Angie Martinez credits JAY-Z for convincing her to protect some unreleased tapes of Tupac Shakur.
Angie Martinez, the radio show host often deemed the “Voice of New York” by the hip-hop community, has revealed that she has rapper JAY-Z to thank for the now secure protection of her unreleased Tupac interviews. Angie interviewed ‘Pac, the man who many consider the greatest rapper of all time, on several occasions, including at the height of his career. Although she has since kept much of those recordings close to her chest, it seems Martinez was literally stashing the tapes rather carelessly in her laundry room for many years.
In an interview with PageSix, Angie explains that Hov was concerned when, during a meeting with Roc Nation, she told him about keeping the tapes in her home. According to the former Hot 97 host, JAY-Z immediately advised her against that location choice, saying, “Get them out of the room now. Somebody help her get them out of that room now because if there is a flood or a fire it will be destroyed.”
Martinez went on to assure that the tapes are now stored in an actual vault in a secure and secret location, and have also been digitized so that they can’t be destroyed.
In a 2014 conversation with radio and television personality Sway Calloway, Angie Martinez recalled her infamous two-hour interview with the late Tupac Shakur and explained why she only ever released roughly ten minutes of the tapes.
It seems that Pac’s interview was so passionate and intense, Angie feared that releasing the conversation in its entirety would only further exacerbate the East Coast/West Coast beef. She explains that she worried the interview would have too much of an effect on the already volatile atmosphere in the hip-hop community, saying, “I was literally afraid that someone would die.”
Unfortunately, concealing Tupac’s impassioned words didn’t prevent tragedy, as both Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. would later lose their lives as a result of the coastal beef.
