Roxanne Wars

So we just covered a little about Lolita Gooden, aka Roxanne Shanté, and her first single - her response to UTFO (UnTouchable Force Organization)'s song "Roxanne, Roxanne."  Her response sparked what would be known as "The Roxanne Wars."

Most infamously, Roxanne Shanté and The Real Roxanne (Adelaida Martinez) recorded answer songs in response to UFTO's song.  In Roxanne Shanté's version, she takes on the role of 'Roxanne' in her response song.  Shanté and Marley Marl also utilized the original beats of the instrumental version of "Roxanne, Roxanne."  Combined with Shanté's distinctive rap style, controversy ensued and as a result, Shanté rerecorded a version of "cleaner" nature.  Despite this, the original version sold over 250,000 copies in the New York area alone.  

The Real Roxanne, on the other hand, paved a new way in music, much like how Marley Marl introduced sampling to hip hop.  Previously, answer songs were limited to one response to an original recording.  In the case of The Roxanne Wars, however, responses didn't end at Shanté's recording; The Real Roxanne released a third, unprecedented response to UTFO's recording.  

Other recordings followed this third recording within the year, with anywhere between 30 and 100 recordings produced, with various people in Roxanne's life rapping in them.  Shortly after the hype died down, an offshoot of The Roxanne Wars came about - called the Roxanne acts.  The acts were a series of songs following the UTFO release "Roxanne, Roxanne, Part 2: Calling Her a Crab" including responses by Shanté and Sparky D.

The most prevalent war that followed The Roxanne Wars were The Bridge Wars, loosely involving Roxanne Shanté and the Juice Crew (Marley Marl's group) and KRS-One.  More to come on that.

Information pulled from wikipedia primarily.

An Early Timeline of Cold Chillin' Records

1983-1984 - Mr. Magic Rap Attack radio show

1985 - Roxanne's Revenge is released on Pop Art Records

January 1, 1987 - Cold Chillin' Records is born, original 4 artists are: Roxanne Shante, MC Shan, Kool G Rap, and Marley Marl

1988 - deal made with Warner Brothers, and by this time all artists were signed to Cold Chillin', and included Masta Ace, Craig G, Tragedy, Wu Tang Clan, etc.

From the source - Tyrone Williams

I called up Tyrone Williams, the founder of Cold Chillin' and spoke to him a little on the label.  We're going to meet in a couple weeks so he can give me more insight, but I thought I'd share a little snippet of what I learned:

At the time that he got involved in the business, hip hop music was primarily a New York thing - some states had it, but "the" scene was in NY.  Tyrone, along with Marley Marl and Mr. Magic, started the first rap radio show on WBLS, called the Mr. Magic Rap Attack - Tyrone was the producer, Mr. Magic hosted and Marley Marl was the DJ.  Kids would bring songs that they made and they would play it on the air.  The three of them saw this as an "exclusive" on unreleased music, so they would air the song, record it, and then they would send the artist to Tyrone's roommate, Russell, who would manage them.  As time went on, the age of the artists dropped, and parents wanted Tyrone as their child's manager.  So that's how Tyrone transitioned into artist management.  Len Fichtelberg had his own label, Prism Records, but when Tyrone started signing artists including Roxanne Shante, Big Daddy Kane, and MC Shan, he realized that it was more beneficial to have his own label - and Cold Chillin' was born. 

Big Daddy Kane

In the rap vernacular, a crew is a group or mob that is "down" together, and sometimes up to no good.  The recently established rap label, Cold Chillin' Records, has the Juice Crew All Stars,a self-sufficient in-house tribal production team headed by Len Fichtelberg and Tyrone Williams.  Rounding out the Juice Crew All Stars is the writer or lyricist for the group, Antonio M. Hardy, better known as Big Daddy Kane.

A native of "Bedstuy" (Bedford Stuyvesant) in Brooklyn, Kane is to Cold Chillin' what Holland-Dozier-Holland was to Motown - a hitmaking mean machine on overdrive, turning out "fresh" material that captures today's sound of young America.  In addition to writing all the material for Roxanne Shante's pre-Cold Chillin' releases, Kane has also scored big for the independent label with monster hits by Biz Markie, including "Nobody Beats The Biz" and the hip hop gross out "Pickin' Boogers." Big Daddy Kane says he became a rapper because a cousin who he looked up to was so heavily into rap music in the late '70s.  He credits his development as a lyricist and performer to his association with Biz Markie.  The two young men became fast friends, hanging out and performing together in high schools in Brooklyn and out in Long Island. 

Kane has worked very closely with producer Marley Marl on session for Shante, Biz Markie and other artists signed to Cold Chillin' Records.  His songwriting ability has awed Marley Marl and the Cold Chillin' front office personnel, but they are equally excited about his prospects as a recording artist in his own right.

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. 

The Making of Cold Chillin' Records

Ignoring its critics and surviving a conspiracy to ban it from the airwaves, rap has maintained its core street audience, while also crossing over into the commercial mainstream.  Multi-platinum rap successes are becoming commonplace, and Messrs. Len Fichtelberg and Tyrone Williams, President and Chairman, respectively, of Cold Chillin' Records are thrilled and encouraged by this development.  Barely a year old, the new independent label has an impressive roster of the best and brightest rap artists, including Roxanne Shante, Biz Markie, M.C. Shan, D.J. Polo and Kool G. Rap, Big Daddy Kane, and T.J. Swan.  Ably assisted by the genius of producer Marley Marl, Cold Chillin' scored heavily with its initial releases by M.C. Shan; with his Down by Law LP surpassing the 150,000-unit mark, with limited radio airplay.  A recently inked distribution pact with Warner Bros. Records has Fichtelberg and Williams bubbling ver with confidence that their company will be able to garner a greater share of the highly lucrative rap market.  With its newly formed relationship with Warner Bros., the compatible vision and resolution of the founders, the creativity of Marley Marl, and the youth, vigor, talent, and raw ambition of its artists, Cold Chillin' Records obviously possesses all of the ingredients necessary to make it a force to be reckoned within the entertainment industry.

It all started in December of 1984 when a young neighbor of Marley Marl in the Queensbridge Project by the name of Lolita Gooden gets pissed off at the way girls are downed in the UTFO song, and bugs Marley until he takes her into his home studio t cut a tape "dising" "Roxanne, Roxanne."  To "dis" means to disrespect someone, to insult with total disregard for the person's disposition.  Magic played Lolita's answer taped on the air and it struck a responsive chord with the audience, especially with the girls.  Soon after, Magic, Tyrone Williams and Marley Marl are in Philadelphia on business and they run into Dana Goodman of Pop Art Records. He hears the tape "Roxanne's Revenge" and immediately strikes a deal to bring it out.  Now what Pop Art issues as a record is actually a tape of Magic playing the tape on the radio.  The record, complete with Mr. Magic's intro and outro launches Lolita as Roxanne Shante and ushers in the Roxanne Craze of 1985.  By the time the smoke clears, there had been an avalanche of Roxannes, dozens of records and a fair amount of legal entanglements.  Only fourteen at the time, Roxanne was so hot she often did three shows in one day in three different states, ultimately flying back and forth between time zones in private planes.With Williams as her manager, and by adding other acts he was handling to her shows,Roxanne Shante actually paved the way for the formation of Cold Chillin' Records. 

M.C. Shan, Biz Markie, and a few others got their initial exposure appearing on shows with Roxanne Shante and Tyrone Williams soon found himself with a growing stable of artists chafing at the bit for the big times.

In September of 1986, Prism made its first serious inroad into the rap market with a Marley Marl-produced EP by Biz Markie, featuring the monster cut "Make the Music With Your Mouth."  This long-term hit, followed by "Nobody Beats the Biz"and the comic hip-hop-gross out "Pickin' Boogers"established Biz as a major contender in the rap world.  The successes of these records also convinced Len Fichtelberg to team with Biz's manager, Tyrone Williams, and launch Cold Chillin' Records as an exclusive rap label.  This was in December of 1986 and since then, Fichtelberg and Williams have not looked back.

The partnership came about because Fichtelberg and Williams had something the other needed.  The former had hands-on experience running a record company, an office and staff and much-needed venture capital for investment.  The latter had under management contract Biz Markie, Roxanne Shante, M.C. Shan, producer Marley Marl, and other talented rap artists.  In other words, Tyron Williams had the performance necessary to make Cold Chillin' fly!