My Voice: A Memoir (7 page)

There were a couple of nights when, as usual, people were calling in to the request line with the standard, “Hi. I’m Jane from Brooklyn!” “I’m Tito from the Bronx.” “This is Oscar representing Harlem!” As they waited to get on the air, instead of putting them through, we’d click all the lines at the same time and create a listener party line without them even knowing. They would all think they were calling Hot 97 and say, “Hello?” “Hello?”

“I’m calling Hot 97 . . .”

“Me too . . .”

“What do you mean, me too? I’m calling you.”

“Nah, son, I’m calling you.”

They’d wind up arguing or hitting on each other or sometimes just talking shit, but it was always hilarious. Salaam and I would just sit there and crack up. Yep, it was dumb, but we did have fun.

One night when I was working in the back office before running the boards for Flex, someone mentioned that A Tribe Called Quest was coming up to the station. “Oh, I love them,” I said. “I love Q-Tip!” I wasn’t trying to fan out or anything, but I was excited that they were coming and I made sure that when they made their rounds at the office, I got a quick pic. I remember them being so cool and regular and everything I’d hope they would be.

After Tribe made the rounds and took about a hundred flicks, they made their way to the on-air studio to interview with Bugsy, who was on the air before Flex. DJ Fred Buggs was a radio pro and had been in the game for years at New York’s WBLS, which was an adult urban station. He was a strong interviewer and, of course, I had to tune in. I was still working with the street team at the time, so I was in the station’s prize closet packing up tees while I listened on a little portable radio. They talked about the new music they were working on and plans for the group; the interview was good and pretty standard. That is, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Bugsy says to Q-Tip—on the air!!!—“You know that girl Angie in the back? I think she has a crush on you.”

Oh MY GOD!!!! Whaaat? Whyyyyyyyy would he do that?!
Come on, Buggggs!

I knew he meant no harm and was just trying to be funny on the radio, but I was absolutely mortified!

First of all, it was embarrassing. I wanted to crawl under a desk somewhere and die, and I most certainly did not want to go anywhere near the studio.

Then I heard Tip, in his very Tip voice, say on-air, “Wait, who is that? The girl with the long brown hair, right?” I froze.

Wait—he knows who I am?
Wait—no! Not the point. Again, the point is—why would Bugsy do that?!

Now I would have to hide every time Q-Tip came to the station. The moment the interview ended and I was certain that the group was long out of the building, I ran into the studio and begged Bugsy to never, ever,
ever
do that again. He laughed and agreed. And that was that, at least for the moment, as far as Tip and Tribe were concerned.

•   •   •

A
fter four or five years at Hot 97, I was happy being behind the scenes and running the boards. Every now and then I’d get to talk to Flex on the air and a few times they even let me do a whole shift—Sundays at four a.m., or if they had a scheduling emergency, here and there at other times. Terrible little time slots, but I was happy
whenever
they’d let me be on-air. I still worked in the office as well, doing whatever anyone needed done.

And that’s where I was, in the office one evening around six p.m., after business hours were over and most of the staff had gone home, when IT happened—that is, when Steve Smith stuck his head out of his office and gestured for me to come see him.

At first this was no big deal. But I immediately knew something was going on when I saw Judy Ellis sitting there, too.

So after I ask what it is, they both stare at me for a moment, and then Steve says, “Okay, well, this is happening—we are going full-steam hip-hop. And if you’re ever going to really learn how to be on the air, you need to be on every day. Judy thinks you could be good, and I think you could be good. But the only way we’re going to know for sure is if we put you on regularly. So we want to offer you the overnight slot.”

Shock. Confusion. Disbelief.
MY OWN SHIFT?!
I almost passed out dead on the floor right then. This was just unbelievable!

All I could say was “YES!” Then, catching my breath, I had to ask, “Can I still work with Flex??”

Judy and Steve looked at each other and then at me. “Yes,” they said in unison.

This was
amazing!

OH MY GOD

T
here is truly no such thing as overnight success. Over the years I would see that again and again with icons I interviewed who once seemed to come from nowhere yet suddenly made it to the top. Every single one has a story of struggle and crazy hard work that came before. And most have a story about a time when an opportunity was given to them and they had to prove themselves.

That’s not exactly how I saw it in those early months of doing overnights at the station. But still, it was wild to be twenty-three years old and getting my own show—even if it was at a time when most people were asleep! My schedule was to first run Flex’s boards from ten p.m. to two a.m. and then do my own show from two a.m. to six a.m. every day. In hindsight, I realize how insane that was because Flex would leave at two a.m. and it was just me there. Every now and then Salaam would stay late to keep me company, but for the most part, overnights were just me alone—in a dark, empty station, in that dark, empty building on
Thirty-Eighth Street in the Garment District, where even the neighborhood was dark and empty.

To keep myself from getting too creeped out, I would stay busy by talking to my listeners all night on the request lines, and on Thursdays I’d also keep a separate radio on in the studio so I could listen to
The
Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show
on WKCR 89.9—the public radio station housed at Columbia University. It was one of the few authentic hip-hop shows in the market and they always sounded like they were having a good time. So having it on in the background made me feel like there were people in the room hanging out with me—or at least a little less alone. Unfortunately, Stretch and Bobbito were only on once a week. Plus, the request lines would get light once three or four a.m. rolled around. So during the segments of programmed music, the challenge was to keep myself from falling asleep, especially between the witching hours of four and six a.m. Every now and then I flat-out failed and would wake up in a full panic to dead air! Maybe it was more than a few times. Fortunately, I never got caught.

As I learned in those first months of being on the air and adjusting to the schedule, overnights were a different way of life. You sleep when everyone else is up; and when you’re up, everyone else is sleeping. This is not a small thing. To this day, when I go through a toll late at night, I look at the person in the booth and feel a certain compassion for them. That life can be dark (literally) and sometimes lonely.

Then again, I tried to take it in stride and enjoy the fruits of my labor—like the fact that I had finally moved out of my mother’s apartment and was now living on my own for the first time. My mother never minded me staying with her, of course. But as I was so independent in other ways, this was the next obvious step in my growth, to go along with the fact that I was moving up in the world at my job.

By moving up in the world, I mean that all I could afford was a
dumpy little apartment in Astoria, Queens. It was right next to the train station, and I could hear the trains running past my window all day and night. On an up note, I had easy access to and from work. That’s all that really mattered, and the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s right across the street came in handy on those late nights and early mornings.

On one of those early mornings, in the middle of my show I got a call on the station’s hotline.
Yes!
At four thirty a.m., the hotline ringing meant it was at least someone I knew. Someone else was actually awake and calling!

So I answered. “Hello?”

“Hey, is this Angie?”

The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t really place it. “Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Tip.”

“Who???”

“It’s me, Q-Tip. Is this Angie?”

Flashing back to what Bugsy had done on the air when Tip was at the station last, I was mortified all over again. In an effort to play it cool, all I could think to say was, “Yeah. Who you calling for?” Maybe I had overshot.

Tip only laughed. “I’m calling for you. Who the hell else is up there at this time of night?”

I laughed and immediately lightened up. Tip told me that Tribe was doing all these promo shows and he was always up late so he would often catch me on the air on his way home. From there our conversation was effortless.

I can’t really explain how this happens, but there are certain people I’ve met in my life that, from the moment when we first meet, I immediately feel connected to them. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, I pay attention. The connection doesn’t have to be a romantic one. In
fact, it usually is not. I felt it when I met Shawn “Pecas” Costner—who later became my manager and one of my closest friends. Twenty years later we are godparents to each other’s children. I’ve felt that immediate connection when first meeting a few of my close girlfriends, and I felt it that night talking on the phone with Tip. It’s that type of familiarity that you can’t really attribute to anything but connection.

A Tribe Called Quest was touring at the time, in the wake of their
Midnight Marauders
album—which had included the single “Oh My God” that I loved. While the tour was ongoing, in those times after the show or the after-party, I’d often get an in-studio call in the middle of the night. Tip and I began to talk pretty regularly about music, family, TV shows, just regular shit. What was weird was that as much as I had been a fan for years, our conversations felt comfortable.

I liked him, but I tried not to make too much of the attention, like—
Oh, he only calls ’cause he knows I’m sitting in this studio till six a.m. He’s probably just bored and no one else is up.

But I was wrong. In fact, when Tip eventually came back to town, we went on our first “date.” He picked me up from work. I was in sneakers and sweats and didn’t even mind because he made me feel comfortable just being me. We ate Chinese and then shopped for vinyl at a downtown record store. He put me on to a lot of new music. When I got home, I had to ask myself—
Was this even a date?
It wasn’t exactly romantic, but we did have fun.

•   •   •

H
ot 97 was redefining its mission and transitioning from dance to a twenty-four-hour hip-hop station, and they needed someone who fully represented the culture. I was on overnights for just about a year when they started trying me in different time slots. I did some
weekend shifts and even did a midday slot for a month or so. And then, when the opportunity opened up—holy shit, I got it! I was the new nighttime jock!

That’s when I felt the difference. The six-to-ten-p.m. slot was prime time. This was a big deal. Everyone was so happy for me and offered to help in any way. The only downside was I would no longer be able to work with Flex because, as Steve explained, I’d need to give my full attention to this new opportunity—and that I did!

I immediately started brainstorming what the show would sound like. To give it something different, I wanted to come up with a feature where I could play new music. I had an idea for a segment where I would play two new songs and then listeners could call in to vote on which song was better. Salaam and I stayed on the phone all night trying to come up with a name for it, tossing around a bunch of stupid ones, until finally we hit on “Battle of the Beats.”

It felt right.

Salaam offered, “Yo, I’m gonna do a promo for you. I got an idea.”

The timing was ideal. He had just worked with the Fugees on the “Nappy Heads” remix, so he had a sense before the rest of the world of how dope Lauryn Hill was. He asked her to sing the intro for me. Lauryn was on the come up and was happy to get on anything she could at the time, so she sang,
“It’s the baaattle of the beats,”
and she killed it! I could not
wait
to play it on the air!

Battle of the Beats took off. We broke so many new records on the air, the word of mouth was over-the-top—all in the days before social media. There was nothing more interactive than radio at the time, where you could call up and hear something happen live and experience it all together. Radio was the 1995 version of Twitter. Listeners were engaged and passionate about it. And so was the station.

Hot 97 also became one of the few places to find hip-hop artists. There were
The Source
and
Vibe
magazines, and you could catch
Yo! MTV Raps
once a week. But for people who wanted it all day, every day—it was Hot 97. And as hip-hop culture and its audience grew, so did our ratings. We turned around to see that Hot 97 had become New York’s number one station in the ratings.

This was all happening at a time when hip-hop was not only flourishing but when the music industry at large was exploding. Everybody—major labels and homegrown independent labels alike—started to add to or expand their hip-hop rosters.

Battle of the Beats gave a nightly platform to new voices and new work from the more established artists. Needless to say, promoters hoping to break their latest records started to seek me out more and more, hoping to get their releases in a battle. One night that I’ll never forget was when I put on the first single release from a little-known Brooklyn rapper by the name of Jay Z. The song was “In My Lifetime.” It eclipsed whatever the other record was that it was up against. I was floored by how many calls this virtually unknown artist got.

This was rare because part of the reason more established artists often won the battles was because once you’ve already adopted an artist, their next release sounds familiar and you feel it even more. Not so in this battle. We were looking at numbers we’d never seen from an unknown.
Who the fuck is Jay Z?

The answer came a couple of weeks later when Jay Z and Damon Dash—Jay’s manager and business partner on their newly formed Roc-A-Fella label—showed up at the station to thank me in person for playing the record. They pulled up in front of the building in a white buggy-eyed Benz that had their Roc-A-Fella logo on the hood.

What in the hell is that?

Nowadays in New York, it’s pretty common to see trucks and vans
plastered with artists’ logos all over town. But at the time it wasn’t the norm and this was the first time I’d ever seen it done on a Mercedes-Benz.

When I went to meet them, Dame handed me a bottle of champagne and asked if I wanted to see Jay’s video.

“Fuck it, yeah! Let’s see it . . .”

Dame Dash and Jay Z played the video on a screen rigged out of the back of the trunk as I watched from the street with my backpack in one hand and the bottle of Cristal in the other. I was impressed, not just by the music or the video. Their whole presentation was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was clear these guys were different.

It also became clear as time went on that Jay was genuinely interested in getting my feedback on his work. As his career started to take off and I’d have him on the show regularly, we clicked as friends. We soon developed a routine that whenever he finished up an album he would come by and play it for me. He’d come pick me up at the station, and I’d run down to the car and listen to the whole thing. He trusted my opinion. He knew that I was a hip-hop head, that I listened to the lyrics and cared. I think he appreciated that.

Jay also seemed to appreciate that I was honest. I’d tell him, “I don’t love this.” Or, “That is genius.” Or, “I hate the third verse on this song.” There are some artists who don’t love hearing anything besides praise. But Jay seemed to value my opinion. And I was thrilled to give it, because from the start I saw Jay’s greatness. I really did.

I was fortunate to be in New York, to watch artists like Jay and so many others who were coming into their own at the time. Almost every night I had somebody notable in the building as a guest. One night it was Wu-Tang, next it was Mobb Deep, and another show it was the Lost Boyz or Nas.

One of the ways record labels and producers would try to break out new artists at the time was to have them record promos for my show.
DJ Premier was working with a new artist Jeru the Damaja, so they recorded a really cool promo for my “Hot 5 at 9” countdown feature, with an original beat by Premier. It was really good! One night when Biggie was driving around listening to my show, he heard the promo and fell in love with the beat. He immediately called Premier to find out what it was. Premier explained that Jeru recorded it specifically for my show and he would have to ask me if I was okay with him using it. I got a call from Premier, and he asked my permission. Technically, he didn’t need to, but I guess it was a sign of respect. As much as I appreciated the gesture, I said, “Are you crazy? Of course, give it to B.I.G.” So Biggie took the beat and made “Ten Crack Commandments.” To this day, it makes me happy to hear that song and feel extra connected to it.

The show just seemed to take on a life of its own. There was no competition in town. There were no expectations. So there were no rules about how long you could talk or what format to follow. We were just freestyling. A guest would come and I’d do whatever I wanted—we’d talk for twenty minutes or play cuts if we felt like it. We learned and set the rules as we went. Nothing was calculated. Nobody had ever trained me how to conduct interviews. I didn’t have a clue about interviewing dos and don’ts. I just loved the music and had genuine interest in the artists. And it happened to work. Ratings were through the roof.

My show became the place for anyone in hip-hop to stop by and chill and talk shit. Black Moon, Queen Latifah, Redman, Puffy with a young Mary J. Blige, Craig Mack, Keith Murray. If you were a rapper and you had a song out, you stopped by the show. For hip-hop fans, it was the first time you could hear your favorite artists on the radio and learn about them and hear what they sounded like, as themselves, in conversation. There were really no mainstream outlets for that. The artists liked hanging out here and we encouraged it. Artists like Biggie would come up all
the time, maybe bring up some food, chill out, smoke Newports, and then we’d go to a club after the interview. This was not uncommon.

“Where Hip Hop Lives,” was the motto that Steve Smith decided to claim for Hot 97. It
was
that. And we ran with it all the way.