As Straight Outta Compton proved, movies about the heroes of the hip hop or rap scene can be electrifying and VERY interesting and fun. What’s great is that means we’re gonna get some biopics about some of the great artists from rap’s beginnings. One of the lost heroes is Lolita Warren, better known to the Queensbridge crowd as Roxanne Shanté, a 14 year old rap genius who ruled the area as the champ. Roxanne Roxanne is the account of her life, and just how quick the rise and fall was.
We first meet Shanté (Chanté Adams) as she mops the floor at age 10 or so with any guys who wanna battle her, as her best friend (Shenell Edmonds) shouts out “The Champ is Here!!” At 14, Shanté is a hustler in every way, stealing clothes and winning battles to make money to help her mom Peggy (Nia Long) raise her and her 3 sisters in a 2 bedroom apartment. Someone that famous is bound to get their talent out, and a friend in the building complex, in a response to UTFO’s Roxanne Roxanne, puts Shanté’s diss track “Roxanne’s Revenge” on the radio. She becomes an instant sensation, changing her name to Roxanne Shanté and quits school to embark on a tour. However, someone in Roxanne’s position, despite her hustling background, is still ill-prepared to handle the pitfalls and perils of a rap career, particularly from older men like Cross (Mahershala Ali) who see her as a jumping off point to money and fame.
Writer Director Michael Larnell streamlines Roxanne Roxanne to revolve around Shanté’s relationship with her mother and family. If you think about it, the outline for the movie is a teenage coming of age story….within the Queensbridge rap scene. Shanté is the oldest of 4, and she does a great job carrying herself without help from any adults. She uses her notoriety to demand dollars from prospective rap challengers, and hooks up friends with clothes from the stores she shops at; conversely, Peggy has just lost most of her savings because of a bad relationship to a bad man, and has started drinking again. The two then get into a power battle: mom channels her lost power onto her daughter by throwing her out, so daughter moves in with a cousin (Jermel Howard) to prove she can handle herself…which she can’t so mom gets the power back until the radio hit, and on we roller coaster with the two of them. Along the way, mom tries to give some tough love advice to her child about men or how prepared she is for the real world. What makes the story fascinating is how Shanté and Peggy appear to be equals, with Peggy making the same mistakes as her daughter and almost equally unprepared for the swings life has thrown her way. By the end, we can see the best thing Peggy did for Shanté was give her her mom’s will to fight and claw, and how disappointment, especially by men, doesn’t drive them to despair but wakes them up to pick themselves up and get over it. Mahershala Ali, against type, does everything in his power to manipulate and crush Roxanne, but Peggy immediately calls him out and has prepared Roxanne for male disappointment, so when it comes, she’s hurt, but not unprepared and comes home to mom with better understanding and a newfound respect for what Peggy has done to say afloat.
If you haven’t noticed though, I’ve barely mentioned the rap part of Shanté’s personal history, because that part of the story is more of a mixed bag. I had no idea Roxanne and Biz Markie performed together, which is kind of amazing to see, plus there’s a nice little cameo from one of the rap all timers that’s not too ill-conceived. Those easter eggs are the best of the lot though; other than radio play, I wish I learned more about how big Shanté was, and the mechanics of the rap world she entered (the constraints of the story probably let us only see that through her eyes). This movie got me researching about this amazing girl; apparently she was one of the earliest known artists to engage in diss tracks on the rap scene. UTFO is an all male group she was battling against, and it would have fit nicely into the story to see even a little bit of what that feud was like. I would have added another 10-15 minutes about life on the road or making music, which could have given Roxanne Roxanne some added context to make her descent more tragic and almost near Kurt Cobain levels of sad.
Roxanne Shanté, sadly, had to be crushed, being the first woman through the door of an all male club (she was out of the business by her early 20s). But if she didn’t we would never have had TLC, Queen Latifah, or Salt N Pepa. Even Nicki Minaj and Cardi B owe something to this wonderful pioneer, as well as one of those Queensbridge boys who thought she was hella ill and charismatic. Have those words been combined by a rapper before? I’m not sure…