I’m from New York, so I grew up listening to your voice every day on the radio. Not that everything I do will be solely hip-hop, but hip-hop is rooted in storytelling, it’s a big part of who I am, and it will always be there. To help build it out and help other people tell stories, produce things, write things - it was a perfect first project and a great way to launch. I think of myself as someone who represents hip-hop culture and storytelling, so it was a natural evolution of what I’ve been doing for a long time. I think that reflects the space where I am in my life. I made my podcast based on conversations I was having in real life, stories I wanted to tell, conversations I wanted to have that were a bit more evolved. You have your own production company now - which was behind that ABC News special you produced and In Real Life With Angie Martinez - I’d love to hear about what you sought out to create with this next era of your career. “It’s cool, I appreciate it, and I’m grateful for the acknowledgment, but it’s really about having this Puerto Rican girl who represents hip-hop culture on the wall with some of these other legends and icons who have done incredible work.” Martinez knows she’s accomplished so much, but with so many possibilities for using her gift of storytelling on the horizon, she still feels like she’s just getting started. “The best part of it is really the representation,” she says of her recent accolades. Next month, she’ll be inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame and she’ll receive her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year. The opportunities keep coming for Martinez, along with the flowers. “It’s a culture worth honoring more than every 50 years.” “Looking at how far we’ve come and at the impact we’ve made on the world is an amazing thing to be able to do,” she says.
Hip-hop is Martinez’s first love, so she’s deeply grateful and reflective in a year where the culture is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Most recently, Martinez executive-produced the ABC News special Hip-Hop 50: Rhythms, Rhymes & Reflections. Since then, she’s moved to iHeartMedia’s Power 105.1, where she has her own afternoon show she’s a two-time author with My Voice: A Memoir and cookbook Healthy Latin Eating: Our Favorite Family Recipes and she’s launched her podcast In Real Life With Angie Martinez.
By then, she had already clinched two Grammy nominations because of her verse on the “Ladies Night” remix of Lil’ Kim’s “Not Tonight,” alongside Missy Elliott, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and Da Brat she had her own top-20 Billboard song with “If I Could Go” from her second album, Animal House and she had appeared in cult-classic movies including Brown Sugar and Paid in Full. Her departure from the station in June 2014 sent shock waves through hip-hop culture and the music industry at large, but Martinez’s career was never going to be limited to the inside of a radio station’s studio. She gained the hefty nickname after putting in more than two decades at the local hip-hop-centric radio station HOT 97, where her afternoon show was the one to listen to - everyone from Jay-Z to Biggie to Mariah Carey was interviewed by Martinez over the years. Living up to a title like “The Voice of New York” is hard work, but Angie Martinez welcomes the challenge. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut Photo: Getty Images
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