What is Roxanne Shante's Net Worth?
Roxanne Shante is an American rapper who has a net worth of $500 thousand. Roxanne Shante first gained attention through the Roxanne Wars, a well-known hip hop rivalry in the mid-1980s between Roxanne Shante and The Real Roxanne. She was also part of Juice Crew, an American hip hop collective made up of New York Artists in the mid-to-late 1980s. A film, "Roxanne Roxanne," was released in 2017 that told the story of Shante's life.
Early Life
Roxanne Shante was born on March 8, 1970 in Queens, New York and given the name Lolita Shante Gooden. She grew up in the Queensbridge Projects, a housing projects of Queens in New York City. She was interested in hip hop and R&B music from a young age and began rapping as a teenager. She was inspired by watching rapper Nipsey Russell on television. At some point after finishing high school, she briefly attended Marymount Manhattan College for three months but never earned a degree. Her main focus in her early life was on developing her career in hip hop and rap.
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Career
When Shante was 14, she met Mr. Magic and Marley Marl in her neighborhood and they formed Juice Crew, a hip hop collective. They discussed U.T.F.O., a rap trio that had just failed to make an appearance at a scheduled concert. U.T.F.O had recently released a single called "Hanging Out," which included a B-side called "Roxanne, Roxanne," about a woman who would not respond to their advances. The track became a hit. Shante, as part of Juice Crew, wrote a track in rebuttal to U.T.F.O.'s rapping in which she posed as Roxanne. The song, "Roxanne's Revenge," became an instant hit and made Shante one of the first female MCs to become very popular. The track sparked the Roxanne Wars, a rap beef between Shante and The Real Roxanne, another rapper who made a record with U.T.F.O. responding to "Roxanne's Revenge." From then on, the two artists exchanged over 30 answer records, which came to be known as the Roxanne Wars.
In the years that followed, Shante's career and reputation continued to develop. She released two solo albums, "Bad Sister" in 1989 and "The Bitch Is Back" in 1992.
By the age of 25, Shante had essentially retired from the recording industry. She did continue to make occasional guest appearances and live performances and acted as a mentor for young female hip hop artists. In VH1's hip hop reality show, "Ms. Rap Supreme," she made a cameo by appearing in the finalist round of the show to give the contestants advice. She returned to performing in the 2000s and rerecorded her song "Roxanne's Revenge."
At the height of her career, Shante was referred to as the Queen of Rap by "The New York Times." She is considered a pioneer of hip-hop, especially for women. She has been credited with popularizing diss tracks, particularly those aimed at her male colleagues considering how dominated the world of rap and hip-hop was at that time. Along with other rappers like Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte, Shante is credited with creating a path for the next generation of female hip hop artists. A dramatized biopic about her life called "Roxanne Roxanne" was first shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It was critically acclaimed and the lead actress, Chanté Adams, won best breakout performance for her role in the film, which was co-produced by Forest Whitaker and Pharrell Williams. The film was generally released in 2017.
More recently, Shante runs a nonprofit organization with her husband, former boxer Jabbar Ali, called Mind Over Matter, which works with inner city youth to help them graduate from high school and have successful futures.
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Personal Life
Shante was in a relationship with her manager, James Cross, as a teenager. They had a child together whom they named Kareem when Shante was only 15 years old. They had started dating the year prior to that, when Shante was 14 and Cross was 28. Shante has stated that Cross was abusive towards her in that relationship, both emotionally and physically. One time, the abuse led to Shante needing to seek treatment for a broken hip. She later left Cross and took her son with her. Much later, in 2017, Shante married former boxer, Jabbar Ali. The couple often posts about each other on their social media accounts.
Shante has given a number of interviews in which she has stated that she earned a bachelor's degree from Marymount Manhattan College and then a master's and Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell University. Articles that appeared in "Blender" magazine and the New York "Daily News" also stated that her contract with Warner Music had stipulated that the label fund her education. Shante had also previously made these claims in a documentary called "Beef II" that was released in 2004. However, an investigation by lawyer and journalist Ben Sheffner for "Slate" magazine found that Shante had never been signed to Warner Music but rather had a contract with Cold Chillin' Records, which was only distributed by Reprise/Warner Bros. Records. Furthermore, academic records indicate that she did not obtain her degree from Marymount Manhattan College, nor that she had a master's or Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell. She also was not found on any list of licensed psychologists in the state of New York. Corrections were fun in the publications that had originally printed these falsehoods and Shante apologized in November 2009.
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