Roxanne Shante

The metamorphia of LolitaGooden into rap phenomenon Roxanne Shante began, unbeknowst to her, in December 198 when Steve Salem, manager of the group UTFC brought a new record to WHBI-FM in Manhattan for DJ Mr. Magic to break on his very popular and highly influential "Rap Attack" program.  Salem was hyping the A-side,"Hanging Out," but Magic and his hanging buddies, Tyrone Williams and producer Marlon "Marley Marl" Williams, dug the B-side, "Roxanne, Roxanne."  They played this cut and the response was immediately overwhelmingly overwhelming!  Pretty soon other stations picked up on the record and UTFO found themselves with a smash hit.

In the meantime, a teenage neighbor of Marley Marl's in the Queensbridge housing project in Queens, New York, Lolita Gooden gets pissed offat the way the girls are downed in the song and and bugs Marley until he takes her into his home studio to cut a tape dising "Roxanne, Roxanne."  To "dis" means to Disrespect someone, to insult with total Disregard for the person's Disposition.  Her spontaneous "answer" set off an explosion, a rap phenomenon that we can now call the "Perils of Roxanne."  There was an on-slaught of Roxannes, dozens of records and a fair amount of legal entanglements.  But when the smoke cleared, there was one obvious victor: Lolita Gooden, now known to the world as Roxanne Shante, the "First Lady of Rap."

With Tyrone Williams as her manager, she has built a solid career from what she calls "a stroke of luck."  "But," she adds, "then it became a stroke of skill.  If it wasn't for me being able to rap the way I do, I would not be able to catch peoples' eye.  And mostly I think it's my voice.

These days, Shante splits her time between school and work in the studio with Marley Marl, readying for her Cold Chillin' debut.  She says that the album is going to be filled with more than a few surprises and a whole lot of good music.  Some may be shocked, but none will be unmoved, she boasts.

Marley Marl

Hip Hop culture may have begun up in Harlem and the Bronx, but Queens has been kicking up a ruckus on the rap scene in the 1980s.  Everyone's coolest producer and record-mixer, Marlon "Marley Marl" Williams has been turning black vinyl into solid gold hits in his Queensbridge electro-funk studio for years.  He has produced all of Roxanne Shante's records and made epochal def jams for D.J. Polo, M.C. Shan, Biz Markie, Kool G. Rap, T.J. Swan, and Big Daddy Kane.  Marley Marl is one of rap's greatest Titans, a young hero to many a rapper, the studio alchemist with the blueprint for success.  He is teaming up with Len Fichtelberg and Tyrone Williams to make Cold Chillin' Records, in his words, the hottest, freshest label in the country."

Born Marlon Williams in Queens, NY, September 30, 1962, Marley attended high school in Manhattan and first heard tapes of rap music from classmates who lived in Harlem and the Bronx.  Rapping is a word that has been a part of the Afro-American vocabulary for a long time.  But what Marley was hearing back in the late 1970s was the first rumblings of a new black American popular music - Rap - rhythmic talking over a funky beat.  He acquired a lot of wisdom and knowledge working as an intern at Unique Studios in 1982, where Arthur Baker, Force M.D.'sand Afrika Bambaata regularly recorded.  His career began to accelerate when he started mixing records at location sites on "the Juice Mobile," the promotion truck for radio stations WBLS-FM, in NY.  The station had hired a young, brash, street iconoclast called Mr. Magic, whose "Rap Attack" program was raking the numbers like crazy.  Marley Marl, Mr. Magic, and Tyrone Williams became the Three Musketeers of Rap, and from their initial encounters have been part of many heroic adventures, including stopping a conspiracy to ban rap from the airwaves.

Len Fichtelberg and Tyrone Williams are extremely delighted to have Marley as Cold Chillin's exclusive producer.

When not conjuring up hits in his studio, Marley Marl rides shotgun with Mr. Magic on the "Rap Attack" weekends over at WBLS-FM, co-mixing the records and engineering the program.