Recorded between laundry loads in 1985 when she was fourteen years old, Roxanne Shanté's first single, "Roxanne's Revenge," was a spontaneous storm of sassy rap turmoil aimed at B boys who objectify fly girls. Turning the tables on UTFO's tease insult "Roxanne, Roxanne," it was the most swashbuckling answer record since Lynyrd Skynyrd sniped Neil Young's liberal hypocrisy in "Sweet Home Alabama." Four years later, after a baby son and a stack of notable singles, the Rox has finally come up with an LP, and its homemade double-entendre slang gets as nasty as its beat. That beat – which Marley Marl's mix thickens house style with up-to-the-minute boogie piano, Shaft-derived wah-wah, dub echo, frat-party noise and horny horns – just couldn't be nastier.

Bad Sister opens in a heart-shaped bed; sex is everywhere, but Shanté's the boss. "Save your junk for tonight's wet dream," she tells one hopeful suitor. In "Fatal Attraction," she castrates a married Wall Street worker; in "Let's Rock Y'all," over a robotic sample from the Brit-pop hedonists in Westworld, she downs funky cold medinas and disses sissy misogynists. A self-proclaimed "Independent Woman," Shanté throws her hips and makes suckers faint, then advises self-deluded sisters: "How many runny-nose kids can you have/How many nights can you work on the Ave/Your so-called man has a car and a Visa/He's livin' large while you're livin' on pizza."

Like Neneh Cherry – and way more than such distaff-rap competitors as MC Lyte and Queen Latifah, who try so hard to convince us rap is serious stuff – Shanté turns "feminism" into a game, a means to a good back rub from a guy with "arms as big as trees." She imitates Elmer Fudd in "Wack Itt," races against the speed of sound in the incredibly dense "Go on Girl," slanders the L.A. hip-hop girlies in J.J. Fad in three different songs and even rhymes "eardrum" with "snare drum" in "Live on Stage." She's always goofing around – pride in her gender is just another way she gets her kicks. (RS 571)

CHUCK EDDY