Art Records in late 1984. What followed was a torrent of answer records — by various estimates between 30 and over 100 by 1985. UTFO and Select Records countered with 'The Real Roxanne,' featuring a different MC (Adelaida Martinez) as 'The Real Roxanne.' Other artists released records as 'Roxanne's Brother,' 'Roxanne's Mother,' 'Roxanne's Doctor,' 'No More Roxanne (Please),' and many more. Per Jeff Chang and contemporaneous coverage, the cycle exhausted itself by saturation by late 1985. The Roxanne Wars is foundational on multiple axes: it established the answer-record as a hip-hop format; it produced one of the first major female MC careers (Roxanne Shanté's, alongside Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte in the years immediately following); and it cemented Marley Marl's production reputation, which became the engine of the Juice Crew through the late 1980s. Per the Smithsonian's Hip-Hop (R)Evolutions curation, Roxanne Shanté is treated as one of the pioneering women in commercially released rap.