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Roxanne Shante recorded the hit 1984 track "Roxxanne's Revenge" when she was 14, arguably becoming hip-hop's first female celebrity. She has also never recieved any payment for it. She then discovered a clause in her recording contract that said they would pay for her education for life, possibly a cynical throwaway line they assumed would never be utilized by a teenage mom in public housing.

Instead of winding up on "Where Are They Now?" or some reality show garbage, she now has an Ivy League PhD in Psychology.

Fuck yeah.

Just for the sake of argument, how much do you think 25 years of royalties for a hit song would come out to? Shante's PhD cost Warner Brothers about $200,000. I'd be willing to bet they made at least 10 times that in the past 25 years on that song alone, and that's being conservative.

I, for one, am willing to forgive a silly platitude in order for an artist to express her fortunate experience.

Is that generally true in the US? Because in many EU countries the course and funding are entirely separate.

It was guaranteed at all the US universities I applied to, and I study history.

Well, two things.

1. An assistantship requires you to put in hours, it's basically like a job, right? She is a mother, she might just want to do her classwork without having to put in extra hours to pay for it. Which is completely understandable, because:

2. If the record company already said they'd pay for it, why the hell would you argue with that? Make the fuckers pay for it! Instead of taking money away from the school, or from a fellowship, make them honor their contract and let another needy student get some financial assistance. Isn't it possible that she was offered some form of financial assistance, and turned it down because she already had someone legally obligated to pay for her education?

Almost every form of financial assistance comes with strings, either loans, or required duties, or minimum grade point averages. If you didn't have to worry about all that bullshit, why would you?

To sum up: I'm not saying that she shouldn't do this or that the label shouldn't have to pay. I'm just saying that it shouldn't really make much of a difference to her financially, whereas the original article implied that she would have been unable to go otherwise.

OK, if she was using it to pay for undergrad that makes way more sense.

But Ph.D. funding hasn't really got any conditions, generally speaking. It's a job, not a grant.

I'm not sure what the Daily News' reputation is supposed to be, but you'd think they would at least check to see if she actually had a PhD.  That's not a frivolous detail, that's like the main point of the story.

I'm trying to see where you told us so.

I do not think you told us so.

I didn't even know this thread (and the whole lawsuit thing) existed until now, so I guess I win.