My Voice: A Memoir (24 page)

Holy shit!
Every time I told someone, it became more real. Later that night, I’m texting Enuff. “I need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you can.” He doesn’t reply. Come to find out the next day that I was actually texting the wrong number ’cause I had like three numbers for him! I barely slept at all that night ’cause I was so worried about missing a beat. At two a.m. I was anxiously writing everything down—everybody I needed to tell, anything that could go wrong, plotting what I would do, drafting what I was gonna say on social media. I didn’t know what the fuck was going to happen when the sun rose on a very different day for me.

If ever there was a “Holy Shit, this is
it
” moment in my life, it was that next morning. I was going in to work for the last time and would be letting everyone know. Thea was going to tell her staff at ten a.m. when
The Breakfast Club
got off the air, and I was going to tell my general manager at that same time. On my way to the station, I called Enuff, and he still didn’t pick up. I texted him again, but of course it was the freaking wrong number, so he never got the text, which breaks my heart to
this day. I called Miss Info. I trusted Enuff and Miss Info and knew they could hold off for a couple of hours and not tell anybody. Miss Info knew how bad it had gotten at the station. We’d spent many, many hours talking about it and trying to figure out how to fix it. And when I told her I was leaving, she didn’t react as a coworker. She reacted as my friend.

“Wow!!! That’s great!” Miss Info said. “That’s what you should be doing. This makes so much sense.” She was so positive and excited about it, and she made me feel better.

“Well, I’m on my way there now to tell everybody.”

“Oh my God. Good luck,” she said. “Let me know if you need me to do anything.”

At ten a.m., I walk into the general manager’s office. And he’s not there. He’s not even in town. It didn’t even occur to me that this could happen.

“Is he coming back today?” I asked his assistant, Pat.

“No. He’s in DC,” she says.

“I really need to talk to him.”

“Okay. I’ll leave him a message.”

“No, Pat. I need to talk to him, like, now.”

So I wind up having to tell Deon on the phone, which was fine because I didn’t really have a relationship with him anyway. Next, I call Ebro and tell him, and he says he’s on his way back to the station. At this point, since I had said it a few times, it started to feel more comfortable hearing these words come out of my mouth. The brand-new interim program director, Jay Dixon, was really gracious about it. He said he was happy for me but bummed that he was going to miss out on the opportunity to work together, something he had been looking forward to. Jay and I are in his office talking when Ebro comes in, and Ebro is mad—like jaws visibly tight angry.

“Ebro, what’s up?” Jay says, sitting in the office that used to be Ebro’s.

“I mean, I’m already just thinking about seeing you next to that logo, seeing you next to that . . .” Ebro’s saying this all in an aggressive way. He’s already in war mode. “You’re our sister. We wish you well, of course. That goes without saying. But I’m already thinking about how this is gonna play out, how they’ll spin it, how they’ll use it against us.”

“Ebro, do you know that out of every person I’ve told so far, you’re the only one to react this way?”

“I get it, Ang. I get it. I’m just being realistic about what we’re going to have to face,” he said. “So how do you want to do it?”

“Well, I would like to do my last show today so I can say goodbye.”

“Okay,” Jay said. He asked if Clear Channel might be willing to wait a week to make the announcement. I said probably not. He looked concerned. “Can you just give us a few minutes so we can figure out how we’re gonna handle this?”

Now it’s eleven a.m., and I’m supposed to be on the air at three p.m. At that moment I say, “Sure, I will give you guys a minute.” I stand, leave his office, and walk out of the building, and I’m literally shaking.
Holy fuck, I just quit! This is crazy!

As I’m walking to Sushi Samba to get lunch, I call Thea.

“Well, I did it,” I said.

“How’d it go?”

“They’re asking if we can wait a few days before the announcement.”

“I don’t know, Ang. Clear Channel wants to go. They wanna announce.”

“Please, Thea. I want to be able to get on the radio and say goodbye. Can you please buy me at least a day?” If Clear Channel announced right away that I was gonna be on at Power, I knew I couldn’t get on the radio at Hot for my final show.

She agreed.

I hang up the phone and I’m just frozen. I hit Nikki and told her I
did it. She leaves her job immediately and hops in a cab to meet me. By the time I get to Sushi Samba, she is already there.

“I need a white wine,” I said as soon as I sat down and started telling her everything.

“Well, you know I had to call for some backup,” Nikki said. I look up and Tracey and Liane are walking into the restaurant. I just started bawling. Something about the three of them all being there, in the middle of this big moment, made me emotional for the first time during this whole situation. No matter what, my three girls were right there with me.

While Liane was proofreading the statement I had written for Instagram, I called Flex and told him what had just happened.

“So we’re gonna go on at three, right?” he asked.

“Honestly, Flex, I don’t know if they’re gonna let me. They told me to give them some time to figure it out, and Ebro is angry.”

“Nah, fuck that. We’re going on the radio at three,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

After lunch I’m walking back to the station, and from across the street I see Enuff and Paddy Duke sitting in front of the building, looking like somebody died.
Oh my God, everybody knows
. I walked up and Enuff gave me a big hug. “I’ve been trying to reach you since last night,” I said, and showed him my phone.

“Ang, that’s the wrong number. I got this other number.”

“I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you.”

“It’s all right. You know I love you. I understand.”

And that was everything that happened before the memo went out and I was confronted by everybody lined up in the hallway in tears. What I couldn’t say in that moment was that I knew my leaving would be good for everyone, that the change wasn’t just about me leaving but about creating opportunities for others that couldn’t happen the way it had been going. Sometimes you have to shake shit up to get forward motion.

•   •   •

B
y now you know most of the highlights that flashed in front of my eyes as I walked down the hall to the studio for my last installment of The Angie Martinez Show on Hot 97.

Right before we started, I had a conversation with Flex, Ebro, and Jay Dixon about how to approach the show. Jay felt we should still play music and be mindful of the length of our talk breaks.

Flex wasn’t having it. “No. There’s no rules for today,” he insisted.

Even Ebro got on board, understanding that we needed to have the moment. “Nah, it’s not that type of day, Jay,” Ebro said. “You gotta just let the rules go. You have to let it happen.”

ANGIE:
Today will be my last day on Hot 97.

DJ ENUFF:
Right. We gonna celebrate!

ANGIE:
So today—I know. Everybody, let it sit in for a second. It’s sad. But it’s also exciting. And I—and I want to celebrate today. I want to celebrate you guys. I want to celebrate what we’ve built. I want to celebrate my time here. Flex is on his way in. Terrence J is even here. What are you doing here, Terrence?

TERRENCE:
I came to support Angie. She supports me. I love you, sis.

ANGIE:
I love you, too.

DJ ENUFF:
That’s what’s up.

ANGIE:
So, yeah. It’s—you know, it’s time. There have been things that I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. And—you know I love you guys. Oh God, I’m not gonna get emotional. We’re on till seven tonight. I gotta hold it together. It’s very emotional. Everybody’s emotional here. You know, it’s a family. So you get stuck sometimes and afraid to—

EBRO:
To move on. Spread your wings.

ANGIE:
Thank you, Ebro.

DJ ENUFF:
But you got some great things coming up, Ang.

ANGIE:
And it’s time. You know, I have opportunities that I want to pursue. And it’s time . . .

And we just took it from there.

It was an emotional, heartwarming, and phenomenal day. I was proud of how far I had come and what I had accomplished. And I was filled up by the outpouring of love. Although the magnitude of it hit all of us on-air by the end of the show, I reassured my listeners that, “Life moves on. You can’t stay still. You have to grow.”

And my listeners reassured me that if you respect them and stay honest with them, they’ll ride with you for a long time.

I was no longer Angie Martinez from Hot 97. That was how I had introduced myself for years. It was how I thought of myself. Part of me was afraid to let that go. But I was more afraid to only ever be that. As much as Hot 97 had helped to make me who I was, I was ready to stand on my own.

•   •   •

A
couple of days after announcing that I had resigned, I was having a drink with my friend Tiffany at the bar at Houston’s in New Jersey. Two Latina girls in their thirties were sitting next to us. I could tell that they knew who I was because they kept kinda looking over but they were mostly minding their business.

Then, finally, one of the young women leaned over and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just had to say that I want to wish you luck. We were listening when you resigned.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot to me.” It did, especially
because of all the flak I’d been getting on social media, people calling me a traitor. And worse.

“No, I wanted to thank you,” she explained. “I just left a job that I had for a really long time, so what you did and talked about inspired me to feel like I’m doing the right thing. Because I was so nervous.”

We had such a real conversation.
This is so dope
. That was more important to me than any negative spin that anyone could put on my journey. I love that she said “inspired,” because that feeling was what I wanted to take with me when I started the new job.

It was real.

My first day at Power was like the first day at a new school. I didn’t know what to expect. I was walking into a station and going to work with people who had been considered our enemy at Hot 97 for so many years. Thea told me that everybody was excited, but I wasn’t sure how people were going to treat me. My first introduction was as a guest on
The Breakfast Club
. Friends or foes, I had met most of them before and they were all radio pros.

DJ ENVY:
Morning, everybody. It’s DJ Envy, Angela Yee, Charlamagne tha God. We are
The Breakfast Club
! We got a special guest that’s usually not on that side of the mic. She’s usually on this side of the mic.

CHARLAMAGNE:
Yes!

ANGIE:
This is—I hate being on this side of the mic! It’s the weirdest thing ever.

CHARLAMAGNE:
A radio icon.

DJ ENVY:
That’s right.

CHARLAMAGNE:
The legendary—

DJ ENVY:
Yes.

CHARLAMAGNE:
Miss Angie Martinez.

DJ ENVY:
The Voice of New York!

ANGELA YEE:
One of the only people that has ever made Charlamagne nervous. Because he used to say to me all the time, “I wonder if Angie Martinez hates me. You think she hates me? She doesn’t like me?”

CHARLAMAGNE:
No, no, no, no, no. What—what we—

ANGIE:
Why would you think that? I mean, you’ve said dumb things in the past that bothered me.

CHARLAMAGNE:
Nothing about you, though.

ANGIE:
Have you?

CHARLAMAGNE:
Never.

ANGIE:
No. Maybe not. But I—

CHARLAMAGNE:
Never. Never ever.

ANGIE: —
never hated you. I respect what you do—I told you this.

CHARLAMAGNE:
And that’s how I felt when (I seen you at 40/40)—I was like, “Yeah, I just want to go up there and tell her I respect her”—but I was always too pussy to go do it . . .

DJ ENVY:
 . . . How does it feel? Everybody wants to know why. You know, you’ve been with the station for fifteen years.

CHARLAMAGNE:
Let’s get it out of the way.

ANGELA YEE:
Yeah.

DJ ENVY:
Why? Why, why?

ANGIE:
I honestly—it was time for me to go. And this company offers so much opportunity for growth. I want to be on in different cities. I want to be able to grow. I want to be able to have new challenges—see new things. I want to learn this studio, how this studio works. And I just—it was time. You know, I feel like I—I’d done what I can do in that company. And I think my friendships remain.

Not bad for a first day. But I have to admit that I was definitely having some anxiety about my first show on the air. For starters, I worried that I’d say Hot 97 instead of Power 105.1—out of habit or whatever, or that I was going to give out the Hot 97 number by accident, just because it was such a part of my brain by now. In the new place, I had all kinds of worries, but the funny thing is that as soon as I hit that on-air button, it was like . . .

“Is this me? Is this the right button? What’s up, New York! Tristate area! It’s Power 105.1. I said it. It’s Angie Martinez.”

I’m still me!

That’s all I needed to remember, that I had the experience and expertise to rise to the new challenges. And ultimately, I was as comfortable as ever on the air. Everyone was happy for me, too. A ton of friends and artists called in to wish me good luck on that first day, including Puffy, DJ Khaled, Alicia Keys, and Swizz Beatz. And right before I signed off Jay called. “Oh, you think you gonna do this without me?!” he joked. I didn’t book any in-studio guests for my first show because I really wanted to talk to the listeners. And I did. That first day on-air, I felt like half the city called in. I talked to so many people who truly helped to put my fears to rest.