Angie Martinez is still holding onto her unreleased 1996 interview with 2Pac Shakur, but she’s hesitant to share it, worried it could upset listeners — or the people Pac went in on during the conversation.
While speaking with Charlamagne Tha God on Monday (December 22), the radio legend and podcast host revisited the long-lost interview, noting that Martinez had kept it under wraps because it could come off as “inflammatory.”
The interview, recorded in 1996, reportedly ran for about an hour and forty minutes. However, only twelve minutes ever made it to air, with the rest remaining unheard and in Martinez’s possession ever since.
Martinez explained her concerns to Charlamagne, pointing out that the interview took place at the peak of the East Coast vs. West Coast rap war. Still, she admitted that she’s starting to feel like “maybe it’s time” to finally release it.
“That’s probably why I never put the ’Pac tapes out — because I think about the people that are going to get hurt from that. Even the people that are talked about on the tape, how that that lands,” she told The Breakfast Club host around the 42-minute mark.
Martinez added that she has gone back and listened to the full interview multiple times over the years.
“There’s people [he talks about] who are no longer here, not just Big,” Martinez explained. “I mean, there’s people in the rap world who passed and he’s talking about them, and not in a way that’s helpful to the world. He was angry at the time. He was twenty-four, in the middle of a war, you know, an internal war. So he’s talking shit about everybody.”
She went on to say there’s a certain “ugliness” to some of 2Pac’s comments that she feels wouldn’t fairly reflect his legacy. The late rapper died just days after being shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996.
Martinez acknowledged that fans want to hear the interview and suggested Charlamagne could possibly help her figure out how to handle its release. Still, she said the conversation isn’t as “amazing” as many people might expect.
“I was twenty. … It’s not a seasoned, evolved Angie Martinez on the radio. It’s a brand new Angie Martinez on the radio. There’s not a lot of follow-up questions,” she admitted.
Martinez also reflected on the unreleased interview in her 2016 memoir, My Voice, telling Billboard at the time of the book’s release that the moment marked a major turning point in her career.
“It taught me a good lesson. I went with my gut,” she said. “I didn’t know how it was going to work out. I was scared to air this interview and I didn’t want to be responsible for making it worse. And the truth is that I made that decision and I’m proud of that after all these years later.”
