Charlemagne tha God: A Women Molested Me As A Kid! I Cheated On My Soulmate! Psychedelics Are Fixing My Depression!

Charlemagne tha God
I didn't realize it until I got older. I was just a young kid, and I was molested.

Ooh, shit.

Please welcome Charlemagne, the guy co host of the breakfast Club and America's most influential radio host. Growing up, my father was telling me, if you don't change your lifestyle, you gonna end up in jail, dead or broken. 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. And then the microphone ultimately changed your life, but I didn't know that you'd had twelve years of rejection. I got fired four times.

I just collected my last unemployment check. I was scared to death. But you can't live life with fear. You gotta 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, man?

Steven Bartlett
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It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode.

Get honest or die lying. Why did you choose those words? Why did you choose that title? It's a play on $0.50. Get rich or die trying.

Charlemagne tha God
You know, I'm always gonna have, you know, some old to hip hop, you know, somewhere like, my last book was shook one, you know, that was paying homage to mob deep. But also, you know, just talking about how I felt my whole life when I would get panic attacks, get anxiety attacks, and get honest to die lying. That's, you know, not just a play on $0.50 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, you know, I had a. I went to a spiritual retreat, you know, back in February, me and my wife. And, like, that's one of the things that came up for me, you know, 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, you know, a lot. Like, we lie to ourselves, and then we just volunteer those lies to other people.

Like, nobody even asked us, you know? And I think social media, you know, contributes to a lot of that, because every day you feel like you have to feed this beast, and, like, you might go look at your feed, and at some point, you gotta ask yourself, who is this person? 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 the mask. The mask insecurities, or, you know, the mask fears.

And so it's just like, yo, if you don't start getting honest with yourself, you're gonna die. Die a liar. The truth and the lies start young for all of us. Absolutely. 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.

Steven Bartlett
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. Something like that.

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? Oh, you gotta. You definitely gotta start from the beginning, you know, you gotta start from that single wide trailer, you know, in monks Corner, 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 in 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 gotta question yourself.

Charlemagne tha God
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, and he didn't want to see me make the same mistakes that he saw a lot of people in our town 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 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, and that single wide trailer on that dirt road. You grew up in a single trailer in a dirt road with a father. That seemed to be pretty absent from what it says in your book. You talked about him raising you there, but it sounded like he very much also didn't raise you.

No, he was absent in the sense of he had his own issues that he was dealing with. And I didn't find that out until 2018. When I put out my second book, shook one anxiety playing tricks on me, where I really opened up about a lot of my anxiety and a lot of my depression and going to therapy. I'll never forget it. It was thanksgiving.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, 2018, and I had a younger cousin. He was, like, 24, 25 years old. He tried to complete suicide four different times. And on the fourth time, he completed it, and it was the week that he completed it. And then on top of the fact, my father had just read my second book, he said to me, he called me and he said, you know, he talked about my cousins, and he talked about my book, and he said, man, I was going to therapy two and three times a week, and I tried to kill myself, you know, 30 plus years ago.

And, you know, I was on ten to twelve different medications for my mental health. So when he said that to me, I already knew that he had the substance abuse. I knew he dealt with the substance abuse issues. Right. But I knew that know, the other aspect of it.

So when I realized that, I'm like, oh, I get it. Cause my dad was absolutely, you know, there when he was, you know, sober for the most part or when he wasn't dealing with his own issues. But when, like I said, the way he raised me was out of. Was out of fear, you know, more than love. But he definitely, you know, had his foot up my ass, like, in a real way, just because he didn't want me to make those same mistakes.

But I always felt like growing up, we didn't have the kind of relationship I wanted to have that I would think a father and son would have. But that's only because he was dealing with his own issues. And then he started having an affair on my mom. So he really wasn't in the house then. Like, he was, you know, off with his new family.

Steven Bartlett
At what age were you? It had to be like 90, 98. So maybe I was 1920. I probably might have been, like, 1920 when he left the house. I think.

Can we model our sort of various relationships? We model our idea of relationships based on the relationship we first see with our parents. I think about my own. My mom's Nigerian, my dad's English. A household that was very loud, the least.

And I always thought my dad was in prison. So growing up, I never had a relationship. Cause I thought women were, like, I thought it was prison. And it was only until I got to about 30 years old that I had a real relationship. But then I've had to go to therapy with my partner over and over again to get out of, like, being triggered by this idea.

Like, whenever we have conflict, I'm like, run. Because I always wanted my father to run from my mum. So, same. Like, I had that deep in me that relationships were prison. And when I read through your story and looked at your father and, you know, his infidelity with.

With your mother, I was wondering how that impacted your future perspective of what a relationship is. Oh, it had me bad for a while. Cause, you know, I've always been the type person I like being with one partner. You know what I'm saying? I like being with one woman.

Charlemagne tha God
Like, that's something that I always thought was really cool growing up. Probably because a lot of the images that we saw, especially on tv back then, it was always the nuclear household. It was always, like, the mother and the father. Whether it was the Cosby shore, whether it was Martin and Gina, whether it was the Winslows on family matters, whether it was the Evans on good times before James died, whether it was the Jeffersons, like, you always saw a black man with a black woman and they had a family. That's what I thought the american dream consisted of.

So that was always something in my mind that I wanted. And then I remember when I found out my pops were cheating on my mom. And I remember just confronting him about it and just asking him. I'll never forget it. He was in my room at my mom's house, and I used to have one of those exercise bikes in the room, and he was riding, but he came in to get on the exercise bike.

Cause I needed to talk to him. And I brought it up to him, and I remember him just saying to me, like, yo, so you only got one woman, huh? He looked at me right in the eyes, and that's what he said. He was like, you only got one woman, huh? And I was like, what do you mean, I only got one woman?

He was like, you know, he's like, when you get older, you understand, like, literally. So planting that in my head just made me feel like, am I doing something wrong? Am I supposed to have one woman? So I spent, like, a large majority of my life trying to show him that I was, like a player. I was like my pops.

I was like, you know, I had a roster, too, right? Only for him to come all the way back around to tell me I always had it right, literally, to only come back and tell me one of the worst mistakes he ever made, you know, was leaving my mom or causing my mom to leave him, however, which way it went. And I remember him saying that to me, and he just was like, man, you know, you've always had it right, but that just kind of. That shows you right. Just because somebody is older than you, you know, doesn't mean that they're right.

Doesn't mean that they're always correct. Like, we're always growing. We're always evolving if we allow ourselves to. And, you know, we're gonna figure out later on in life that, yeah, we did make a mistake, you know, doing whatever it is that we were doing, and we should be able to admit that no matter the age and correct it, no matter the age, eight years. Old, your cousin's ex wife had a sexual encounter with you.

Steven Bartlett
And you talk about these sexual encounters changing your personality thereafter. When did you decide to speak about this? And when did you begin to learn the implications that that one instantly sort of incident when you were that age had had on you throughout your life? Well, I used to always make jokes about it, right? Cause I.

Charlemagne tha God
You know, I used to always say. You know, I used to always say that I used to buy these. They used to be like these little firecrackers that were like these little poppers, so you could throw them on the ground and they would pop. And so it's like, one day I just started throwing them at her. Cause I didn't want her to touch me.

And when I did that, she started calling me ugly. Like, literally from that moment, like, oh, you ugly. You got a big nose. You know, she'd be telling everybody, look at his nose. I think his nose is swollen.

So, like, to the point where my grandma, God bless the dad, would, like, take cream and put it on my nose to try to reduce the swelling, but it wasn't swollen. She was just messing with me. So in my mind, it was like a psychological thing. Like, she was messing with me mentally. And how old was she?

I don't know. You know, she was 30, 40, 50. Oh, yeah, she was definitely older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were eight.

I was eight, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember her. I remember her me telling people the reason I made her stop is cause I didn't like the smell of her jheri curl. So that was always the joke. And I remember watching Tyler Perry on Oprah Winfrey show, and I remember watching him cry over an older woman who molested him.

And I remember thinking to myself, what's wrong with him? Cause the way we rationalized it in our mind is, like, when you young, you just used to talk about it like it was a sexual encounter. And it was. When I think about it now, like, I had, like, me and, like, you know, three of my other younger friends and all of us were talking about these sexual encounters we were having with older women. So now that I think back on it, I'm like, damn, we always getting, you know, molested.

You just don't look at it like that when you're a young man. When you look at it, when you're a young man, you look at it like, I'm just getting action early. So when I saw, you know, Tyler on Oprah, that's when I first started, like, thinking about it. And I remember this was. I forgot what year this was, but this was way, way, way back in the day.

But I remember there was Twitter, and I remember tweeting about it, but I was tweeting about it in jest, like, you know, like, wondering, like, what the hell's wrong with Tyler Perry? You know? But then I had to start asking, what's wrong with me? That I'm not reacting to being molested the way that, you know, he is. But then you don't even realize that it's molestation till you get old.

At least I didn't realize it until I got older and I was like, oh, I was getting molested. And then when you start going to therapy and you start peeling back, you know, the layers of that trauma, you start realizing, oh, this is why I am the way I am in regards to pleasing people. Because I felt like even though what she was doing to me was wrong and it made me uncomfortable and I didn't like it, I had to keep doing it so she'd stop calling me ugly. Cause her calling me ugly was really, really, really hurting my feelings. You know what I mean?

As a young eight year old kid. So that leads to you being an older adult who's a constant people pleaser. Because you don't want to let nobody down. Because, you know, if you let them down, then they'll talk bad about you, you know, but that you realize you gotta set those boundaries. Cause if those people are gonna.

If you. Making yourself uncomfortable is the only way. The please said individual, that individual don't need to be in your life. That's not somebody that you have in your circle at all.

Steven Bartlett
You've never gone back and found out who that person was and done anything about it? No, I see her. You still see her? Yeah, I've seen her. I've seen her.

Charlemagne tha God
I've seen her around in my hometown. Absolutely. You're not interested in. Nah, last time I saw her, actually, she came up to me. This was about, let me see, it's 2024.

This probably had to be before COVID You know, she came up to me at a house party and she was like, oh, you're so handsome. And I was like, you, Ben thought I was handsome. Beat it. Like, you, ben thought I was handsome. Like, knock it off.

Steven Bartlett
Your behavior becomes problematic. 15 years old, 1993. I sort of read through from. You were 15 up until your sort of early twenties up to sort of 23 years old. And there was quite a shocking pattern of behavior involving drugs and other things.

Charlemagne tha God
I was wondering, not that early 15. I was still in high school, so I was. I was. The disciplinary problems from started in middle school. It started when I was in, like, 7th grade.

And the disciplinary problems started just because, you know, my older cousins were like, what you would call, I guess, bullying me. Right? Like, they would. I was wearing glasses and I had the fanny pack and I was in, like, what they had, they used to call it. The classes were broken down in letters.

So it was like a and c were for, like, the smart students, right? So I was in, like, the a class, and it was only, like, two black people in the class. Two or three black people in the class, right? Rest is all white. And so, like, I would be with a lot of white people for the most part.

And, like, my cousins, who were all from my daddy's side of town, they would bully me, like, literally, like, they would just beat up on me. Cause I'd be with all the white kids. Cause my dad was a really cool dude, you know, like, he was like a. The guy who always had, like, the small little sugar shack where you come over there and get your alcohol and stuff like that. And, you know, he used to hustle his drugs, stuff like that.

People knew my pops. My pops was a cool dude, so they thought I was supposed to be like that. So being that I wasn't like that, they was like, they would bully me. And it just became one of those things where it was like, yo, if you can't beat em, join em. So it's like, yo, my glasses fell off my face, you know, one too many times.

And, like, that one time where they fell and they just broke for good. That's when I broke for good. And I was just like, you know, what? If I can't beat em, join em. So I just started hanging with them.

And, like, in order to hang with them, I had to be, I guess, like, worse than them to prove myself in a lot of ways. So that's when, like, the disruption really started in class. That's when the class clown, you know, really started to happen. And that just evolved into me getting left back a couple of times. You know, I think I went to summer school twice in 7th and 8th grade.

Then I got left back in 9th grade, and that's when I actually had to stay back. And then by the time I got to 10th grade, I was getting kicked out of the school. I was in Berkeley High School, and they transferred me to Stratford High School, where my mom taught. Cause they thought if I was at my mom's school, then I would act better. But most of my problems from that point on started to be in the street more so than, you know, in school.

And so I ended up getting in a situation where I was with, you know, some of my homeboys, and a shooting happened, and we all ended up going to jail. And they actually came and arrested me from Stratford High school. And that's the last time I was in a high school. And you sat in jail for three months? No, it was like 40, I think, 45 days, something like that, yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Your dad could have bailed you out. My dad could have bailed me out, but he wanted to teach me a lesson. Like, he wanted me to learn from my mistakes. So he let me sit in there for 45 days. And sadly, that wasn't.

Charlemagne tha God
It was a wake up call, but it wasn't the wake. Wake up call. It was more like, I woke up, but then I hit the snooze button, slept for a little while longer before I finally got up. As a grown man, you can look back now and think that 1516 year old kid, he needed something that he wasn't getting. He needed a bunch of things he just wasn't getting.

Steven Bartlett
Because you've got kids now yourself, so you can. If you saw that behavior in your kid, you wouldn't say, oh, well, I don't know. I'm putting words in your mouth here, but you probably wouldn't think, okay, they need to go to jail and sit in jail for a while. You'd probably look at it and go, there's something unmet there. Man, that's such an interesting question, because when I do think back on it, I say to myself, I didn't have to do none of that.

Charlemagne tha God
Like, that's my mindset now. Like, I didn't have to do any of that. Like, my mother was an english teacher. She was a joker witness. My grandmother was a Baptist.

They absolutely taught me better. Like, I absolutely, positively knew better. I had the example of my father. You know, if my father had been probably more honest with me about his life and, you know, the things he had went through and who he was, then I probably would have seen a lot of those obstacles coming. Cause I got to the point, even when I started selling drugs, when I found out he was also selling drugs, you can't tell me not to do it.

You know, like, you can't be on some don't do as I do, do as I say type stuff. I remember us having that conversation, and he was like, well, this is my house, so you not gonna be doing that in my house. Cause you making me hot. Right? Like, literally.

And so I feel like, you know, for me, I was just a young, impressionable kid who wanted what every single human being wants, and that's just simply security. And if you don't get security, you know, from people, you will find a way to get it. So me, you know, becoming that version of myself I was then was. That was just literally for security. That was for survival.

Like, I was just literally a kid that was tired of getting bullied. But, you know, once you get down on that path, you know, if nobody stops you, there will be things that stop you, like jail, you know, or sadly, in some cases, death. But then it's too late. So I just always thank God that, you know, even though I got caught up and I made those mistakes, I was able to, you know, finally, you know, wake up. I've sat with Buster rhymes and Ashley Walters, and they talk a lot about their fathers, and they also talk about the absence of male role models, often for young black men, and how the impact of that.

Steven Bartlett
I've actually come up to learn the impact of that by having these conversations over and over with black men that didn't have a male role model in their life that could stop them from going down that path. And I don't think it's talked about enough, because I've learned about it from Busta Rhimes and from Ashley Walters from top boy. And it's really made me think that there's something we need to think more of in society, especially for people that have sort of single parents or have an absent father or an emotionally absent father. I think we could save a lot of downstream consequences with mental health, crime, and all of those things if we thought more about the importance of male role models. Oh, yeah.

Charlemagne tha God
I mean, listen, I had a male role model in my father, but the problem with my father was he wasn't practicing what he was preaching. So, you know, you have to be about actions. You can't just be about words and lip service. People have to see you and see that you're, you know, a living, walking example of what it is that you're telling others. Like, you know, I didn't even believe that men could be faithful to their women until I started seeing it from people that I actually knew.

Like, you know, it's one thing for somebody to tell you they are, but, like, let's just say, you know, you're out and about at a television shoot and, you know, you're out of town, right? And you and this person or these people are hanging around after the shoot and their wife is nowhere in sight, and they got every opportunity to do the wrong thing, but they like, nah, I'm going back to my room. You know what I'm saying? I love my. Gotta get home to my wife.

Like, nah. And then that's when you strike up conversations, like, really? Like, nah, I'm faithful. You know what I'm saying? Like, literally, like, those are the conversations.

Like, nah, I'm faithful. I don't get down like that. Oh, all right. That's respectful, you know, so it's just like, actions speak way louder than words, man. And the thing I love about the era that we're in now, you know, this is the first generation.

We're the first generation of people that I feel like we have the luxury of healing the people before us, our parents, you know, I'm 45. My parents, they were just scratching and surviving. They were just trying to figure it out. They were just trying to make it. They were trying to keep some food on the table and a roof over their head.

We are the first generation that has the luxury of actually healing, and I think that's a beautiful thing. So true.

Steven Bartlett
There's a lot of role models emerging now on the Internet. You think about the Andrew Tate's of the world and all of those conversations. And at the same time, what it is to be a man has become quite unclear in many respects, like gender roles. And there's a lot of, of, you know, we're in the post me too movement where a lot of inappropriate behavior was called out. And it's funny, a guy came up to me in the gym, lifetime gym, just down the road from here in Brooklyn yesterday.

Came up to me, 25 year old kid wearing a Barcelona shirt tapped me on the shoulder, said, I love your podcast. I listen to it. One question, he goes, I'm 25 years old. He goes, where do I find male role models? And I remember I was with Will in the gym, and I just remember thinking, that's so interesting, because I'm getting that conversation over and over and over again.

I think what he's actually saying is like, what is a man in 20, 2014? And who do I model myself on? Because there is a lot of. If you go on Twitter, there's a crowd of people that are saying, lamborghini, 17 women, Rolex, loads of money. And I'm not necessarily sure that's a great example either.

And then you look at the stats around suicidality amongst men. In the UK, where I'm from, the single biggest thing that has the chance of killing you is suicide. If you're over the age of 18 and under the age of 45, as a man, it's yourself. And as you think about, put all this in context, this sort of, like, looking for role models, masculinity is really unclear. We've called out men.

Do we need to call them back in what matters have you got a young son? I got all girls. You got four girls? Damn. Yeah, me and my wife got four daughters.

Charlemagne tha God
I guess it just depends what you're trying to model. Like, we use that term role model, but what does the term role model mean? Because, you know, you can only model yourself after what somebody shows you. You can only model, you know, yourself off what somebody presents. So if you like that person's Lamborghini, if you like that Rolex, if you like the clothes that they got on, if you like their jewelry, then you gonna say to yourself, okay, that's what I want.

So that's what you're modeling. You're not necessarily modeling the man. You're modeling the man's things. You know, you might as well be a mannequin. You might as well be looking up the mannequins.

You know, it's hard to, like, really, you know, model yourself after somebody's, you know, personality, after somebody's morals, after somebody's values, after somebody's beliefs. Cause you don't necessarily know exactly what they are. And especially on social media, you just know what people present. So you gotta be very careful of that. Like, I would tell people, man, you know, yeah.

If you admire something about a person, cool, you know, let that be like a guide for you, so to speak. It gives you, it's like a flare going up in the air. So you kind of know which direction you may want to go, but you don't know that individual. The only individual that you will ever truly know is you. What kind of man do you want to be?

Steven Bartlett
Are you trying to be with the therapy, with the work you've done, with your books, et cetera? What are you, what kind of man are you trying to be? A good man. And what does that mean? Um, just somebody who is who they say they are.

Charlemagne tha God
Like, that's what I always tell people, and that's what I constantly tell myself. I want to be who I say I am. I want to be who you know. If you see me, um, saying something, if you see that I'm telling you that this is what I believe in, if I'm telling you this is my truth, I want you to know that that's exactly who I am. Like, you're not going hear something in the future and be like, oh, my God, this dude had a whole other life going on, and, you know, he had this going on over here and that going on over here, and nobody ever knew about it.

No, I'm a faithful husband, you know, I am a learning father. And the reason I say learning is because there's no class on being a parent. None whatsoever. Anybody tells you that, that they got that figured out, they are lying. I got a 15 year old, a eight year old, a five year old, and a two year old, and every single one of them challenged me and my wife in completely different ways.

And there's been plenty of times when me and my wife sit around, you know, late at night or at dinner somewhere or just sitting around talking in the bedroom, asking ourselves if we getting it right. So, like, there's no, you know, blueprint or no manual on how to be that, but I just want to be. I want to be the adult that I feel like I needed when I was a child. You know, I want to be present. I want to be.

I want to raise them out of love, which is very hard, especially being that I deal with, you know, really bad anxiety in a lot of ways. And I talk about parental paranoia a lot. And, you know, you just have to, man, you have to let go and let God. Like, I'm a faithful person because I have no choice but to be, you know, I'm an optimistic person because I have no choice but to be like, you know, the opposite of, you know, faithful is worry. The opposite of faithful is doubt.

And, like, you can't raise kids in that way because they got. They got to live their own life. My 15 year old, she wants to go hang out. I can't worry about what may happen, you know, at the mall and, you know, you open up a newspaper and you see all types of crazy stuff happening in the world and you see crazy things happening to other people's kids, and, you know, you just like, yo, I don't want my child to ever get caught up in anything like that. But, man, sadly, that's just not your call.

And you just can't live life like that, man. You can't live life with fear. You gotta live life with faith. With all this work you've done on your mental health to understand the anxiety and the bouts of depression and so on, have you been able to pinpoint the causal factors of it in your early years? Oh, yeah.

I mean, being molested at eight was definitely, definitely part of it.

Definitely the bullying early on, definitely wanting.

Wanting my father to raise me out of love and not fear. One of the main things that I realized when I had one of my first breakthroughs in therapy was when I realized my dad used to discipline me for things he never taught me. So I remember one example I always tell is, I had just got my driver's license, and so he told me to follow him somewhere, and he was like, follow me. Do what I do. Like, all right, driving.

He's driving. And we're coming off Gillyard Road in Monks Corner, South Carolina, about to get on the highway. Highway is Highway 52. So we're driving, and we get to the stop sign, but he doesn't stop. He just drives onto the highway.

So I drove onto the highway, you know, and he pulls over to the side of the road. I pull over to the side of the road. What I didn't notice was, you know, you're coming down the highway, you're driving. He drove, like, maybe. I don't wanna say a split second, but, like, several seconds before a car was coming, and so I came right behind him.

So the car had to swerve out of the way. I didn't even notice that. So he tells me to pull over. He pulls over. So I pull over.

He gets out the car. He comes to the window, slaps the shit out of me, right? I'm like. He's like, wake up. That's all he said.

I'm just sitting there, like. I mean, I think about that now, but there's no teaching in that. Where was the teaching in that? I ain't even realize what I did wrong. You told me to do everything that you did.

You literally said, do what I do. You ran the stop sign. So I ran the stop sign. And then once you slapped the shit out of me, you don't even tell me what I did wrong. So that's why I said, my father used to discipline me for things that he never even taught me.

So I think that's where a lot of the insecurity and anxiety and imposter syndrome, that's where a lot of that comes from. And the bouts of depression, that's probably just a chemical imbalance or something. Cause that's just. I constantly have to pump myself up, and I do that through prayer. I do that through daily affirmations.

I do that through just constantly telling myself I belong, you know? And that's something. I remember being young. My affirmation used to be, I love Jehovah God and the son Jesus Christ. And I would say that three times, and then I would say, fuck Satan, and I would say that three times.

And that is what used to get me, like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready for the day. I'm ready for whatever, you know, the day is going to deliver me. So, yeah, it's just all of those things from my childhood contributed to those. Issues at some point.

Steven Bartlett
It appears that you reached a sort of personal rock bottom in those sort of early twenties, and you made a decision to that enough was enough. And I find that so interesting because I sit here with so many people who reach that moment where they look at their lives and they go, listen, look at what I'm doing with myself. And some of them carry on going, and they're probably not around to sit in the chair. And then some of them hit that rock bottom moment, and they go, I can't carry on doing this with my life. And they make a decision to take at least one footstep in some positive direction, and that starts to compound for them.

Is that accurate? Is that an accurate description of what. Happened in your life? Cause I learned early that everything my father was saying was true. So when my father was telling me, if you don't change your lifestyle, you gonna end up in jail, dead or broke under the tree, I actually saw that starting to happen to not just myself, but people around me.

Charlemagne tha God
So, you know, I had my stint in jail, but then I had people around me that was going to jail for, like, five years. Like, they were going to jail for actual prisoners sentences. And, you know, I had people around me that were dying that were actually, you know, getting killed. And I saw, like, you know, people that I used to once look up to who were older than me sitting under the tree, literally doing nothing with their lives, like, becoming that next generation of, you know, people who just sit under the tree all day and drink or do drugs or whatever it is. So I saw that happening, and I was just one of those kids that was smart enough to realize, man, whatever I'm doing today will directly impact what happens in my life tomorrow.

And that's always. That's been my mindset since I was, you know, early 20 years old. Like, whatever I want to be doing five years from now, I gotta start doing now. Literally. That's always been my mindset.

And so, you know, when I finally got that break to find the internship in radio, like, just being in that environment, being around that in 1998, as an Internet, literally made me say, okay, this is what I want to do with my future. Before that, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was going, speaking of male role models, like, I had Uncle Henry. He worked at UPS. I'm like, all right, maybe ups is the move.

I had one of my mother's cousins named Bruce. He was in the military. Okay, maybe being in the military is the move for me. Like, I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do with my adult life. And, you know, I started working a bunch of odd jobs.

I did telemarketing. I worked at a clothing store called Demo in the mall. I worked at a warehouse called Industrial Acoustics. I worked at a flower garden. I worked at Taco Bell for a couple of weeks because my sister was the manager there.

I was just trying to figure things out. And at one point in my life, I worked at demo in the mall with my now wife. I worked at the telemarketing place, and I had stumbled upon an internship probably like a year prior, which was at the radio station in 1998. And then around 1999, I actually started being on the air. And once I started being on the air, it just started to let me see what the future could potentially look like.

Steven Bartlett
Up until that point, did you have high hopes for yourself in your future? Were you at campus? Because I thought I was going to be a rapper. Cause most young black men from the hood in the late nineties are from the rural area that I was from in Moncks corner of South Carolina. You know, when you look on television or you open up these magazines, the people that you see that are successful are usually in rap, hip hop, in some way, shape or form are athletics.

Charlemagne tha God
And so I thought rapping was going to be the way to get up off that dirt road in Moscone, South Carolina. That's why, you know, I got a tattoo on my arm. I got Wolverine from the X Men tattooed on my arm, holding a microphone in his hand. I got this tattoo, and I was like, I don't even know, like, 1819, something like that. And I got it made by a dude named T.

Willis. T. Willis was a tattoo artist in south Carolina. Tattoos weren't even illegal in this time, but I got it tatted on my arm in his apartment. And the reason I got Wolverine holding a microphone, cause I always loved Wolverine, because I loved his Healing powers.

I loved that he was able to heal quickly from things. This is me at 1819 years old, not knowing anything about, no therapy, not knowing anything about, you know, the future journey I would go on of healing. This is just me back then, being a young comic book lover, loving the fact that Wolverine had these Healing powers, and I had him holding a microphone. Cause I thought the microphone was gonna be, you know, what changed my life, which it ultimately did. I just thought it was gonna be too.

Steven Bartlett
Through rap music, the microphone ultimately changed your life. I also didn't know that you'd spent this really long stint on the radio from sort of 20 years old, doing that internship right up until the breakfast club when you were 32 years old. So that's twelve years. But it's not just twelve years of work and graft and mastering your skill. It's also twelve years of rejection, getting fired over and over and over and over again.

Charlemagne tha God
I got fired four times. I got fired from four different radio stations. I got fired from Hot 98 nine in Charleston. I used to do radio. I started my career at Z 93, which I'm back on now, which is the actual heritage station.

So the breakfast club is broadcast on Z 93, so I'm back on Z 93, but I left Z 93, which was the big heritage station in Charleston, to go work for an up and coming station called Hot 98 nine, simply because, you know, my man George Cook, who's still a great mentor of mine to this day, he offered me a full time radio gig. I was on Monday through Saturday, seven to midnight. I had to take that, making what, I don't know, $19,000 a year or something like that. But that felt so good back then, because I was able to show my mom a contract and say, look, I'm making a salary. I'm making $19,000 a year, right?

Like, that just felt good to say that I had a job that I had to be to, you know, every day. And not just a job, a job that she knew about. Cause she would hear me on radio. What did your father think? Oh, he loved it.

Like, that was. I mean, even when I was on Z 93, that was a big deal. Cause Z 93 was the. Was the heritage station. Like, that was destation in Charleston.

So that was a big deal for him. Was he surprised, having shared a jail cell with you at one point, seeing your delinquency through that period of your life? Was he surprised? Man, you know what's interesting? I've never had those conversations with him, even to this day.

Like, I've never had, like, that conversation with him. Like, nah, he might tell me he's proud of me, stuff like that. But we've never had, like, an in depth conversation. Like, my mom. Me and my mom have had, like, those in depth conversations.

Like, my mom has told me things like, you know, you've accomplished more than anybody in the family ever thought about accomplishing. Or she'll show me, like, the taxes, my great grandfather. Her father. Yeah, her father, was it her father? Yeah, her father, her father, my grandfather, she would show me, like, the taxes that he would have to pay on their land.

So, like, just to put things in perspective, you know, for me and, yeah, like, she's, like, I share things with her. Like, I share with her how much I'm making or how much I made doing something. I share things like that with her. And, yeah, she's very, always supportive and lets me know, like, she's proud of me. I remember she gave me the best advice a long time ago.

She told me, just be happy you making a living. Straight up survival generation. But the way she said it was basically. Basically saying, this is how you stay humble. She was like, just be happy that you're able to make a living.

And she's right. Cause you know how hard it is for some people to make a living. Like, seriously, it's hard for some people just to be able to afford some wings from the grocery store. Like, it's hard for people can't afford daycare. Like, things, like, just little, small, simple, everyday things that, you know, you and I may be able to just take care of.

There's a lot of people out here who can't. So you should very. You should very much be happy just to be making a living. So her telling me that, you know, puts a lot of things in perspective for me and has kept a lot of things in perspective for me, but, nah, me and my pops have never really had those conversations.

Steven Bartlett
32 years old, you joined the breakfast club, which is the first time that I saw you, heard about you, was entertained by you, but before you joined the breakfast club, something else became really sort of front of mind in your life, which is anxiety and panic attacks. And you talk about the first sort of panic attack you had. Well, you were driving down into, say, 26 in South Carolina. I. 26.

Charlemagne tha God
That was probably the first really, really, really major one. The first one I ever had was definitely in first grade. I would never forget that. Memento elementary school, I can't forget that to this day. Like, my mom dropped me off first day of school, and I just could not calm down.

I mean, bawling, tears, screaming. Like, I could not stop, you know? And now when I think back on it, I'm like, oh, I was straight up having a panic attack. I remember to look at my mom's face, like, what is wrong with, like, what's going on? But the one I had then, that was after being fired for the fourth time from radio.

I was back home living with my mom, like you said. I think I was 31, 32. I don't remember how old I was. 31, 32. My daughter was like one or two.

My now wife was back living at home with her parents in monks Corner, South Carolina. And I remember I was driving down, I 26, going to Orangeburg to go see little Duvall at a comedy show. He was at a comedy show in orangeburg. I forgot what school it was. And, yeah, I just remember feeling that feeling that I've always felt my whole life.

Heart beating crazy fast, mouth getting dry, palms sweaty, feeling lightheaded, dizzy, had to pull over, get some water, take a few deep breaths, and just told myself, like, look, man, I'm gonna go to the doctor yet again. Cause I always would check myself in the emergency room whenever I would have those kind of panic attacks. Cause I always felt like I was having a heart attack. And so I went to the doctor, and the doctor was like, nah, your heart is fine. You got an athlete's heart.

And he was like, he said to me, he said, you deal with anxiety. I was like, anxiety? What do you mean, do I deal with anxiety? And he was like, the symptoms you're describing sound like a panic attack. He said, have you had these before?

And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, are you stressed out about anything? And I'm like, hell, yeah. Like, you know? And so he was like, yeah, it sounds like, you know, that's anxiety, you know?

And then he was telling me some breathing exercises I could do to possibly deal with it. And then in my mind, after he said, are you stressed out about anything? The first thing I thought to myself was, all I gotta do is get another job, and everything will be a okay. I just gotta get out my mom, house, get my family back in position, and everything will be okay. Next gig I got was the breakfast club.

And so you think you fast forward three, four years. I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life. I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life. Everything is going great, but nothing's changed. I'm still having the panic attacks, probably even more so now.

I'm still dealing with bouts of depression, and I can't figure out why. I just was not happy. And so that's what finally made me decide to start, you know, going to therapy. We started breakfast club in 2010. Then I started going to therapy around 20, 15, 20, 15, 20 16.

Steven Bartlett
How bad did your, your depression get in those early years, those early thirties? Oh, no, they got bad. I mean, it definitely got bad. It got bad to the point where, like, I was the guy who, you know, I love to laugh, definitely love to laugh, loved the joke, love to have a good time. But then, like, yeah, those suicidal thoughts just cross your mind for no reason.

Charlemagne tha God
Like, literally for absolutely no reason. Like, you know, now's a good time to end it all. Like, just literally, randomly. And you. Like, what was that?

You know? And even now, sometimes it'll cross your mind, and it definitely crosses your mind a lot when you have. Like, I had a friend who committed suicide. You know, her name was jazz waters, you know, and called her jazz fly. And me and her used to lean on each other a lot.

Like, she committed suicide during COVID And her and I used to lean on each other a lot. Like, I used to call her, like, my wartime general. Like, you know, when it was, like, really time to, you know, get busy and, you know, really strategize some stuff. That's who I would pick up the phone and call. And we would always have these conversations about, you know, therapy and, you know, depression and anxiety and all of that from, I mean, deep conversations.

I'm talking about. We'd spend Sundays, literally. I'd be in the backyard sometimes three, four hour phone conversations, right? Like, away from everybody. My wife, kids, everyone just really having conversations.

So, you know, when she did it, I remember sitting in my backyard and I heard her voice in my head, and it was like, she literally said to me, are you still here?

Like, you still. Like, you still there on earth? And I was that, like, kind of just shook me to my core a little bit. Right? And so it's just, like, I constantly do.

Not constantly. Constantly is a strong word, but, yeah, those thoughts just cross your mind. I don't know if it's because it's not cause I actually wanna do it or because I'm thinking about doing it, but because I've had people close to me do it and because I had those thoughts when I was younger. Sometimes I don't know if it's the survivor's guilt, maybe, or survivor's remorse of it all that just makes you think about it. Like, what am I still doing here?

You know? But then I got a million reasons to still be here, so that immediately makes it. Makes it go away. When you have a friend like that, that passes in such circumstances a complex range of feelings, any. Like, I sat here with someone who described that exact same thing to me.

Steven Bartlett
Their best friend, who had said nothing to them, was always that. It was actually works on radio in the UK. Both of them worked on radio. Then his radio partner one day died by suicide. Never said anything to anybody, appeared to be fine.

And the complex set of emotions that he's left with, the regret, the feelings of, what if, what if I'd said something? Did I reach out all of those kinds of things? Is there anything that I could have done? All of those feelings? What is that complex set of emotions that you, man?

Charlemagne tha God
Yeah, you can't do that to yourself. You will, but you can't do that to yourself because like I was saying earlier when I talked about, you know, modeling, when you say the word role model and you're modeling yourself after people, you don't know what's behind all of those layers of a human. Like, we're complex creatures. Like, to me, she was one of the most intelligent, brilliant, creative, strategic human beings I ever met in my life. And she was somebody that so many of us went to.

And I never felt, I didn't guilt myself with that because I knew that she would come to me with stuff, too. And I would always be an ear for her. I was always there for her. But, yeah, it is. To act, like, to narrow it down to one emotion is crazy.

You'll go through sadness, you'll go through anger, you'll go through happiness, you'll go through frustration. You'll go through thinking about those last moments that that person was here, and you'll be saying to yourself, I tried. Like, I tried. That's what I know. That's what I do know.

I know for a fact I tried. Like, it's not like we didn't, you didn't see things, you know? So it's not like we didn't try to get that person all the help and more that they needed, but, yeah, it is. It is a very, very complex set of emotions. Something that you can't even really put in words and not even.

Not something I'm trying to suppress either. Like, you know, it is one of those things you want to. You want to constantly confront, but it's very complex. Cause you wish that you could have you. What you really want is you wish you could have talked to that person that day.

You wish you could have had a conversation with that person that day. That's what you really wish, you know, and see where they were at in that moment. And hopefully, if you. Cause I think everybody would probably do that. Everybody probably says the same thing.

I probably say the same thing. Her mom probably says the same thing. Her father probably says the same thing. Her sister probably says the same thing. If I would have spoke to her that day, you know, I probably could have got her in a better place.

But that's not the way. That's not the way the universe had it. Had it designed. Your external life changes rapidly when your external, your world, everything around you changes when you become a star in the breakfast club. But internally, you say, nothing really changes.

Steven Bartlett
If not. If anything, it was potentially worse. The panic attacks, anxiety, the bouts of depression, a lot of people be surprised by that because there's a bit, as you say, people think that you get the job, you get the money, you get the fame. You did. I was losing myself.

Charlemagne tha God
Because you got to think, I'm still in survival mode. I'm still coming off being fired four times. You got to think what my journey was from 1998 up until that moment. Up until that moment. I'm just coming out of my mom's house, living with my mom in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

Like, I'm literally. I just collected my last unemployment check, right. You can't chill? Nah, I'm scared to death. Everything that you saw was me.

Was rooted in fear. It was rooted in, I'm not going back to that. So whatever I have to do to not go back to that, I'm going to do. That's why you see the ruthless. Anybody can get it, you know?

It's still a lot of pain there that I'm probably projecting on the other people. It's still a lot of hurt there that I'm projecting on the other people. Plus, y'all done tried to fire me out of this business four different times. Y'all thought it was sweet when I was down in monks Corner, South Carolina, living back home with my mom. Now all of y'all gotta feel my rap.

Like, literally, that's what I was on. And, you know, when you getting. When you're getting rewarded for that, that fuels whatever that is, until you realize, like, for me, it was around 2015. You like, this ain't. This is not what I want.

Steven Bartlett
How'd you know that? How did you know this wasn't happy? And at this time, now I got two kids. Like, my oldest is, like, seven at the time, in 2015, and my newborn had just been born. And, like, I got married in 2014.

Charlemagne tha God
So it's like, yo, am I really about to become my pops? You know? Am I really about to become. You know, even though I love this man, I despise the way he ended up treating his family, us treating my mom, and I'm like, yo, am I really gonna be that? Am I really gonna get caught up in this radio, radio star, and I'm putting star in air quotes, lifestyle am I really gonna get caught up in the women?

Am I really gonna get caught up in the drugs? Am I really gonna get caught up in the alcohol? Am I really gonna become a caricature of myself? This caricature that I created, you know, to protect, you know, this vulnerable young man named Lenard? Am I really gonna get caught up in that and completely lose myself?

Am I gonna do that? Or am I gonna, you know, get back on the path that I know I'm supposed to be on? Am I gonna get back on that righteous path? Am I gonna do that? So I chose to go the righteous path.

Steven Bartlett
Sounds simple. Sounds like it was an epiphany one day, but I. And that's a man speaking in hindsight there. And I just want to. Cause there'd be a lot of people that are in that moment where they're looking at their life going, is this really who I'm gonna be?

Charlemagne tha God
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's not simple, because you'll constantly lie to yourself. And I think that's why so many people from the street always end up in the same situation. Like, there's nowhere you gonna go in any ghetto America, USA, any rural town USA, where an older person isn't gonna tell a younger person, you keep living like that, you gonna end up in jail, are dead.

My dad added, the other one are broke, sitting under the tree. But everybody thinks they can beat it. Everybody thinks they can live a certain lifestyle, and if they just do this, you know, then that won't happen. Or that person was stupid. That's why they ended up like that.

Nah, you live a certain lifestyle, you move in a certain way, all of y'all gonna meet the same fate, and it's no different, you know, even in that space. Like, I was absolutely about to crash. I knew it. How? I just saw it coming.

Like, a crash to me is losing your family, you know, your wife leaving you. Like, I don't want that. Like, who wants that? I don't envy those type. I don't envy people like that.

I don't envy people who, and I'm not knocking them in no way, shape, or form, but I don't envy people who lost their families because of infidelity, and now they gotta visit their kids on the weekend. You are unfaithful to your wife. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And she's the love of your life. I mean, there's very few people like that.

Soulmate. 100%. You've been with her 30 plus years or something. 28, 26. 26 this year.

Absolutely. Absolutely. 26 years. Like, we were kids, you know? And we literally grew up together in every sense of the word.

Like, literally, the first time I ever filled out an application at a radio station, she drove me because my license was suspended. Like, we were together since kids. Like, literally, like, I was at her high school graduation, I was at her college graduation. You know what I mean? Like, she.

Like I said, she. The first time I ever filled that application at a radio station, she drove me. Like, she went to college in Columbia, South Carolina. I got a radio job in Columbia, South Carolina. I ended up getting a radio job in New York.

She ends up getting a job in New York City. Like, our lives were just like that all the time. We couldn't escape each other if we tried. And to be honest with you, I would never want to, because that has been the one constant in my life that has been my muse forever. That has been the person who's constantly made me want to be the best version of myself, even when I wasn't the best version of myself, you know?

Cause when you ask God for certain things, he's gonna give them to he or she is gonna give them to you. So when you tell God, like, this is what I want. I wanna be with this person for the rest of my life, or I'm looking for a soulmate, or I'm looking for, you know, my hope Brady, or I'm looking for my, you know, Claire Huxtable. Like, he's going to give you that, but are you gonna be prepared for it when you get it? Same thing with any type of success.

Yeah. God, he or she may give you that, but are you prepared for it? I think a lot of us are. You know, a lot of us get things that we're really not prepared for. And when we get those things we're not prepared for, we don't hold onto them.

Steven Bartlett
You nearly lost it. I feel like I did. Absolutely. I feel like I did. It wouldn't have been worth it even if I would have continued to have success professionally in radio.

Charlemagne tha God
But meanwhile, my personal life, you know, I lose my wife, I lose my family. That's not worth it. There's nowhere. There's nowhere on this earth where that's a fair trade for me. You start going to therapy, you go twice a week?

No, I always started off going once a week. Oh, really? When did you start going to therapy? 2016. Either late 2015 or early 2016.

Steven Bartlett
Why therapy? Who told you that that was a good idea? A lot of people I know a. Lot of black people, black men. A lot of black Americans, period, don't seek mental health care.

There's a huge disparity. It's almost 100% difference between white people and black people seeking mental health. A lot of people. I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of the tv show girlfriends. Grew up watching girlfriends.

Charlemagne tha God
That's one of my wife's favorite shows. So when I would go to her house when she was in college, she would have that on and we'd be watching girlfriends. And, like, if you watch girlfriends, a lot of them were going to therapy. That's the first time I even heard of it, right? But then as I got older, talking to different people, and they were all ranging from men, women, like, I remember having conversations with Neil Brennan, who's a comedian, and he was in an interview talking about the benefits of therapy.

My young homie, Pete Davidson, he was talking about it. My homegirl, Debbie Brown, she was really into it. Not just therapy, but just all different facets of healing. Like, if you know Debbie Brown now, like, you, you'd understand why she was on that back then. Like, she's one of the leaders in the mindfulness, you know, mental health space.

Right now. I have some very exciting news to share with all of you. As of yesterday, you can find a diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett channel exclusively on Samsung TV in the UK and in the Netherlands. The channel will also be launching shortly in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Samsung TV is Samsung's own streaming service, which is pre installed on all Samsung smart tvs and Galaxy mobile and tablets.

Steven Bartlett
And it's completely free. So if you have a Samsung tv, go and watch the diary of a CEO on your tv. And please do me a favor, take a photo and tag me in it. Thank you. What's helped you to heal?

If you look at the toolkit you've used, my girlfriend's alternative healing breath work practitioner. Super spiritual. She's helped me a lot with all of my early childhood. All of that stuff? All of it, brother.

Charlemagne tha God
I didn't. Therapy, meditation, breathing exercises. I done did Reiki. I got crystals at home. I do plant based medicine.

All of it. Ayahuasca, psilocybin. I've done an ayahuasca journey. That's what I was talking about earlier when I said I went on a spiritual retreat. Ah, really?

Steven Bartlett
Yeah. Early this year. And that was South America, was it? Or somewhere else? No, no, I did it.

Charlemagne tha God
I did it here in the states. It was a beautiful, beautiful ceremony and it was, man, it was very, very, very life changing. Like, that's where I got the revelation, the revelation was, you know, stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people. It's like, yo, whatever, wherever you're at in your life, like, for me, it's just like, I want to show up and be my authentic self at all times. Like me.

That's what I want to do all the time. No matter where I'm at in my life, I want to present that. And being on that journey, it literally ripped away every single ounce of falsehood that existed. Like, it just shattered it. Like, bob, that gotta go.

Like, I watched it in my mind, like, go up in flames. Like, literally, what's the cost if we. Live with those falsehoods and those lies?

Depression, probably constant anxiety, a whole lot of insecurities, a whole lot of imposter syndrome. Because I'm from the country, so I believe in simple sayings like, God can't bless who you pretend to be, you know? And I think that constantly, we gotta constantly check ourselves and make sure we're always showing up is who we are, and we're not pretending to be, you know, some version of ourselves. That's why you read get honest or die line. I talk so much about social media in the book.

Cause I'm watching so many people lose themselves to social media. Like, I'm talking about intelligent, well educated, well read academics are literally losing their selves to social media. You can have conversations with them and you realize, like, all of their talking points are coming from social media. Like, their thought process is being dictated by social media. These people care more about their relationships online than they do their actual relationships offline.

Like, I know people who are personalities who have, like, podcasts or who may have YouTube shows, and these people will literally be on Twitter all day, be on Reddit all day, listening to what people are saying about them, reading what people are saying about them, and crafting their thoughts just to talk to them in that crowd to just please them. I'm like, my God, how narrow minded is that? That's why for me, man, if you claim to be an academic or you claim to be a well educated person, you claim to be an intelligent, book smart person, I don't think you're that smart. If your emotional iq is that low, if your emotional iq is so low that people on social media can dictate how you move, how you think, how you talk, you're not a smart person. To me, smart people know how to disconnect from that.

And smart people know how to go, you know, do some meditation to make sure that their thoughts are absolutely, positively their own. Like, I got people right now today hitting my phone, trying to tell me how they feel about the new Kendrick Lamar record. You know, I love Kendrick Lamar. I think he's fantastic. I think Mister morale in the big steppers in the future is gonna be known as one of the most hip hop, one of the most important hip hop albums of all time.

That one and Jay Z's 444. But people are hitting me, telling me their thoughts and telling me their opinions, and I'm blocking all of that because I listened to the record and I listened to it five or six times. I know what I got from it. I know what I feel about it, and I'm not letting y'all change my mind, okay? But they're doing that because they know that tomorrow when I'm on the air, I'm going to be talking about it.

So they're trying to curate my thoughts, and they're trying to push my thoughts in a certain direction. I don't want that. And I'm not even. I'm just using that regular example because it's the freshest thing on my mind. But I'm like that with anything.

I need my own clarity. I need to lean into my own discernment. What is my spirit telling me about this situation or this moment or this thing? That's all I care about. I don't care about any of that noise that exists on social media.

Steven Bartlett
That's given you a real big competitive advantage in many respects because originality is so valuable. That's right. You're 100% correct. That's why I laugh at a lot of these individuals, because what also happens is they start whispering about me, right? And they start wondering, well, why is this happening for him?

Charlemagne tha God
And why does he get to do this? And why is that? Why is that going on? They look and I keep growing, and they wonder why. They wonder why I keep growing and they don't.

I tried to tell you. Disconnect. How are you going to grow when you're not even watering your own garden? Because if you're getting on social media and you're reading what they're saying about you and you're catering all your thoughts and all your talking points to appease those people, you're not watering your garden. You're literally trying to water somebody else's.

So as you're watering somebody else's, that continues to grow and that continues to get louder and louder and louder, but meanwhile, you just stagnant. It's scary, though. It's scary to ignore and then to show up as yourself in a world where we're rewarding conformity with the likes, the claps, the. Okay, you won't be canceled because you fit in. It's when you say, I'm gonna disconnect.

Steven Bartlett
I'm gonna be myself. I'm gonna be authentic. I go, Jesus Christ, that is, man. I get attacked all the time for thoughts, for opinions, because I don't go along with the mob. And I'm not even.

Charlemagne tha God
I'm not a contrarian in any way, shape, or form. I just know that nothing is black, nothing is white. There's always those areas of gray in the middle. There's nuance to everything. Like, you can be objective about everything, right?

Like, there has to be a certain level of, well, let me see where this person is coming from. You gotta hear both sides. To me, that's just common sense. And I feel like the only way to get the real truth about anything is if you see where both sides are coming from. I can't just dismiss you as wrong because you have a different opinion than mine or you feel differently than mine.

I gotta hear where you're coming from first. There's no political party called nuance, and we're in an election year. I know this as well. I think if I wanted to go viral, I just gotta do a hot take for either side, because there's algorithms for that. There's a group of people that are gonna pick that up and retweet it and send it, but the people in the middle, it's.

Steven Bartlett
There's no. And we're going into this election year now where there's, I've heard you say there's really no great choices. Yeah, but on that point, you just said about being able to see the other side. What do you think about Trump? I think that.

Charlemagne tha God
I mean, I say this everywhere I go. I think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. You know, I don't think that you should have anybody, especially in the United States. You can't have a leader of a country who says we should suspend the constitution to overthrow the results of an election. I mean, he led an attempted couple of this country.

Like, we watched it, we saw it, you know. Yeah, I just don't think a person like that should be president of the United States of America. I think that if you're facing, you know, the type of criminal charges that he's facing, what is it, 86 counts or something like that now? 86 counts, 88 counts. I can't remember the exact number.

But if I was facing 88 counts of any criminal charge, I wouldn't be able to work at Walmart. Nonetheless, you know, run to be president of the United States of America. So I just don't think that he's, you know, he's not somebody that should be in that position, but I understand why he is in that position because he's good at messaging. What do you think about the people that follow Trump? Do you think they're good people?

Some of them even. That is a very broad question. Right? Like, when you say, what do you think about the people that follow Trump? Those people aren't monolithic.

Steven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah. All of those. All of those people. Those 70 plus million people who voted for Trump, a lot of them voted for Donald Trump for a lot of different reasons. I have actual friends who will remain nameless who I know voted for Donald Trump, and I know they're great people.

Charlemagne tha God
And they didn't vote. They ain't black. They're also black, too. And they're not like, they're not black conservatives. They're not in any way, shape, or form.

They are black, pro black individuals. And, like, that's what I mean when I say having conversations with people, because you get to see why people do, you know, different things. I know why that person told me they voted for Donald Trump back in, you know, 2016. Just like I know individuals now who tell me why they voted for him in 2016 or 2020. And you can't just chalk everybody up to being a racist.

You know, you can't just chalk everybody up to, you know, not caring about LGBTQ issues or whatever it is. People have different reasons and interests why they vote for people. It might be one thing. It might be one interest that they vote for. That's what they always tell you, right?

They tell you to vote your interests. So it's the same thing with a President Biden. I can look at a million things that President Biden has done that I do not like. The 86 mandatory minimum sentencing, the 88 crack laws, 94 crime bill, all of that I got, there's a million things I can point to and say I don't like that he did this. But if the one interest is to at least protect democracy in 2024, or if you're somebody who got their student loan debt wiped away, that might be it.

If you're somebody who can afford insulin now because the president Biden, that might be the reason you vote for him. So it's just like everybody has different reasons as to why they vote for different candidates. That's why you. I don't even think the question is fair when you say, what do you think about the people who voted for such and such? Like, I'm not the.

I'm not the person I vote for. When we get to speak to those people, we understand their motives. Until then, we kind of misunderstand them. And I think I see that crossover with you and your father, because eventually you had a conversation with him. You talked about that conversation at the very beginning of this one, where you finally had empathy for him and his experience in his life.

Steven Bartlett
That conversation with your father, where you rebuilt your relationship and finally understood him, did that help your healing journey? Absolutely, 100%. Because, like I said, I never quite had the relationship with my father that I wanted to. And, I mean, it's not too late. He's still here, right?

Charlemagne tha God
But, yeah, it did, because I realized in that moment that he was just a man who was just doing his best, and he didn't have the tools that I have. He didn't have the resources that I have. Even though he was going to therapy two and three times a week, even though he was on the ten to, he was on ten to twelve different medications, the state of South Carolina just started giving him a check. We used to call that a crazy check back in the day. You just get a check for being crazy.

Like, I knew people who used to play crazy to get a check. I remember when I went to my mom and said, yo, did you know dad was going through all of this? And she was like, yeah, I just thought he was playing crazy to get a check. So it's like all of those, you know, if I would have known when I was young, if he would have told me all of those things when I was young, then I probably would have ended up on a totally different path much earlier. I guess that's another example of, like, you know, role models, right?

Cause I think another time, a lot of times when we say role models, we think it has to be just about all the good a person is doing. But if a person has dealt with a lot of the things that you're going through, because a lot of this stuff is genetic, right? Like, if a person is dealing with their own anxiety, if a person is dealing with their own, you know, bouts of depression. My father, he was already in therapy. He was already on ten to twelve different medications.

He tried to commit suicide. If he would have told me all of that when I was young, I would have known what I was dealing with. I would have been able to be like, oh, okay, I'm dealing with that. It's the same way you can see it in your kids. When your kids are dealing with those things, you can look at them and be like, okay, I know what that is because, you know, I went through that.

To me, that's being. That's good. Even though my dad was dealing with all those issues. But him, if he was just telling me when I was young, if he would've just told me when I was young, this is what he was dealing with, then that would've been a good model for me to follow. Cause I would've known what it is I need to do much, much earlier than I did.

Steven Bartlett
My last question before we go to the book for you. This is a question that I think is central to why, especially men don't really talk about their feelings. Or at least it's a question that I think we often just diminish, which I wanted to ask you a very simple question. We ask each other this question every single day, which is, and please do give me the long answer. How are you doing.

Charlemagne tha God
Right now? I'm doing great. I am blessed, black, and highly favored. I'm doing fantastic. I just came.

I just had a fantastic weekend, man. We were in Atlanta, Georgia. Cause I did my second annual Black effect podcast festival. Cause I have a podcast network called the Black Effect. And, you know, we're the home of, you know, like, 30 various podcasts.

You know, everybody from the 85 south show the horrible decisions to, you know, carefully reckless with just hilarious, you know, all the smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. Like, we have a bunch of different, you know, podcasts. And we just had our second annual Black effect podcast festival in Atlanta is such a beautiful event because podcasting is such a. Such a new industry. And to be able to curate a space where it's like seven or eight of your favorite podcasts on stage.

People are from eleven to 07:00 at night, 11:00 a.m. to 07:00 at night. We got all the food trucks, we got the vendors, we got the merchandise. Like, it's a festival. So to be able to have a real live podcast festival, to be doing it for the same second year in a row, to see this community of creatives just come together for the day, that's very fulfilling to me.

And another thing we do during the festival is we bring three people out from hbcus. Cause Nissan is one of our sponsors of the festival. So we bring these three kids out from these hbcus. Cause another event that we do throughout the year with the black effect is called the Thrill of Possibility summit. And we fly 50 HBCU students to Nashville, and we just have a weekend of, like, panels for them.

And we have different, you know, people who went to hbcus who've gone on to have tremendous success in the world, come and just pour into them all weekend long. So we had those three individuals come speak hbCus. Yeah. Historically black colleges and universities. So we had three people from the summit come to the Black Effect podcast festival just to talk about the summit and, you know, how fulfilling it was for them.

And then we're doing it again this year. The reason that gives me such a high is because, man, I'm all about service, man. Like, that's what I'm about at this point in my life. I say all the time, if I'm building things, whatever I build nowadays, if it only benefits me, it's not big enough. And the things that I'm building now, you know, whether it's my black effect podcast network, whether it's, you know, the company me and Kevin Hart got at Audible called SBH Productions, whether it's the, you know, the book imprint black privilege publishing with Simon and Schuster, I'm able to provide so many people opportunities.

Like, we got staffs and we got presidents of our companies, and we're able to partner with people and ride book deals and podcast deals and all of these different things. So it's just like, that is what is fulfilling to me. And then being able to take those resources and do things like the thrill of possibility summit, where we're pouring into these hbCus, HBCU students. I got a nonprofit called the Mental Wealth alliance, where our goal is to get 10,000 black and brown people free therapy over the next five years. I do an expo every year.

I think I'm on my fourth year, fifth year of that called the mental wealth Expo here in New York. It's a free event. I bring some of the best psychiatrists and therapists and spiritual leaders. I've seen it. Yeah, I own the domain name mentalwealth.com, so if you want it for free, you can have it.

Steven Bartlett
I was going to do something with it. I bought it five years ago. I bought it five years ago for a project. Wow. And then I saw you post on instagram an event called mental.

I was thinking, damn, I've got this domain name, and he's doing something with it, so you can have it. It's just that we'll send it over to you. That would be a fantastic. I saw what you're doing. It's incredible.

I can't think of a better reason for someone to do with that domain. So, yeah, so to answer your question, I'm doing great. And the reason I'm doing great is because I realize that your true purpose in life will come through service to others. Doctor Wayne W. Dyer says that in the power of intention.

Charlemagne tha God
I read that years ago and didn't understand what it meant. I'm talking about, I read this 20 plus years ago and didn't quite understand what that meant. Your true purpose in life will come through service to others. I overstand what that means now. That's not the way culture's gone.

Steven Bartlett
Culture's become less religious, less community, more about yourself, your own goals, your own individual being less about others, less about a higher power. And it's so interesting because as I've had these conversations over the years, religious until I was 18 years old, my mom's religious. I was baptized, raised in a christian household, and I lost that religion. And with that, you lose the church. And then social media made me more individualistic.

Get the Lambo. I was this broke kid, dropped out of university, trying to get the ranger of a sport in the mansion. I got those things, the anticlimax. Something's missing. Going in search of more.

And I've almost found myself right back at the beginning again, going, j, I said it yesterday, I was like, damn, I wish I was still religious. But what I'm searching for is what you said. I'm searching for service in my life. Yeah, because, listen, I grew up broke, so when you grow up broke, I grew up watch. I grew up broke, but I grew up watching my grandma, even if, you know, we didn't have much, she always knew how to whip up a lot of food.

Charlemagne tha God
And so whoever was in the yard could come to my grandma's house and eat. Same thing with my pops. My pops was the guy who, like, they all like frying fish. You here, you gonna eat? You know, hey, we got drinks.

You gonna drink? So to me, that was service. That was early versions of service. So I've always, you know, known that, you know, you gotta give to receive. Like, that's just how I, how I grew up.

So being that I never had much, you know, growing up, I just always felt like that was the way for me to show up for people, like, do something for them. And now that I got, you know, a lot of resources, that's just amplified, you know, like, I really, I used to look at people that would put philanthropists in their bio and be like, all you doing is giving money. Like, what does that even mean? But now you, like, I understand. I get it.

When you can go to your mother's alma mater, South Carolina State University, and say, I am starting a scholarship fund in my mother's name, the Ford family endowment scholarship, and I'm going to donate this amount of money, a large amount of money, right? And you can look it up and see how much it was. By the way, it wasn't that large, because Mister Clyburn, who's a congressman here in South Carolina, I remember the day that we did it. We were both donating money to South Carolina State University. Cause that's where his beautiful wife, Emily went.

She's from my hometown. He literally said to me, you should go first. And I was like, nah, nah, nah, you go first. And he was like, no, you should go first. And I was like, nah, you should go first.

And he was like, no, you go first. I'm like, all right. So I went first. You know, they hold up my check. I said it was a quarter million dollars, right?

Blessed. I'm happy to be able to receive that. I mean, to give that Mister Clyburn goes up, it was like 1.3 million.

And I was like, you were right. And I'd see why you wanted me to go first. But my point with all that is the fact. The fact that I'm able to do things like that. Yeah, man, that means the world to me.

And that's literally what I just want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be able to provide opportunities to people. I want to be of service. That's it. That's all we're here for.

Steven Bartlett
It's selfish and selfless at the same time. And both of those things. Cause as you said, you said by giving, you get so much. Yeah. There's only so much you can get from a Lamborghini, right?

Charlemagne tha God
I've never wanted that in my life. And you know what's so crazy? I used to say that when I was broke. And when you say it, when you were broke, you sound like a hater. And you see a nice car and, like, I don't want that.

Well, you can't afford it. Yeah. You know how when, you know, you really mean that? When you can afford it and you still don't want it. I don't want it.

What the hell am I doing in Lamborghini? What am I gonna do with a Bentley? What am I gonna do with a phantom? Like, what why does that need to be in my yard? You know what I have to say?

Steven Bartlett
But we don't have. Especially, like, I grew up on rap videos. I grew up on 50 cent, on MTV and all that stuff. And that was modeled to me, and it's modeled to a lot of young black men as success. And it's so nice to hear people like you say, listen, you don't.

That's not. That's. In fact, you're doing yourself a disservice because it's a. Some of those things are really bad use of your funds. Like, go and invest.

A lot of these other. A lot of other people have a dad at the table who's an investor and knows to put it into a. This investment fund or this investment fund. And I think some of our role models growing up said, if you get that kind of money, you go spend it on champagne in a nightclub and something else, which is going to make it go to zero. Yeah, most of that stuff is rented, too.

Charlemagne tha God
Like, when you look at those rap videos, most of that stuff wasn't even theirs. So, yeah, I've done that. I've gone to Miami, and my partner, e class. Salute to e class. He's the founder and CEO of the licking restaurants in Miami.

He tossed me his keys to his big benz back in the day, and I drive it around Miami. I'm cool. I get my fix. I don't need to have one of those at home. You know what I'm saying?

I don't need it. That stuff does absolutely, positively nothing for me in any way, shape, or form. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you in the diary of a CEO, what are you most afraid of feeling?

Ooh, shit. Grief. Grief. The grief. The grief of death.

100%. 100%. The grief of death. That's the thing that, like, if I was an actor or an actress, I would never be an actress. Well, I mean, I guess I could be in 2024 if I wanted to be, but if I was an actor, that, like, if you know how they tell you you gotta cry on cue?

Like, it's that. Like, that's the thing that I dismiss out of my mind. Cause it's just certain things. Like, I always say, the things you want to happen in your life, you constantly think about, and you speak about the things you don't want to happen in your life, you don't think about you don't speak about your thoughts creep up on you, but when they do creep up on you, you just gotta push them out. But for.

Definitely for me, man, it's that feeling of. That feeling of grief when somebody close to you passes. Like. Like, that is, man, I've had some, like, really traumatic things happen to people that I genuinely love. Like, you know, I haven't lost a parent.

God bless, you know, not going, I haven't lost a parent. I haven't lost a mate, you know, a wife. A significant. I haven't. That hasn't happened to me, but I've had that happen to people who are very, very, very close to me.

I haven't lost a child. God bless, you know, so, yeah, people that have experienced that, I truly, truly, truly, truly, truly feel for them, and I know that we all will. I hope I don't. I hope my kids bury me, you know, man, I hope my. My wife buries me, but, yeah, that's the feeling that I don't want to want to feel, even though I know I probably will at some point in life, a long, long, long, long time from now, but, nah, you don't want to feel that.

Steven Bartlett
Thank you. Thank you for so much. I think I can't imagine how many people's lives and relationships you've saved by making what many people would consider the brave and vulnerable decision to speak about your own struggles and to, as you said, step into an authenticity. That's what you do in this book, but that's what you've been doing long before you came here. You've been doing that for years now.

And it had an impact on me. Imagine that I'm thousands and thousands of miles away in my own room. I'm feeling anxiety for the first time in my life, and I see this man who I love watching. He's an entertainer. I see him, of all people, because he's a black man, and black man never speak on these things.

I see him speaking about it and I go, damn, this isn't me being broken. This isn't something that I should hide. This isn't something that I should be ashamed of. This is something that happens to all people. And it's not evidence of my inadequacy.

It's actually evidence that I'm a human being, too. You human, man. Like, there's nothing inadequate about any of us. Like, we're literally all spiritual beings living a human existence. And that human existence is going to go through a lot.

Charlemagne tha God
But at the end of the day, like, I think you said it earlier, man. We all got to return back to spirit. Like, I love the movie. Well, not the movie, the book. American gods.

It became a tv show. And, you know, in the book, american gods, one of the new gods was the Internet. It was like Internet boy, social media. And I think that too many of us, man, are submitting our will to the Internet. Literally, we're submitting our will to the Internet.

And if you talk to anybody who works in Silicon Valley, they'll tell you that the Internet, it literally thrives off the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins. It thrives off of those. It is fueled by the seven deadly sins. So if you're submitting your will to something that is fueled by the seven deadly sins, then what are you fueled by?

And you wonder why the anxiety is so crazy. You wonder why the insecurity is so crazy. You wonder why the imposter syndrome is so crazy. You wonder why the depression is so crazy. It's because you're worshiping that.

That should be a tool. That's what you should treat it as, a tool. Like, you wouldn't walk around with a hammer in your pocket and you wouldn't be pulling out that hammer all day and just looking at it and staring at it. You wouldn't be pulling up that screwdriver all day and just looking at it and staring at it. So why are we doing that with our phones?

Why are we all in verbally abusive relationships with social media? We all literally go, especially when you're a public figure. You'll go on these pages just to read. People talk about how bad you are. These are all people that are dealing with the same things you're dealing with.

The hurt, the pain, the anxiety, the depression, the insecurity, the imposter syndrome, they don't. It brings them joy to talk like that to you and hope that it gets to you in some way, shape, or form. So why are we letting that in here? We can't have all these conversations about mental health and not really truly be protecting our mental.

Steven Bartlett
Amen. Yes, sir. Everybody needs to go get this book, get honest or die lying. And I think it's been one of the biggest inspirations for me to really get closer to being my authentic self in every sense of the word. And it's also made a really good case to me as to the power of that authenticity, because people say, I'll be authentic, whatever, and they say that's part of their virtue signaling status games.

But it's so clear to me that it's one of the greatest services you can do to yourself and those that matter most to you in your life. I'm going to link this book below. Everybody needs to go and buy a copy. Forget the why small talk sucks part. That is actually the most important part to me.

Charlemagne tha God
Because what we just had here was a macro conversation. And I think a lot of times, you know, in this world that we live in, we're having too many small conversations. Like, we make micros macros. Like, literally, and once again, that's what social media does. It takes these micros and it makes them macros.

And you don't realize that they're micros until you get out into the real world and you walk up to somebody and you're talking like, hey, did you see such and such? And that person's like, no, I didn't. And you're like, what do you mean? It's trending number one on Twitter. And they're like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Like, that's literally the world that we live in. So when I say why small talk sucks, I'm not just talking about, like, when somebody's trying to make chit chatter with you. I hate that, too. I can't stand it. But I'm talking about just those small conversations, those small conversations we have.

We're talking too small. We're thinking too small. So this book is literally giving you some things to just simply talk big about. To think. To think big about.

That's why I end every chapter by saying, let's discuss. Cause I'm not an expert at anything. I'm not an expert at nothing. I just got some experiences and I got some thoughts and I put them in that book and you read them. And next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel like the conversation is too small, I want you to say, yo, Charlamagne Lenard, he said, we don't gotta do this.

We can sit here in silence, or we can talk about this in this way, in this large way. And hopefully, you know, when you start doing that, you'll start having more fulfilling conversations. Like, this one I just had was with you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Steven Bartlett
You're an, honestly, a massive inspiration to me in every sense of the word. And you're so right about the small talk. I think my relationship wouldn't exist after five years if I didn't figure out how to start having big talk, uncomfortable conversations with my woman. And that's changed my life. It's made me a better.

It's been me, better inside my head, and it's saved the thing that I care about most in my life at the moment, which is my relationship with her. And a lot of men, they don't have the tools, they don't have the role models. And hopefully, you know, they can look to you and this book now as that guidance and that framework for how to model ourselves in such a way. I have to say, I have to shout out your podcast as well, the brilliant idiots, because one of my favorites I was watching the other day when you guys were talking about all the Drake Kendrick stuff like that, and he was doing the little white thing and saying about the. It's just so hilarious.

And it's the best combination of podcasts. Andrew Schultz. Andrew Schultz is the best stand up comedian in the business today. I think he is the best. I put his pay per view for his money to the online thing.

It was incredible. Oh, the infamous. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you.

Charlemagne tha God
Thank you.

Charlemagne tha God: A Women Molested Me As A Kid! I Cheated On My Soulmate! Psychedelics Are Fixing My Depression!

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Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Impact of Childhood Trauma

3: Turning Points and Healing

4: Reflections on Personal Growth

5: Conclusions

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