Angie Martinez releases full 1996 Tupac interview after 30 years in four-part Netflix podcast
The Four-Part Series Will Feature the Full 1996 Conversation Alongside Commentary From Hip-Hop Figures
Angie Martinez is finally opening the vault. The radio veteran will release her full 1996 interview with Tupac Shakur as a four-part Netflix video podcast. The Tupac Tapes with Angie Martinez premieres November 27. The conversation ran roughly an hour and forty minutes. Radio listeners heard only about twelve of them.
A new trailer gives the first taste of the unheard audio. Tupac sounds wounded and furious as he rages about betrayal, loyalty and the bullets he survived. Martinez says she kept the tape back because she feared someone could die over it. The series pairs that raw audio with voices including RZA, Lil’ Cease, Joe Budden and Charlamagne Tha God. It arrives weeks after Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced to 40 years to life for the murder. Fans are split between hunger for the tapes and suspicion of the packaging.
Three decades later, hip-hop’s most closely guarded interview is about to play in full.
“They Cross Me:” Inside the Trailer
The trailer runs about 70 seconds and wastes none of them. Tupac’s voice comes first, tight and furious. “They cross me. Now they cross me,” he says. “This is like war games right now.” Martinez cuts in with a simple question: “Who crossed you?”
On-screen text sets the stakes. Martinez landed one of the last interviews with Shakur before he was killed. Someone asks her point-blank about the long silence. “You been sitting on this for 30 years.” Her answer is blunt. “I didn’t want anybody to die because of a conversation that I went to LA to go get.”
Then the trailer turns up the heat. Tupac claims he has done more for credibility in hip-hop than any other artist. Martinez tries to remind him that people loved him. He cuts her off. “Where’s the love?” he snaps. “Just cause they didn’t kill me what love?”
Pain runs through every clip. He talks about suffering and consequences. He talks about casualties of war. “They shot me, sent me to jail,” he says. “My family has never been protected.” A modern voice in the studio sums it up plainly. Shakur, the speaker says, was projecting his pain onto everyone around him.
The visuals stay lean. A reel-to-reel tape machine sits between two armchairs. Archival footage catches Tupac on a video set. A lone lamp glows in a dark room. The final line belongs to Pac. “If anybody out there could listen to me, she gonna listen.”
A Razor Blade, a Laundry Room and 30 Years of Silence
The story starts in 1996 with the East Coast–West Coast feud at full boil. Tupac was signed to Death Row Records. Bad Boy Records and The Notorious B.I.G. sat at the center of his anger. A 1994 shooting in New York had nearly killed him. Prison time followed soon after.
Martinez was 25 and rising fast at New York’s Hot 97. Her first call from Tupac came with an offer to appear in his “I Ain’t Mad at Cha” video. She said no. Coastal tension made it too risky. Still, an invitation followed to sit down at his Los Angeles home.
New York pizza was waiting when she arrived. The gesture carried a clear message. Tupac’s fight was never with New York itself.
The tape rolled for about an hour and forty minutes. Back home, Martinez cut it by hand with a razor blade. Only about twelve minutes made it to air. The rest stayed buried. Specific people could get hurt, she believed. A dangerous feud could get even worse.
Three months later, Tupac was gone. A Las Vegas drive-by on September 7, 1996, left him fatally wounded. Death came six days later. Martinez was on the air when the news hit the station. She calls that broadcast one of the most emotional moments of her career. His death made the unaired audio heavier. She refused to let it become his accidental final statement.
So the tapes sat untouched. For years they lived in her laundry room. Jay-Z eventually pushed her to move them somewhere secure. Digitized copies were later locked in a vault. Martinez has also shut down a long-running rumor. Sean “Diddy” Combs, she says, never paid her to keep them quiet.
Why Martinez Changed Her Mind
For decades, Martinez stood by her decision. Her 2016 memoir, My Voice, described the cut as a lesson in professional judgment. In interview after interview, her answer stayed the same. The tapes were staying put.
Time changed that. Nearly thirty years have passed since that afternoon in Los Angeles. Some of the people named on the recording have since died. Martinez now sees the audio as a piece of hip-hop history that is bigger than any one person.
Context is her other reason. Putting the most explosive clips online on their own would invite chaos. A longer format lets her place Tupac’s words in context. Her own choices get examined too. The series tells two stories: the interview itself and the decades she spent keeping it back.
Fans Split Over the Announcement
Reaction online came quickly and split hard. Plenty of fans celebrated the end of a thirty-year wait. Others asked whether the tapes should be heard at all. Some argued that certain words should stay in 1996.
For the most part, sentiment was mixed and frequently skeptical of the packaging. One high-engagement reply said, “Thirty years is a long time to keep a Tupac interview to yourself.” Another called the project “everything a money grab” and questioned the value of commentary from Charlamagne Tha God and Joe Budden, arguing that the interview should simply be released on its own.
A third prominent reply stated that Martinez “was on record saying she would never release this” and interpreted the current move as evidence that “Money is drying up. Everyone is selling out.”
Other posts repeated the announcement with varying degrees of excitement or caution. Some framed the release as the long-awaited end of a thirty-year wait. Others asked whether the tapes should have remained unreleased. A smaller group speculated about the content. One user wrote, “If I was a betting man. I’d bet Puffy was the first few to listen to the tapes.”
The trailer has already put Tupac’s sharpest lines back into circulation. Even the skeptics are focused on what was left off the air. Their quarrel is with the format, not with the tape itself.
The Voices at the Table
Each of the four episodes mixes the archival audio with live conversation. Much of the guest list is people who lived through the era. Lil’ Cease, Ed Lover, Monie Love and RZA were all part of that decade. Outlawz member E.D.I. Mean speaks as one of Tupac’s own group. Dream Hampton adds a writer’s eye.
A younger group of commentators fills out the panel. Joe Budden, Charlamagne Tha God and Wallo bring huge podcast audiences. Big Boy, Bootleg Kev and DJ Hed bring years of radio and interview experience. Former NBA player Matt Barnes, activist Erica Ford and Aiyisha T. Obafemi join them.
Martinez says she wanted guests who would challenge the familiar version of the story. She also wanted people who knew Tupac in different ways. Above all, she hopes viewers notice how young he was. Shakur was 24 or 25 at the time. Under the anger was pain.
Closing Thoughts
The release comes weeks after a long-awaited verdict. On August 31, 2026, a jury convicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis of first-degree murder in the 1996 shooting. A judge sentenced him on October 13 to 40 years to life.
The sentence combines two terms. Davis received 20 years to life for the murder. A consecutive 20 years to life came for the deadly-weapon enhancement. No one else has ever been charged in the case.
That verdict closed one legal chapter. Bigger questions about the rivalries behind the killing remain open. Martinez’s tape records Tupac months before the shooting, talking about betrayal and his own vulnerability. The full conversation arrives November 27 on Netflix. For the first time, listeners will hear everything Martinez cut out with a razor blade in 1996.