My Voice: A Memoir (25 page)

It was that simple, just pressing the on-air button that first time and thinking,
And we’re off!

That day and every day since, the show continuously has been #1. We’ve broken all types of ratings records, not only on-air, but digitally as well, with people watching our interviews online all over the world. And as much as that makes me happy, ultimately, what motivates me the most is that I still really love this shit.

I hear people complain all the time about how hip-hop has changed, and while I miss some of the elements of what it used to be, I’m still very
much inspired by the notion that we are forever evolving—the music, the technology, and the way in which we exchange ideas and share new content. Even with the content itself changing, what we talk about, what we care about, what moves the needle. I’m constantly inspired by people within the culture who push the boundaries. There’s always something new to learn.

In the past year alone, I’ve had the opportunity to sit across from Ice Cube talking about prejudices based on race and hip-hop culture in Hollywood, right after he broke records telling the groundbreaking story of icons NWA. And J. Cole sharing his perspective on capitalism, integrity and the power of hip-hop. And Nicki Minaj bravely and emotionally opening up about love.

These are the moments that matter most to me, when I can be part of a conversation that resonates and has the potential to spark something in someone else. These are the moments that keep me engaged and connected. These are the moments that remind me how powerful our voices can be.

FIND THE INSPIRATION

I
’m not saying it’s all been happily ever after since the big move. But I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be. My family is healthy and thriving, thank God, and I love our squad—as we call it—that Oronde and I have with his son, Christian, who I am so lucky to have as a second son, and, of course, with Niko, my beautiful, funny, good-hearted boy. I love seeing the brotherhood between Niko and Christian. Where Niko’s more like me and can be more reserved and thoughtful, Christian is possibly the most fearless kid I’ve met in my whole life. The two balance each other very well.

We take our family seriously and enjoy each other. These boys, and Oronde, too, crack me up and make me laugh out loud every single day. Nothing is better than laughter. We have Sunday family meetings over crab legs to talk about the highs and lows of our weeks and let the boys bring up anything on their minds. Being with my family in those moments keeps me balanced and at my happiest.

We also have an amazing extended family, an unexpected blessing. In an effort to keep Niko close with his half brother, Jordan, his father Tamir’s elder son, Jordan’s mother, Margo, and I began to get the boys together regularly on our own when Niko was about three years old. In the process, Margo and I just clicked. Before long we started having family celebrations with her and her husband, Clayton, and with Jordan, as well as their three other boys. Over the years we’ve gotten so close, spending holidays together, cheering for each other’s kids at basketball games, and going to Disney World multiple times as one big family. In fact, I’m now the godmother for all four of their children, Jordan included. So on a Saturday night it’s not uncommon for me to have six boys lying around in my living room: Niko, now twelve; Christian, ten; Jordan, fifteen; Cayden, eight; Brandon, six; and Mason, five. Can you imagine breakfast?

And then there is my new family at my new home at Power 105.1—which has been an amazing place for me to challenge myself and learn new ways to do radio. As a company iHeart is growing in such unique ways; it’s been incredible to watch that firsthand.

I’m also passionate about my production company, Media Noche, which I launched to tell different stories than I can on the radio. I’m excited to develop content for unique voices that don’t currently exist in media—stories and platforms for voices like mine.

I’m intrigued by underserved voices, and I’ve had the opportunity to try to champion them in other ways, including recently being tapped by President Barack Obama to participate in a criminal justice reform panel at the White House. In fact, the morning of the panel, when I arrived in DC, I was told that Obama would be saying a few words and I was asked to introduce him.
Meee?!?!
To me it seemed crazy, but the people on his administration who put the panel together seemed to value my voice and my audience. So I stood up onstage as a representative of
hip-hop culture, of Latin culture, and women, and introduced, “The president of the United States, Barack Obama.” To say it was an honor would be an understatement. I still show the video of it to anyone who will watch, and the screensaver on my phone is a photo of me standing behind Obama like a nervous Olivia Pope. A few months later I was invited back to serve on another panel, this time representing women in hip-hop. I’m proud to have a role in these panels and to use my voice to represent my culture.

The response to my White House debut was overwhelming, as it was the year before, when I started at Power. I was feeling so much inspiration and energy from the support of my listeners, the hip-hop community, and my city. The beauty of inspiration is that it goes two ways. When people tell me that I’ve inspired them, it inspires me to want to do more, to push myself and make them proud. It was then that I thought,
Now is the moment I could do something great
. I was just looking for the right opportunity.

As it happened, I was at my son’s baseball game one afternoon when my girlfriend Amber Sabathia—our kids play ball together and she’s married to CC Sabathia, who plays for the Yankees—told me that she was running the New York City Marathon for CC’s foundation, PitCCh, to raise money for kids in underserved communities. She was putting together a team and offered me a spot to run. It wasn’t the challenge I’d envisioned, but I’d been watching the marathon since I was a kid and was always in awe of it.

The thing was that I hated to run and could never imagine doing that, which is exactly why running the New York City Marathon was on my bucket list. I thought,
If I could do that, I could do anything
. And in a moment of courage I told Amber, “Okay, I’m in.”

It was only four months before the marathon and I hadn’t been working out for some time. Did I mention I also
never
ran? Still, I signed
up and made an announcement on the radio. Then there’s a press release, a race date looming, and there’s no turning back.

It’s not pretty: I cannot run a mile. Not one fucking mile. I feel like a fraud every time someone congratulates me.
If I went outside right now and somebody asked me to run two miles, I would drop dead.
The New York City Marathon is 26.2 miles long!

Amber sent me a training schedule of how to go from nothing to the marathon in three and a half months. So I go outside the first day to start training.
Let’s see how this goes . . .

I wanted to cry. Not only because I realized I was in such terrible shape, but also because I realized how ridiculous it was that I’d committed to this.
Why would I do this to myself?!

I got in touch with a trainer I’d worked with years before, Mark Jenkins, who also trained Puffy for the marathon. On our first day out, Mark teaches me how to dogtrot. It’s like walking with a lift. He explained that when you want to stop, instead of stopping, just bring it down to this dogtrot. After having to cancel a few sessions because of my schedule, I knew Mark wasn’t going to work out. So from there, I was on my own.
I know how to push myself. I need to be in tune with my body. I’m going to be out there by myself, so I need to figure this out by myself.

According to the training schedule, I was supposed to be running four days a week, sometimes five, but I quickly started falling way behind the rest of the team. So for the most part, I ran alone.

Find the inspiration
—that became my mantra while training for the marathon. There’s inspiration everywhere, by the way—coming across another runner who’s struggling to keep pace and never stops, the sunset over the Hudson River, the music blasting through my headphones. I’d put on a song that gave me a burst of inspiration.
Find the inspiration
. I listened to music all the time while I was training. Marc Anthony’s “Aguanile,” a Héctor Lavoe remake, made me feel like there
was a holy ghost in that song that gave me extra energy when I needed it.
“Aguanileeee . . . Aguaaaniiileeeee . . . Santo dios, Santo fuerte, Santo Inmortaaal . . .”
That was definitely high on my playlist. Along with J. Cole, Young Jeezy, Meek Mill. Anything that moved me or made me forget I was running.

To switch it up, I’d try different routes almost every time I trained—around my neighborhood, Central Park, the George Washington Bridge, Washington Heights. I would run over the George Washington Bridge and run past my old neighborhood in Washington Heights and feel inspired by how far I’d come.

A few times Niko would ride his bike alongside me. I loved those days. And before one long run, when I was feeling really down about my progress, Oronde offered to run with me. He’s not a runner, but there he was alongside me in full support. When we got back to the house, he took two steps inside and lay down on the living room floor, still in his running clothes. That sixteen miles kicked his ass! He literally couldn’t move and stayed there on the floor until the next day. At some point, I brought him a pillow for under his head. Marathon training was taking a toll on the whole family.

Something definitely started happening in that training. You start seeing the city in a different way and thinking about your life. It’s almost like meditation because you’re resting your brain. So that part of running I did learn to appreciate and actually enjoy.

The whole purpose of our team running the marathon was to raise money, and now we’re starting to get support. I had a donation jar in the studio. Ne-Yo came and put a hundred dollars in there. Khaled dropped a hundred, as did most of my guests. Then Puffy called in and donated a thousand dollars for every mile that I ran. That’s twenty-six thousand dollars! It was such a nice gesture. Especially considering our history. I appreciated it and was grateful for it. But it also added pressure,
because now there’s tens of thousands of dollars involved and I’m clearly not even close to ready.

Holy shit. Everybody expects me to do this marathon . . .
The pressure built as the day drew closer. Every day I’d be limping into work because I was so hurt from my run the night before. I always had sneakers on. I couldn’t even bear to do my hair anymore. It was all about training.

In the middle of my training, there was a half marathon at Central Park, so I signed up. I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want anybody to know I was there. I just wanted to see if I could do a half, knowing that in a month I had to go do a whole. I took an Uber to Central Park and sat there by myself, looking at all these people stretching. I felt like, if I could do this, and if it was kind of easy, then I would have a lot more confidence. Just the opposite happened. I was the second-to-last person to finish the whole thing. That includes the senior citizens and the handicapped people. I’m not even kidding.

I finally get to the damn finish line and they’re already closing it down, cleaning up, and putting the boxes and bagels away. I’m pathetic, asking, “Can I get a bagel, please?” I grabbed my bagel and was looking at a bench not too far away.
Can I make it to the bench to sit down?
I could hardly walk.
Oh my God, that half marathon almost put me in my grave. How am I supposed to do a whole one in a month?!

Three weeks before the marathon, Amber and the team decided to do an eighteen-mile run together—beyond anything I’d ever tried. I did it and I didn’t die, but I hurt my right hip flexor. In a lot of pain, I hoped it would just be a couple of days. It wasn’t. A week later I still couldn’t walk. So I started going to physical therapy every day straight for two weeks. But for those three weeks before the marathon, I didn’t run at all. I was in recovery, taking ice baths, trying to just walk normal, let alone run. I was absolutely in freak-out mode at this point, panicking.
The doctor gave me the okay to show up at the marathon, although he warned that it was going to hurt.

Crack of dawn on Sunday, November 2, 2014, I showed up, the same way I always fucking show up through my whole career, even though I’m not prepared. Yes, I’ll show up. I’ll run the marathon. I could barely run the half as it was, healthy. Now I’ve got to go do this whole, and I’m hurt.

I came up with this mantra that running the marathon was similar to having a baby. Giving birth hurts like hell, but no matter how bad the pain was, the baby still had to come out. There’s no option. And I applied that thought to my race.
I know this is going to be really painful, but ultimately, like delivering a baby, I have to finish.
I took the option of quitting out altogether
.

They put our team with the elite runners and the “celebrity group.” It’s the actress Teri Hatcher, who’s an avid runner, Olympic gold medalist Billy Demong, tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. With one look around, I can tell I have no business in this tent. They have all kinds of gadgets, roll-on things, and tape things. Billy the Olympic gold medalist is telling me how he was training in the Himalayas and explaining how he’d stay hydrated. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on his body and he was going to run this thing in an hour. I was still hobbling.
Fuck
 . . .

It’s freezing that day. The winds are abnormally strong. We get to the starting point, lined up by the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island. As soon as we start, the whole group quickly sprints ahead of me. There goes Teri Hatcher; there go the fucking Olympians; there go the Kenyans. Everybody’s passing me. My girls Amber and Alexis were in pretty good shape, so they were moving ahead, too. We were not even half a mile in and Amber, God bless her, turns around.

“Come on, Ang! We’ve got to get our pace.”

“Amber, go!”

“No, it’s too soon! I don’t want to leave you—we just started!”

“Amber, just go!” I didn’t want to have the pressure of trying to keep up. “I need to go super slow or I’m not going to finish this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go!”

So they all leave me. There’s hundreds of us. Then there’s tens of us. Then there’s, like, five of us. Then there’s me. By myself. On the Verrazano Bridge. I am literally the last person on the Verrazano Bridge. Not only am I the last, but I’m the
only
person on the Verrazano Bridge, by myself.
I could jump off the bridge; that could be a way I could get out of this . . .
It was so cold out there, so quiet.
But fuck it . . .
I run. I’m slow, but I get over the bridge, and I run off the bridge into Brooklyn. The streets are empty; it’s still just me. Eventually other runners from behind me start catching up and I start feeling less like a loser and an outcast. Now I’m just part of the group.

Even though I was sore, I was so present the whole time, paying attention to the people in the cheering crowd, amazed at how many people were standing in the cold to support us. “Come on. You got this! You’re just getting started! You’re going to do this! Congratulations!” The whole way through the marathon, they’re encouraging you. It was so touching and overwhelming that I did not put my music on, not one time. I was like fucking Rain Man out there.
I’m just gonna finish, just gonna finish, just gonna finish
.

Every time my brain went into
This is impossible
, I would find something else to distract or inspire me. Stopping was not an option. Everybody says, “Run your own race.” You really do have to run your own race—in everything, in anything. It’s a good lesson in life, not just in marathon running. At mile seven, I had the notion,
Holy shit, you’re going to run the marathon.
Yes, you’re going to do it!