Funkmaster Flex says the confrontation at Madison Square Garden was a setup. In a string of Instagram posts the morning after the Knicks’ season opener on Oct. 20, the Hot 97 DJ denied that he had been hit, shared footage of the encounter and accused music executive Shadow Stokes, the husband of former Hot 97 executive TT Torrez, of trying to bait him into a lawsuit. “YOU WISH I GOT PUNCHED IN THE FACE!” Flex wrote, adding that “these label guys” want “to sue when they dont get they way,” VIBE and Rolling Stone reported.
In a later post, Flex said Stokes threw a drink at him and told him to throw a punch so Stokes could take legal action, and he called Stokes an “ambulance chaser” with an “active case” against him. He has not said publicly what that case involves. Flex said he would address the incident on his Hot 97 show on Thursday, and Complex reported that his attorney, Chris Cabanillas, was scheduled to join him.
Torrez Says the Video Leaves Out What Happened
Torrez tells a different story. Through a representative, she said a verbal exchange between her husband and Flex “escalated into a physical confrontation in which Funkmaster Flex shoved her violently,” and that the clip spreading online “does not tell the full story” because Stokes was defending her. Her rep said she filed a police report online that night and that she will pursue the matter through her lawyers, Complex reported. She also says Flex subjected her to years of “harassment, intimidation, and bullying” at Hot 97, which she says led to a settlement with the station’s owner, MediaCo, and a nondisparagement agreement she says his posts have now violated.
Neither side’s video shows how the encounter began. As of Wednesday, no arrests or charges had been announced, and Madison Square Garden, the Knicks and Hot 97 had not commented publicly, according to reports.
The Two Men Go Back Decades
Flex and Stokes are not strangers. Stokes was a co-executive producer of Flex’s 2005 Carshow Tour CD and DVD, released through Koch Records, according to Rolling Stone, which also noted that former Mayor Eric Adams signed a 2023 proclamation giving Stokes his own day in New York City. A dispute between longtime collaborators, one of whom is married to a former colleague who says she has a settlement on record, is more tangled than a scuffle in an arena lounge, and Flex’s own reference to an “active case” suggests some of it may already be headed for a courtroom.
It also puts Hot 97 in an awkward spot. As SSC laid out in the record behind Flex’s brand, the station has stayed quiet through a 2003 harassment plea, a 2011 domestic case and a 2024 retaliation lawsuit. This time its biggest personality said he would use the station’s own airtime to answer the allegations. Whatever Flex and his lawyer say on air, the station that employs him, and that his accuser says settled with her, still has not said anything at all.