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Los Angeles lawyer and journalist Ben Sheffner, who used to represent some Warner Music arms, pens a piece at Slate today that destroys an earlier New York Daily News story claiming that Warner paid for the college education of 80s rapper Roxanne Shanté.
It was the feel-good story of the summer...endlessly blogged and tweeted, heralded as an example of a heroic triumph by a girl from the projects over her evil record label....One problem: Virtually everything about the Daily News' heartwarming "projects-to-Ph.D." story appears to be false.
At his blog, Sheffner posts that when he read the NYDN story, "I knew something just didn't smell right. I've read enough entertainment industry contracts to know that companies simply don't enter into contracts like that. So I started digging. Little did I realize what I would find." His Slate post refers to an investigation and follow-up checks by "Slate," but I gather the story is Sheffner's work alone — there's a disclaimer in the end credit saying "The views expressed here are his own."