Street Sounds Electro 6. That's the tape.
It's 1985 and I'm ten. I'm at a friend's birthday party, and another friend puts on a tape I know, straight away, I have to have. The friend borrowed the cassette from his big brother, so it is a BIG ask when I ask him to let me take it home.
I think it's the first time I've ever heard a woman rap. The MC is Roxanne Shanté, and she is taking UTFO apart.
The tape I had to borrow
I'm lucky. I get to borrow that tape, and I play it over and over for the next few days. By the end of the week Roxanne Shanté is the woman of my dreams. I've never seen her. I've no idea what she looks like. I'm ten. None of that matters. The way she goes after UTFO has me hooked.
When the tape goes back, I make sure I get a copy of Electro 6 that I can keep. Then I start trying to get hold of every other one in the series, the ones that came before it and the ones that came after. For a kid in Southampton in the mid 80s, those Street Sounds Electro tapes were a big part of how you heard hip hop at all.
What was actually going on
Here's the story I didn't know at ten.
UTFO, short for Untouchable Force Organization, had a record called Roxanne, Roxanne. Three lads taking turns to tell you how they tried to chat up a girl called Roxanne, and how she wasn't having any of it.
Roxanne Shanté was 14 and lived in Queensbridge in New York, part of the Juice Crew around the producer Marley Marl. She answered them. Her record, Roxanne's Revenge, came out in 1984, produced by Marley, and it's her telling UTFO exactly what she thinks of them. It caused such a stir that answer records started appearing everywhere. Electro 6 has UTFO's Roxanne, Roxanne, The Real Roxanne and Roxanne's Revenge on the same tape. A whole argument in one place.
I've always thought of Roxanne's Revenge as probably the first rap beef to make it on to record. There have been plenty since, including one of her own with Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One and DJ Scott La Rock. Her answer to them was a track called Have A Nice Day.
Electro 11, and a remix of my own
The next time she really stood out for me was Electro 11. It opens with Def Fresh Crew, Roxanne Shanté with Biz Markie.
Her album Bad Sister came out in 1989, with tracks like Have A Nice Day and Go On Girl. Years later, in 2011, I did a mix for a show on Ramp FM. Sixty tracks in sixty minutes. Number 33 was my own remix of Go On Girl. Twenty-odd years after that party, she was still turning up in my record bag. So was Marley Marl, the producer behind Roxanne's Revenge. The same mix had my edit of his track Droppin' Science with Craig G.
Back in 2007 I wrote on an old blog of mine that to me she would always be "the definitive female MC".
Think about what she actually did. A 14-year-old heard a record about someone like her, made by people older and better known than her. She could have ignored it. Lots of people would have. She answered it, and in doing that she changed what a rap record could be.
When I talk about done beats perfect, this is what I mean. Done beats perfect is the idea behind my book: getting it out there beats waiting until it's flawless. Roxanne's Revenge didn't wait for anyone's permission. It was out there, and it was hers, and people are still talking about it four decades later.
I sometimes wonder how many of us have an answer we've never recorded. Something we'd love to say, or make, or put out, and we're waiting for someone to ask us first.
If that's you, maybe it's time to put your own record out. And if you need a push, give Roxanne's Revenge a play first.
