The Roxanne Wars

L.) Elease Jack   C.) Adelaida Martinez   R.) Lolita Shanté Gooden  

Will the real Roxanne please stand up! In 1984 the rap rivalry of all rap rivalries emerged. At the center of it was a chick from NYC named Roxanne. See, here’s the tea. There was a rap group from BK named UTFO. They recorded a track named Roxanne, Roxanne! Due to the success of the single they were scheduled for radio promotion, which they failed to appear. An overly confident 14 year old girl named Lolita Gooden from Queens overheard the radio DJs discussing the no-show rappers. She made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Lolita agreed to challenge UTFO by making a diss record that would get back at them. To add even more shade, she took the Roxanne name & added to her middle name and Roxanne Shanté was born. The diss track was called Roxanne’s Revenge. To hit deeper below the belt, the track used samples from UTFO’s single & was laced with profanity. Ultimately, the single was a success selling a quarter of a million copies in NY alone. Once UTFO got wind of the diss, they immediately found another female rapper by the name of Elease Jack to make an answer record to Shante’s diss & naming her “The Real Roxanne.” Due to ‘creative differences’ Elease was replaced by Adelaida Martinez. The Real Roxanne’s answer record was also a success, but unfortunately it created a seemingly never-ending saga of Roxanne-themed diss tracks & answer songs from a bunch of people that had nothing to do with the initial diss causing what is now called ‘The Roxanne Wars.’ Between 30 -100 songs were recorded before it FINALLY came to an end.