Rap icon Roxanne Shanté earns a lifetime achievement Grammy

Hip-hop legend Roxanne Shanté, who pushed the art form forward as a teenage battle rapper in the 1980s, is set to become the first solo female rapper to take home a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

Hip-hop legend Roxanne Shanté, who pushed the art form forward as a teenage battle rapper in the 1980s, is set to become the first solo female rapper to take home a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

“I would have never thought that I was going to get a Grammy,” Shanté, 55, told NBC News this week ahead of Saturday’s ceremony, where lifetime achievement and other special awards will be presented.

“My music days were over. For me to receive a lifetime award, not for my music but for the decisions that I made, is amazing,” Shanté said. “I’m here for deciding to do the right thing by everybody else, even when so many people decided to do the wrong thing by me.”

Her story goes back to hip-hop’s formative years, in the early ’80s. By age 10, she was becoming a fixture in New York City’s underground rap scene; at 13, she was an undefeated battle rapper.

Roxanne Shanté performs at New York City’s Apollo Theater in Harlem in 1990.Al Pereira / Getty Images fileBut Shanté made waves in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge,” a response to the Brooklyn rap group UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne.” Her single sparked the Roxanne Wars, an early rap beef that inspired at least 86 response songs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/roxanne-shante-lifetime-achievement-grammy-rcna190046

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