My Voice: A Memoir (10 page)

Ed Lover came into the editing room and was standing over my shoulder, listening. Apparently, he heard enough that at some point he decided to mention something to Puff about what he had heard. Puff then called Steve Smith and told him, “If this airs, it’s going to make the situation worse. I’m going to have a real problem with the station.”

So he got to my program director and got in his head. Now, mind you, I’m sitting in the studio by myself, with the little razor blade, listening to the interview over and over again, trying to decide what to play.

Before I could even figure that out, Steve Smith calls me out of the editing room and says, “Well, I don’t know if we should be playing this. And Puff doesn’t think—”

“Puff? What does he have to do with any of this?”

“Well, he just thinks that more people could get hurt,” he says.

It irritated me that, all of a sudden, a decision had come from somebody who was deeply involved in this situation and didn’t work for the station.
I don’t work for him
. It bothered me that everybody was so eager to please Puff before I even had a chance to evaluate the right thing to do. I knew Puff had a lot on the line, but I felt like he was trying to bully the station.

“Well, you’re not telling me I can’t play it, right?”

“I just want us to be very careful,” Steve said. He paused, as if he were about to put his foot down.

“Hold that thought,” I said, backing out of the room. Before he could tell me something I didn’t want to hear, I got out of there quickly, like a ninja. I tend to do that before somebody’s about to say something I’m not interested in hearing.

I see where this is going. I’m not going to let it go there. I’ll be back
. I’m actually brilliant at extracting myself from conversations I don’t want to have. It’s a gift.

I went back into the editing room and continued as if I were still making the decision about what we were going to do. Ultimately, a lot of what Pac said scared me. My intention, truly, was to help. But what he gave me was so aggressive and at points angry, it verged on explosive. Everything main topic was so sensitive, and some of it was so inflammatory that I could see where it would make a bad situation worse. That was never my intent.

Now, granted, airing it in full would have been the biggest interview in the country. At the time, before all the online content and commentary, pre–social media, radio was the one place where you could experience what it was like to be there in the moment, hearing everything as it was unfolding. It was a really big deal. But the material could also accelerate this crazy war that I had suddenly found myself on the front lines of. The magnitude of this position and the responsibility hit me hard.

So with what I did eventually air I chose to stick by Pac with cuts that reflected his truth but that were also positive. I stuck to clips of him defending himself against the rape allegations and talking in general about wanting to inspire people. And yes, I took the best of what he had said about there not being an East Coast–West Coast beef and his clarification that it was about one person dealing with another person. My
decision was to use the brief on-air cuts to put some good in the world—to leave his message in but take out the super-inflammatory stuff, even if it was about eighty-five percent of the interview. In the end I played the pieces that really captured the best part of Tupac.

I struggled with the fine line between my journalistic duty to keep his meaning intact and not contributing to a dangerous situation as a human being who deeply cared about the culture.

Everything had happened so fast—the phone call, the trip to LA, the interview, and the drama over what to air. Even so, all these years later, the details have remained incredibly vivid. I even kept a few mementos. Sadly, over the years, I rarely kept any. That’s actually one of the few regrets that I have in looking back. But I did save some from that day. I kept the plane tickets to LA and back and Pac’s box of Newports with four cigarettes left in it. Back then I smoked cigarettes occasionally. And I was smoking Newports with Pac, so I held on to the box. I just knew that it was such an unusual moment and one that would stay with me forever.

I’d come to a turning point. Before that interview, my job was just fun. I finally realized,
Oh! This does matter! It can matter. It is
mattering
.

UNBELIEVABLE

B
ryant Park was buzzing on September 4, 1996, for the after-party following the MTV Music Video Awards that had been held earlier at Radio City Music Hall. As I pushed my way into the thick of it, I couldn’t help but feel good that hip-hop was well represented that night. Everybody was there.

Snoop and Dre were in town. And so was Pac, as he and Dre had been nominated for Best Rap Video for “California Love”—although they lost to Coolio for “Gangsta’s Paradise.” The biggest names of the night were The Smashing Pumpkins and Alanis Morissette, each winning multiple awards in the rock and pop categories. As much as I loved Alanis’s
Jagged Little Pill
album, when it came to the show, I was most excited about the hip-hop awards and performances. Nas and the Fugees killed it with a medley of “Fu-Gee-La,” “Ready or Not,” and “If I Ruled the World.” Definitely not a bad showing for the culture. Not everybody was happy though. At the after-party, Suge Knight and Pac complained
plenty that Death Row was not given its due awards-wise or on the show.

In fact, Tupac, flanked by the Outlawz and Suge—all carrying signs that read “Death Row East”—talked to an entertainment reporter about how they were expanding to include East Coast artists. Aside from what was going on with Biggie, Pac called out Nas and apparently now had a beef with him, too. Shit was still crazy.

Walking into the party, I’d known there was a chance of running into Pac. And I had hoped I would. Snippets from my interview with him had aired over the last several weeks, and I honestly had no clue how he felt about it. All in all, my cuts had gone from a two-hour interview to about twelve minutes that wound up on-air. There had been no word from Pac so, naturally, I was somewhat worried he might be angry after he spent so much time and money to make the interview happen. That didn’t change my feeling that I’d made the right choice not to fan the flames.

So there I was in the middle of the tented festivities at Bryant Park. The coastal war was still very much a thing, and you could feel high tension in the air—especially because Pac and Nas were both there. There was this moment when I thought,
Oh God, when these paths cross, this is going to be a problem
.

And all of sudden, like in slow motion, everybody realized that Nas and his crew were walking toward Pac and his, all with the same intensity. You could almost hear a gasp from everyone watching, with all of us probably thinking the same thing:
Oh God, this could be really bad right now
.

But Nas and Pac talked. It did feel a little aggressive, not because of them, necessarily, but the people around them. That is usually where most of the problems happen—with the crews. But somehow it seemed to be managed, and whatever Pac and Nas said to each other that night, it ended in peace.

At some point in the night, I found my way over to Pac. He had a cup in his hand and his shirt was half unbuttoned. He looked like a superstar. He just kind of looked at me and I was like, “Hi.” I’m in some stupid little silver sweat suit. Like a shiny TLC sweat suit. And Pac was like, “Hey!”

“You know, I just wanted to come say hello,” I said. “And I don’t know if you heard the interview. I aired it. But I just want you to know I had to edit a bunch of stuff out, because I felt like it was the right thing to do. But I did my best to not misrepresent you.”

“I understand, Angie. It’s all good,” he said. “We good.” And he gave me a big hug.

As he did, the tension lifted off of me. I had been so worried and it turned out he was so okay and comfortable about everything.

Pac reassured me even more, adding, “It’s cool. We cool, and I’m still happy you came.”

We could have talked longer and I would have had more to say, but there was a crowd around us wanting their own moment with Pac, everyone waiting for his attention, so I excused myself. I said, “Thanks, Pac. I’m glad I went, too.”

He winked at me, and I just kind of crawled away in relief. We were good.

That was the last time I ever saw him. It was the last time that most of the people at Bryant Park that night ever saw him.

•   •   •

O
n September 7, 1996, three days after the MTV Awards, we all got the news about what had happened that night in Vegas, after the heavyweight championship match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand. Initially, the news was just that Tyson had knocked out Seldon in the first round, making it one of the shortest
fights in boxing history. But then came word that Tupac—who had been at the match with Suge Knight—had been shot in a drive-by incident as the two of them cruised through town on their way to a club. Apparently, before leaving the MGM Grand, Pac had been in a fight in the lobby that had to be broken up by security. The cause was said to be gang related. Nobody knew if the shooting had come about in retaliation, but from what was known, a Cadillac had pulled up on the right side of the car Suge was driving and multiple shots had been fired.

The thing about Tupac is that he was always in the news and he had been shot so many times. I thought—as everybody did—“Oh, he was shot again. He’ll be fine.” Nobody thought that he could actually die.

But as the next couple of days went by and I heard reports from the news and other firsthand accounts from people I knew who were there to check on him, I started to lose my certainty that Pac was bulletproof. I heard that when they carried him in, half conscious, Pac told a medical worker, “I’m dying.” He had been hospitalized since and was in critical care. He had to be sedated because he kept trying to get up out of the bed.

Telling myself he was going to pull through, I still felt a pit in my stomach, like a sense of dread. He was so good to me, so kind. And I just liked Pac. In the span of one trip to LA we had bonded in a real way. What could I do? How could I say something to cheer him on? There was no texting him or sending an e-mail to an assistant or anything like that. So I wrote him a letter. That’s how old-school it was. I wrote a handwritten letter, got a stamp, and mailed it to the hospital:

Hey, I hope this letter finds you. I hope you are recovering and on your way back to doing what you were born to do. I just want you to know that people are praying for you . . .

We were all waiting to find out how Pac was. By chance someone who worked at the station knew someone on staff at the hospital and had been giving me confidential updates, confirming what I was hearing—that he was in a coma. That was not good, but I’d remind myself that gunshot victims recovered from being in comas all the time. Then, on September 13, I called our connection at the hospital and asked, as usual, “Just checking in to see if you have any information on how Tupac is doing.”

There was a pause. Then in a cautious voice she relayed the news that Pac had passed. He was twenty-five years old. Same age as me.

My first reactions were shock and disbelief. I put down the phone and sat back in my chair, convinced there had been a mistake.

There’s no way. There’s no way he passed. No way. That’s impossible
.
Why would somebody say that?

Now, at this point, nothing had been announced. It wasn’t on the news yet. So I picked up the phone again and called the hospital and somehow got through to an administrator who told me that, yes, it was confirmed that Tupac had just passed. Literally
just
passed. Moments ago.

In the middle of feeling so devastated and sad, I knew it was important to share the news with our listeners. I couldn’t even begin to think about how, so I turned to Red Alert, who happened to be on-air, mixing. Red Alert was the original iconic deejay, who had not only been a pioneer of hip-hop, but I had grown up taping his show and mixtapes on KISS FM for years—the only place where a kid like me could hear hip-hop on the radio. Right before we went back on the air, I quietly and quickly gave Red Alert the news that Tupac had passed. He looked as stunned as I felt.

“What do we do? Do we say it on the radio?” I asked.

Red Alert took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, Angie. You have to tell people.”

And I knew I did.

Nothing like this had happened before. I had no expertise in how to announce a tragedy. I didn’t know how it went. I wasn’t a trained news reporter or a journalist with experience in how to cover breaking news stories, horrible crises, wars. I was still that kid who liked hip-hop and somehow got a show on the radio. I don’t know how you report on death. And I was so affected and emotional about it. Nobody had taught me a protocol for how to convey this kind of important news to our listeners. All I could do was trust my instincts and crack the mic.

We spoke from the heart. Red Alert began, “It’s Hot 97, Red Alert and Angie—we have some bad news. Really sad, bad news.”

And I continued. “I just got word from University Medical Center of Southern Nevada that Tupac has passed away.”

Suddenly, it sank in. I was overcome by emotion that caught in my voice and in my chest. I had never experienced anything so real on-air. It was the realest it had ever gotten. And I just lost it. I just started crying. The mic was on. There was nothing I could do but just let it go, and all I could verbalize was, “It just is what it is . . . God. I’m sad, as I’m sure a lot of you are.”

At some point we weren’t even saying anything; the mic was just on for like a minute. And to this day people tell me that they had that moment with us, that they were there, listening. It was the first time I had felt that type of vulnerability on the radio. It’s not like it was something planned. It was just what was happening. It was just how it felt. It was just sad. It was awful.

And then, of course, not that much longer after, MTV had gotten wind of it and reports started to show up on the news that Tupac was pronounced dead. The aftermath of that was so weird. Everything had changed. I think everyone in the culture started feeling crazy about how far everything had gotten and this man’s life was taken now.

Over the past four months I had known that Biggie had been none
too pleased about me going to talk to Pac. All of that changed when Tupac died. A short time later Biggie came up to the show to talk about how terrible it was that Pac had lost his life. No matter what they had been going through, he didn’t wish that on anyone.

We all felt the loss and understood the weight of the moment, no question. But we couldn’t yet appreciate what Pac’s legacy was going to be, or really how much what had just happened would change the whole trajectory of hip-hop and how big of a part of hip-hop history this turning point would be.

For my part, as grief set in, I was too emotional to think that far ahead. How could someone with so much talent and so much potential be gone? The news took longer to travel in those days, but as people started reacting with memorials and fans connected all over the world, I was amazed at how much larger than life Pac already was.

For the longest time I’d be walking through the street and so many strangers would approach me to say that they were listening when the news broke. They’d say, “We were crying with you on the radio. My whole family had the radio on.”

Over the years I’ve often wondered if Tupac had a kind of sixth sense that maybe his life was going to get cut short and so he had to just live more in less time. Clearly, his lyrics and images were full of death and dying. I do know as complex as he was, he knew things. In fact, during my interview with him there were two major lessons he taught me that have stuck with me ever since.

The first came up when I made the mistake of starting a question with, “Well, people say . . .”

And he stopped me. “Who are you talking about? What people? Because if you are just talking about niggas in the barbershop, you know they gonna talk shit no matter what you do. So don’t talk to me about people and what people say.”

Maybe I knew that, but because I was young and nobody had ever put it like that, in those terms, I listened. He was right. And in my career I needed to know that, yeah, there were always going to be people who want to talk shit. Because that’s what they do. They sit in the barbershop—or wherever—and talk shit. And it helped cushion the blow later when there was talk that I needed to ignore. Pac telling me that was important at that point in my career. It saved me a lot of time that would have otherwise been wasted.

His other lesson was along those same lines but different. At one point I had asked him if he regretted a career move that had turned out to be kind of stupid. He waved me off and said he wasn’t afraid of making a mistake. “My career ain’t about that,” Pac said. He told me that, yeah, he was gonna fuck up, but that was not ever going to be enough to erase everything else, all the years of work. It may have been obvious, but I hadn’t heard it put that way, and I took it as gospel. So what if you make a mistake and fuck up? It can’t erase or outweigh the other great things you’ve done, if you’ve been at your career and working hard. A mistake or a setback doesn’t have to define you.

Both those lessons gave me courage that I carried from then on. He delivered his points as if he knew I’d value them. And he was right.

•   •   •

T
he hip-hop world had barely stopped reeling from the loss of Pac when we faced another devastating blow.

Biggie had been doing his best to keep positive and move forward after Pac passed. He took a trip to Los Angeles to promote his second album and to present at the Soul Train Music Awards. Lots of people thought it was too soon for him to go to LA, but I think it was his way of showing love to the West Coast and letting everyone know that things would be okay.

Aside from all the drama that had been going on with Pac, Biggie was busy making history of his own. He was already thought of by many as the greatest rapper alive, with just one album out. I remember when I first heard him rap on a cassette tape given to me by Salaam, it was like nothing I had ever heard. That tape became legend before he even put out his debut album. In my opinion nobody had ever put words together like B.I.G. That, combined with Puffy’s marketing and branding genius, made Biggie’s first album huge—not just in New York, but everywhere. People were expecting greatness with the second album, and he was ready to deliver.