Roxanne Shante Bad Sister Rar
Nicki is a hell of a rapper.She’s phenomenal. I love wordplay.
I think it’s phenomenal when she does that, and then she throws in there. Remy is a phenomenal writer, too. When Remy and Nicki were, what was going through your head?I hate to see my sisters fighting. It bothers me. But there was a part of me that wanted to say to them, “You gotta do something. She’s on top of you—what you gonna do?” The sister in me is always wanting to see everyone get along.
The competitive battle rapper in me wants to see the winner win. Who won that beef?This is one thing I’ve learned: As a sister, especially as a big sister, when your little sisters are fighting, you kinda let them work that out. Your relationship with your mom is the centerpiece of the movie, and it’s not always pretty. As portrayed in the movie, after she was cheated out of $20,000 by a boyfriend and was unable to move the family into a better life in New Jersey as planned, she began to drink heavily and was particularly hard on you. Did she see the film?We actually had our own private viewing because I needed to know how she was going to feel about the movie. I was walking on eggshells because I was so nervous.
I wanted to make sure that my mom was okay with it. She laughed, she cried, we hugged, we ate food afterwards. And she said, “Listen, the truth is the truth, there are many other women who went through that who had children, who had a dream of leaving out the projects, and somebody came along and stole that dream—but we bounced back from it. Now look, you and your sisters are great, and my grandchildren are all college graduates.
So if our story is able to help other families do it, then so be it.” You’re an adult now with kids of your own—when you see your childhood on-screen, how do you feel about your mom and her role as a mother?As an adult, and even as a child, I understood that it wasn’t her. She felt that she let us down. She was feeling that guilt for us. And so she just happened to stray. But when I look in comparison to other people’s parents and the things they did—my mom never used hard drugs. There was never no crack.When she worked in the hotels, my sisters and I were putting peppermints on pillows, putting plastic bags in the garbage cans.
My mom worked at Holiday Inn out at LaGuardia Airport. And she had put so much into this, getting a house with a backyard Roxanne begins to cry a little bit Hold on a second. I don’t wanna mess up my make-up. I’m not good at wearing make-up. You look beautiful.Thank you. That heartbreak—I understood her totally.
I grew up in that one summer, the summer we didn’t move. I was 12 and I think my whole childhood disappeared in a day. I knew from that point on that that’s what it was gonna be.
There was nothing wrong with learning how to fend and take care of yourself. What’s the pivotal scene in the movie for you?The moment when I cut my ponytail off. In real life, it was a sign that I was really tired of the situation that I was in. My ponytail was literally being used as a weapon: When I was going through abuse, he would grab it and that’s how he kept a hold. And even if I would get away or try to get away, that’s what he would grab. And I was just so sick and tired of him grabbing it, grabbing it, grabbing it that I cut it all off and cut my hair down really, really short.
Roxanne Shante Bad Sister Rar Cover
And now you have a ponytail again!Well, I bought it this time. Laughs Tell me about watching the domestic abuse that you suffered, now on-screen so many years later.It was very therapeutic. Because you know that you survived it. There are a lot of women who have went through what I went through. There’s a lot of women who are still going through it today.
And one of the main things is being able to say, “You know what, if I was able to get away from it at that age, you’ll be able to do it now.” I want young girls to take away from the movie that anything is possible. You’re so pivotal to the history of hip-hop, but haven’t fully received your due. How does it feel to get it with this movie?It feels great, and it’s definitely one of those “Get your flowers while you’re still alive” moments. Not everybody’s gonna get that.
Roxanne Shante Bad Sister Rare
When you do receive your flowers while you’re alive, you wanna take care of them. And you wanna make sure everybody understands how much you appreciate that. I’m not the female hip-hop artist people talk about. I’m not invited to the awards. I’m the person who people would assume would be angry at home. And I’m the total opposite of that.
I love life so much. I’m a breast cancer survivor. I know what it’s like to go through lumpectomies, through everything. Life is amazing to me. I enjoy every minute of it.
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