Wow! Someone gaffled the gafflers…rapper Roxanne Shante who rose to fame in the 80′s at age 14 and paved the way for female rappers is now a doctor at the expense of a record label clause in her contract that made the company liable to pay for her education for life.  According to the NY Daily News:

“This is a story that needs to be told,” Shante said. “I’m an example that you can be a teenage mom, come from the projects, and be raised by a single parent, and you can still come out of it a doctor.”  After two albums, Shante said, she was disillusioned by the sleazy music industry and swindled by her record company. The teen mother, living in the Queensbridge Houses, recalled how her life was shattered.

“Everybody was cheating with the contracts, stealing and telling lies,” she said. “And to find out that I was just a commodity was heartbreaking.”  But Shante, then 19, remembered a clause in her Warner Music recording contract: The company would fund her education for life.  She eventually cashed in, earning a Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell to the tune of $217,000 – all covered by the label. But getting Warner Music to cough up the dough was a battle.

Shante found an arm-twisting ally in Marguerita Grecco, the dean at Marymount Manhattan College. Shante showed her the contract, and the dean let her attend classes for free while pursuing the money.  “I told Dean Grecco that either I’m going to go here or go to the streets, so I need your help,” Shante recalls. “She said, ‘We’re going to make them pay for this.’”  Grecco submitted and resubmitted the bills to the label, which finally agreed to honor the contract when Shante threatened to go public with the story.

Tagged as: Contract, Doctor, Marguerita Grecco, Marymount Manhattan College, Rap, Roxanne Shante, Warner Music Group