Lady of Rage hit the world with her song “Afro Puffs” on the Above the Rim soundtrack in 1994, spitting uplifting lyrics with Snoop Dogg’s vocals urging her to “rock on with your bad self” in the background, but the "lyrical murder" was paying her dues well before that.
Born Robin Yvette Allen, Lady of Rage grew up in rural Virginia, loving poetry and knowing she wanted to be “a superstar.” Her first taste of the spotlight came when she won her high school’s talent show in 12th grade for a dramatic presentation of Langston Hughes’ poem “The Negro Mother.”
After graduating, a brief move to Houston, Texas lead her to Job Corps, learning the trade of meat cutting. When the organization hosted a talent show, she found herself slaughtering the competition with her freestyle. “They started throwing Little Debbie cakes at me,” she laughs. “I didn’t know that was like money.” She would have won the contest had she not been disqualified for cursing, but that didn’t discourage her. She eventually hitched a ride with a friend who dropped her off in Manhattan, thinking “if Run-D.M.C. could just hear me” everything would be okay. She had all the addresses of the record companies written down and planned to visit them in person to show what she could do on the mic.
While browsing around Tower Records, some guy commented on her Run-D.M.C. hat, telling her the tag was hanging out.
“I know,” she said, annoyed that he didn’t seem to know that was the style. “You rap or something?” he asked. She said yes. When she told him she was from Virginia, he seemed skeptical. As they walked through the store and onto an elevator, she rapped an original rhyme for him as if they were at The Apollo Theater (her longtime dream.)
“And when we got to the floor we were heading to, every in there clapped for me,” she says. The guy was Dax Rodgers, brother of Nile Rodgers, who co-founded the iconic band Chic (yes, creators of the classic song, “Freak Out”). Dax’s mother, Beverly Goodman, was looking for someone to rap a Public Service Announcement for AIDS awareness and she was coming to pick him up that night. “She let me stay with them for a little while and eventually put me in the studio,” says Rage. While bouncing around and even living at Chung King Studios at one point, Rage met the Outlaw Posse in Queens, who introduced her to the LA Posse.