File under things that are a bummer for multiple reasons: The New York Daily News story about Roxanne Shanté exploiting a clause in her contract with Warner Music Group and getting the company to fork over $217,000 toward her education—which went all the way to Ph.D. level–from a few weeks ago? Well, it’s apparently not based in anything resembling fact, according to an exhaustive investigation by Slate. Shanté—neé Lolita Gooden—admitted to Slate freelancer Ben Sheffner with an acknowledgement that she didn’t have a Ph.D, so anyone calling her a “doctor” is off the mark. (She still claims to have a master’s degree from Cornell, but Sheffner couldn’t even find evidence that she’d earned a bachelor’s degree.) And now the author of the Daily News‘ original story is nowhere to be found! Ugh. The full list of findings: More »

Roxanne Shanté is very, very, very smart, and I’m not just saying that because of her advanced degrees. The MC—who burst on the scene in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge,” an answer song to the UTFO classic “Roxanne, Roxanne”, which in turn sparked its own flurry of answer records—used her street smarts to help polish her academic bona fides; after a thorough read of her record contract with Warner Music Group, which she signed long ago, she realized that there had been a clause in there where WMG said that it would foot the bill for any and all educational pursuits she decided to embark upon. Score! More »