Legendary New York City DJ Angie Martinez brings her years of experience to WE TV’s new series “Untold Stories of Hip Hop.”
“It was a mutual idea that has always been in my head,” says Martinez, host of Power 105.1’s top-rated evening show. “There are so many stories [about hip-hop] and people are always so fascinated by them.”
Martinez, known as “The Voice of New York,” says the series, premiering Thursday at 10 p.m., is based on in-depth interviews with hip-hop artists including Snoop Dogg, Cardi B, Ice Cube, A$AP Rocky, DJ Khaled, Fat Joe and Queen Latifah.
“The first day of shooting was literally the day after the Grammys, so who better [to interview] than Cardi B?” she says. “She had just won that big Grammy for Best Rap Album and it was a huge moment for her. She’s a hustler. She really works hard. I’ve seen people go hard but she goes super hard. Her work ethic is really impressive.
“And Snoop Dogg is one of my favorite people to talk to,” she says. “In the business he has such a dope wide perspective — so I kind of knew that’s who I wanted in my first episode.”
The Brooklyn-born Martinez has been a New York radio fixture for over 25 years, first at Hot 97 and now at Power 105.1 (she joined the station in 2014). In 2016, she published her bestselling memoir, “My Voice,” which she’s hoping to turn into a movie and which was also part of the inspiration for “Untold Stories of Hip Hop.”
“When I wrote my book it was like my story was running parallel with the coming of age of hip-hop, and all those major moments that happened,” she says. “Hip-hop radio is so under-documented because, back then, there was no social media. Now everybody knows everything about hip hop artists and there are so many great stories.”
Martinez says she can’t pick just one favorite tale. “There are so many good stories and they’re all so different,” she says. “Fat Joe is a great friend of mine. People think he’s a big tough guy, but he will get vulnerable and tell me about a dark time in his life. So to me that’s sweet and special. Queen Latifah tells me great stories about struggling with alcohol and other vices.
“Snoop Dogg has so much history that he’s telling his iconic classic stories about Tupac [Shakur], and as a hip-hop fan I’m like, ‘Tell me more.’ You look at DJ Khaled and his work ethic and then he tells me a story about a trauma that happened to his family and his family losing everything. That really helps you understand why he goes so hard.”
“And Cardi is like the most honest person walking the planet,” she says. “She tells me a crazy story about her and Offset and how they first met and how they started dating and what she did to keep the sex going. A$AP Rocky is a notorious ladies’ man. He’s such a free love baby . . . so he told me some of those stories as well.”
“I can see when somebody’s lying or if they are all about their agenda and I hate that,” she says. “I can tell because they’re not responding, only speaking in sound bites. I hate when that happens because the conversation can become really irritating. So when I feel like somebody’s lying it’s a challenge to me to get to the truth.”
Martinez says she wants people to be inspired by “Untold Stories of Hip Hop.”
“I also think that it takes work when you see somebody on TV and they’re doing a video and it seems cool,” she says. “Nobody just becomes successful overnight. I think that’s the beauty of telling these stories about what it takes to get there.”