During her 25-year career at New York City’s hip-hop radio station Hot 97, Angie Martinez was used to mediating dangerous rap beefs among the likes of Tupac and Biggie and Jay Z and Nas.
But as she reveals in her new memoir, “My Voice,” the DJ was once involved in a war of her own with talk-show host Wendy Williams — which ended with Williams trying to defend herself with a mop.
During 1997, Williams — then also a Hot 97 DJ — had taken several snipes at Martinez on air and online.
The beef started when Martinez got wind of snide comments Williams made in regard to Martinez’s romantic relationship with rapper Q-Tip.
Williams wrote on her site: “One of my co-workers is dating Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest. Oh well. I guess some women like men who like men.”
“Everybody was gay to Wendy,” Martinez writes in the book, out Tuesday. “Every rapper you could think of in that era, I had heard Wendy Williams call them gay. Not one or two. Like every one of them.”
After Martinez made several failed attempts to hash it out, Martinez finally confronted Williams in Hot 97’s offices in Tribeca.
“I lost my f–king mind,” writes Martinez in her book. “Before I knew it I was swinging at her. It was a quick scuffle. It took only a few seconds for me to realize that she wasn’t really hitting me back — she was just trying to get me off of her.”
After a co-worker separated them, Williams grabbed a nearby mop. Martinez recalls how her foe “just stood there with it like she wanted to have some sort of sword fight or something. It was actually kind of funny, even in the moment.”
The two were suspended from the station, and loyal Williams listeners organized rallies outside the Hot 97 offices in support of their idol. Some even threatened the Brooklyn-born Martinez.
“I used to get threatening faxes . . . that said things like, ‘Bitch, get off the radio. I’ll break your jaw,’ ” she writes. “It was awful and it made me insecure.”
Williams was eventually shown the Hot 97 door. Martinez alleges that station bosses were fed up with her rude behavior.
Martinez, who had been the evening show host, was tasked with taking over Williams’ afternoon slot.
On reflection, Martinez feels that Williams had it all coming. “The truth is that if it wasn’t me it was gonna be somebody else. She was disrespectful to so many people all the time.”
The two haven’t spoken since, but Martinez pays tribute to Williams’ talents as a talk-show host in the book.
“I watch her TV talk show sometimes and she has really mastered her lane. I find myself watching and laughing out loud. I don’t have any ill feelings toward her.”