Charlamagne tha God Opens Up About His Depression & Childhood Trauma!

Charlamagne Tha God (0:00)

I didn't realize it until I got older. I was just a young kid, and I was molested. Ooh, shit.

Steven Bartlett (0:13)

Please welcome Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of The Breakfast Club, and America's most influential radio host.

Charlamagne Tha God (0:21)

Growing up, my father was telling me, if you don't change your lifestyle, you're gonna end up in jail, dead, or broke. The problem was he wasn't practicing what he was preaching. When I started selling drugs, I found out he was selling drugs. Then he had an affair on my mom. So I became a player because I felt I had to be like my pops. But then I ended up getting in a situation where a shooting happened and then going to jail. But I was able to finally wake up and I was smart enough to realize whatever I want to be doing five years from now, I got to start doing now.

Steven Bartlett (0:50)

And then the microphone ultimately changed your life. But I didn't know that you had 12 years of rejection.

Charlamagne Tha God (0:55)

I got five, four times. I just collected my last unemployment check. I was scared to death. But you can't live life with fear. You got to live life with faith. Next gig I got was the Breakfast Club. Fast forward three, four years, I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life. But I just was not happy. I was losing myself. And those suicidal thoughts just cross your mind for no reason, you know? And even now, what am I still doing here?

Steven Bartlett (1:38)

Get Honest Or Die Lying. Why did you choose those words? Why did you choose that title?

Charlamagne Tha God (1:46)

It's a play on 50 cents, get rich or die trying. I'm always gonna have some old hip hop somewhere, like my last book was Shook One, that was paying homage to Mobb Deep. But also, just talking about how I felt my whole life when I would get panic attacks, get anxiety attacks, and get honest or die lying, that's not just a play on 50 cents title, that's how I truly feel. It's like, yo, if you don't get honest with yourself, you're gonna die lying. Like, I had a, I went to a spiritual retreat back in February, me and my wife, and that's one of the things that came up for me that weekend at the retreat. One of the things that came up for me was stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to others.

And I think a lot of us do that, a lot. We lie to ourselves, and then we just volunteer those lies to other people. Nobody even asked us, you know? And I think social media contributes to a lot of that, because every day you feel like you have to feed this beast, and you might go look at your feed, and at some point you gotta ask yourself, who is this person? You know, or just the things that you say to people in your life as you're just growing and evolving, just as a human. You might just volunteer lies for security purposes, or to mask insecurities, or to mask fears. And so it's just like, yo, if you don't start getting honest with yourself, you're going to die, die a liar.

Steven Bartlett (3:29)

The truth and the lies start young for all of us.

Charlamagne Tha God (3:32)

Absolutely.

Steven Bartlett (3:32)

Especially if you look at the stats for black men, because they are much less likely to get to the point where they can get honest with themselves, in their whole selves, their mental health, everything. When I read through your story, I met an individual that I never knew before. I've watched The Breakfast Club for years and years and years. I've probably watched it for a decade, I think, something like that. So it's always been my connection with US culture has been watching that show. And I watched the guy that was a bit of an antagonist to the guests coming on. But I never knew all of the other stuff. And you're one of the only black men that I encountered, especially in the United States that has a big sort of public figure, who has been so unbelievably honest about what it is to be a complete man and the complete human experience and your complete experience that starts very young. If I am trying to understand the man that sits before me right now, where do I have to start to truly understand?

Charlamagne Tha God (4:26)

Oh, you got to, you definitely got to start from the beginning. You know, you got to start from that single wide trailer, you know, in most corners of South Carolina, you know, growing up as a young man, you know, to a great, great father and a great mother. I say great, you know, now in regards to my father, because I understand him as a man. You know, there was a period of my life, you know, especially when I first started going to therapy, I didn't know if I even liked him as a person, you know, because, you know, you got to question yourself. You question things that he did to you growing up, you know, just, I always said, my dad raised me out of fear and not love, but the fear was just from the standpoint of he didn't want me to, you know, make the same mistakes that he did. I mean, he didn't want to see me make the same mistakes that he saw a lot of people in our time making. Like, you know, the one thing that he used to always instill in me was like, if you don't change your lifestyle, you're going to end up in jail, dead or broke sitting under the tree. And I think that's what happens with kids a lot, right? Like kids, they end up mirroring, you know, the parent. And I think sometimes when you see yourself, you know, in your child, if you made a lot of mistakes and, you know, you bumped your head a lot of times, man, that'll probably terrify you to see your child going down that same path. So for me, my journey would definitely have to start in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, in that single wide trailer on that dirt road.