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My guest today is a radio legend and author and leading voice and mental health discussion.
You know him from the.
Breakfast Club on the iHeart Radio. Please welcome Charlemagne, Go God, what about Hello?
What's happening?
What's happening?
Happened?
Hey?
What up?
Lovely man? We have never got to actually meet.
We didn't like been in the same places when it cross paths we ever met, we said hide each other back like.
This, baby, I'm so glad to finally get to talk to you. You look very at home. Man.
Well, thank you, man, absolutely absolutely, I'm trying. I'm trying, and I must say having a depressed DIC playlist is nice.
Jesus on your show is the question? Well, it'd be soft and subtle.
Well okay, let's just get into it now. I want you to explain to me why do you think men are so scared of therapy?
Oh?
Man, I think it's societal. You know.
For me, it came from like my father, because my father he went to therapy too, and three times a week. And my father, you know, he was on like ten to twelve different medications for his mental health issues, but
he never told me that. I didn't find that out until November of twenty eighteen, after I wrote a book about it, and after I started discussing my own issues, and I remember asking my mom, like, Mom, you know dad was going through all of that, And she said, I thought he was playing crazy to get a check, because that's what they That's what they did in the state of South Carolina. They just would give him a check because they couldn't figure out, you know, anything else
that he was going through. And I think about it, I'm like, damn, I was dealing with anxiety my whole life. I was dealing with, you know, a Boucher depression. If he would have if he would have told me that, you know, back then, then I would have had the tool much much earlier.
But what I do is.
And I learned this from my therapist, you got to give your parents grace. And you got to give your parents grace. You got to give them grace because they were doing the best they could with what they had. Like we take for granted that we're the first generation that has the luxury of here. You know, that generation, they was really scratching and surviving on some good time stuff.
You know what I mean absolutely.
I think about it all the time that my parents were in their twenties and thirties raising two kids, and I think about my twenties and thirties. Thank god if there was no children involved. What was the reaction when you started talking about this type of stuff.
Did you get a bad reaction? Did you get a positive reaction?
Well, like a lot of things that come out of my mouth, I wasn't really caring about what people thought. So I was really just having these conversations because it was almost like it was a cry for help, you know, because I can't get on the radio and you know, discuss what everybody else is going through, discussed what I'm going through, you know. And I've always been transparent about my life, but I think, you know, going to therapy made me more vulnerable. So I was flirting with the
idea for a while. So I'd be having conversations with a lot of people around me, you know, Like, you know, I got to give credit to people like you know, Aman the Seals and Neil Brennan, Pete Davidson, Like even though Pete's younger than me, he was somebody that's been going to therapy for a long time, and just like having conversations with those Why isn't that funny, Jesus Christ,
we should be applauding man, you know. But it's just like, you know, having conversations with those individuals about things that I thought were normal, you know, because it took a long time for me to realize that your anxiety is not normal. You know, these these these Boucher depression aren't normal. A lot of times we think we can just you know, right anxiety off to being in a better position in life. That was my case because I was dealing with panic
attacks my whole life. And then the fourth time I got fired from radio, when I was back at home living with my mom at like thirty one, thirty two years old, with like a two year old daughter, and my now wife was back at home living with her parents in Mont Corner, South Carolina, I remember having like one of those panic attacks where you couldn't tell me I was not about to die, like it was the French Stamford, Oh, I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth, like you.
I thought, like I thought it was over.
And so I went to the doctor like I usually do, and the doctor told me I got an athlete's hard.
He said, your heart is fine.
He was the first person to ever say to me, yo, do you deal with anxiety? It sounds like what you're describing was an anxiety attack. And so he was like, are you stretched out about anything? And I'm like, hell yeah. So in my mind, as long as I give me another gig and get back in position.
To get out my mama house, I'll be all right.
Next year I got with the Breakfast Club, so you know, three four years later, I got more success, more.
Money than I've ever experienced. But nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.
Anxiety might even be worse, the depression might even be worse. And I really just was looking in the mirror, not liking who I was becoming. And listen, I love I loved my father, you know what I mean. I love him to death. But I saw all myself turning into him, right, And I saw myself, you know, really indulging in the drugs and really indulging in the alcohol, and really indulging in you know, other women, and not treating my woman
the way I needed to. And I was like, yo, for somebody that I thought I resented because of how I saw him treat my mom, I'm becoming just like.
Do you think that that's why black men don't talk about therapy too, because they feel like they're snitching on themselves.
You know, I think we just don't be having the tools, we don't be having the resources.
I think we have it.
Now because we're having more conversations about it. You know, Like I said, I would have never known anything about it. I wouldn't have known anything. I would have known about it if my dad would have told me way way, way, way way back when. But I think, you know, man, come on, I'm forty four years old. I grew up in the era where you had to be hardcore. Like literally there was a term like hard core, Like it
didn't show no emotion. You know, we couldn't cry, We couldn't tell anybody we were sad.
Sad, you better go get a job, sad? You better, you better go play outside?
Why you're sad?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you living? You breathing, that's right, Yeah, that's right. So let me tell you.
Let me ask you, how do you deal with the panic attacks? I mean, you wrote a whole book about it, so I mean, like, because that can help women just as much as men, how do you deal with panic attacks.
How do you you know, is that breathing exercises? Is this something that you do well?
I got a new therapist now, and my new therapist told me something that's really interesting, you know. He said, he said, faith and anxiety can't coexist.
So whenever you have those.
Panic attacks, whenever you have those anxiety attacks, you got to tell yourself.
Your own hero story. And I know it may.
Sound arrogant, but no, you really got to tell yourself how far you've came. You know, you have to tell yourself you know what you've overcome. You know, you have to talk about the good things that you know you do for yourself, the good things you do for people. And I think that's something that we don't do enough. We don't tell ourselves our own hero story. So much of us are getting on social media waiting for a bunch of strangers that we don't even know to validate.
Us through likes and retweets and everything else. You know. So it's like, yo, how how often do you How often.
Do you wake up and look in the mirror and really just tell yourself your own hero story? You know, sometimes we laugh at Calid, but catl is right when you said, Yo, sometimes you look around like you're smart.
You know, you beautiful.
You know I do it too much, But I get you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you on that you might do it too much. But maybe we have to have a DJ. Khalid level of annoying.
Absolutely I get in order to encourage each other. You know. Marriage Black had a song called good Morning Garden, this morning gorgeous. Yes, sometimes you.
Gotta wake up in the morning and do that for yourself.
I agree, we're a hundred percent.
Sometimes you really got to look.
At yourself and say, hey, I live with myself. You gotta like yourself. That's what you're gonna be with yourself all day, all day, when you go to sleep, up, when you when you brush your teeth. That's right, that's right, it's yourself.
Tell yourself your own hero story for all your brothers out there with the press dict. You know, look in the mirror, Look in the mirror and talk to your penis about the good time.
See, that's what y'all you said.
That's what I'm gonna ask you.
Do you think do you think therapy like improves you as a sexual partner? I mean, please say yes so they can go to therapy.
Please, Yes it does, but it really, it really does, because it makes you more vulnerable, you know what I'm saying. And I think that it makes you more It makes you more intimate, you know, And I think that you start approaching you know, sex, not just from a physical aspect, from a mental and a spiritual aspect, you know.
What I mean.
There's a great song by Dead Press. It's an old it's an old school song. Damn, I can't believe I said this old school. But it's called mind sex, and it's true, you know what I mean? Like everything is mental, it all starts here. So it is gonna make you know what happens in the bedroom better. See, I just told my Penis my own hero story. I might be dealing I might be dealing with a rectond justs frunction, And I just told my Penis my own hero story means something, all right, that's right.
So what would you say right now?
What would be the thing that you say right now to tell men to go to therapy? What would be your inspirational like, what would you say to all the men right now?
I would say, the life you save may be your own, because you know, I saw what you were saying about you know, men and being violent, Like, yeah, I think that we do a lot of projecting, you know what I mean. I think that we haven't dealt with our pain, we haven't dealt with our hurt, and so we end up projecting that pain and that hurt on the other people, you know, And and therapy is really just one part of it. I got a good friend, I got to
salute her man. Her name is Debbie Brown, and Debbie always told me that, you know, therapy will give you the language, and it will give you an understanding of what you're going through, but you actually have to go out and do things that help you heal, you know, because it's one thing to be able to talk about it, but what are you doing to actually heal what you're
dealing with. So if we don't actually deal with our issues and actually seek some healing, we're just gonna keep projecting that pain and hurt on other people.
Hey man, I mean, my next best tonight is a rapper.
Put him in in prison for twenty one years, but he recently put out a new album called Son of the City. Please welcome Mac Phipps. It must be it must be weird to see the very thing you were convicted of a long time ago being in the headlines again.
Huh yeah, and this time with another rapper.
I know you're glad about that part.
That's that's pretty it, ain't you. Yeah?
You remember what the lyrics word that they used to send you, to send you to prison, to send you.
Yeah.
So they used two different songs. It was a song I had called shell Shock, and one called Murder Murder. So what they did was they took the chorus part from Murder Murder, which I say, murder, murder, kill, kill. It's rail on the battlefield. So they took murder Murder and they took a line that I used from shell Shock about my father. Wow, I said something to the effect like he gave me his name, he gave me the game, and if you f with me, He'll put
a bullet in your brain. So they put them together and they said murder, murder, kill kill, if you f with me, I'll put a bullet in your brain. This is the words of this young man. And did they appointed to me in court?
That made me scared to finish this interview, let me tell you. But interestingly enough, because here's the thing I think I'm an artist like you're an artist. I think that art should be protected. I think that there should be no limits on art. I shouldn't necessarily know if you need it or not. That's the purpose of art, right. But ultimately, there are a lot of people who say a lot of things they actually did, and that's the problem.
There's a difference between artistic expression and a confession.
And I think that some.
People are so determined to prove how hard they are and where they came from that they telling on themselves and the whole street code snitchers don't get. They get a immunity for prosecution. That's what they get, right, And.
I guess and if you might, and to add to that, I think that even if there are people that's doing, you know, doing what they're saying, I speak for the majority, right, and for the majority is straight fiction. I mean most of these guys, I mean not the most the more well known artists. Let's talk about some of these artists that don't have as big of a name. In this song, he says, and I think prosecutors don't get the right to cherry pick what is and what is.
What is not that specifically, the gig what they do is they don't care about being right around. They care about if they can win right. And I think that that what we have, this conflation with words and what they mean and their impact. And we just showed you an example of the kind of biases that can Like I write an essay called how to Murder your Husband that isn't admitted. You write murder, murder, kill, kill, and
it is right, and it is unfair. But I think the whole thing is that we have to protect art in general, whether we agree like it or not. I don't like everything I hear, but art needs to be protected.
And then I told I told you, and I told I totally agree because in one song, this young man may say, well I killed four people, but in this very same song he says he owned a Bughetti or lyric jet or helicopter, and he's sitting here with a caught upon in a tournament. So we know this is false. So I mean the hip hop we use, we use similes, we use math fors, we use hyperboles. You know, we exaggerated. Roy Kim said that we like to exaggerate, dreaming, imaginate.
So I just think that it's unfair when they get to cherry pick. Okay, this part of the song is true, and this part of the song is fiction. I just think that's wrong.
Even now you've been through everything you've been through, the one thing I noticed about you when I walk into your room you still got light in your eyes.
So that's that means.
And it's not just because of what you do, it's because of who you are. And there art does that for you.
Man.
So the fact that you could go through that, have an experience that could turn you sour and you use it to create guess what more art that says something.
Right right and.
Honestly, just being just being here is a reflection of of of that hope that I kept the whole time I was there for twenty one years. I made a promise to myself. I said, I was never gonna let this situation turn me black hearted. I never wanted to be bitter mad about it.
You don't want them to situated it turned you.
You couldn't. I wasn't.
I like the wind. I like the wind y'all, and you wasn't.
Going to turn you into.
Miserable, better person, you know. So when I came out, I said, well, I gotta get to work because there's other guys who I left behind that are in similar situations. Master Pea's brother C murders in a similar situation. So you know his image was used against him and C.
Murder right, So right, you know what's interesting. You have a new album now.
It's called Son, Son of the City.
Now, did you use any of the murder murder, kill kill?
Yeah?
None of that.
No, I bet that ain't an album is no, no, no.
And I think I think much of that has to do with just maturity.
Is growing up.
I'm a grandfather, right, you know what I mean. So I mean, ultimately I was going to mature as a musician anyway. A lot of these young men that's rapping about what they're wrapping about today, they won't be talking about that in ten fifteen years. I mean, this album is a reflection of a more mature, grown man on this it's ten tracks on it. My favorite track is Proverbs because it's what I would tell the world if I had the world's attention for four minutes. Those words are.
What I would say, whine got four minutes, give me thirty seconds?
Thirty seconds? All right, may yor Tomorrow's be filled with promise and the opposite of sorrow, amongst other things. For I know that it's a struggle just to go with the float when fee to take you many places you would rather not go. But fret not your soul, and not the fear the things that you just might behold but cannot control. For in time you'll know the reason everything has a season. I swear that not until it's
cooked that we start eating. I believe in the power of us, made in their image and in their likeness. The reason we write this is what hopes that will inspire others to take it higher and further than those before us, because they're waiting for us. See your thoughts make your reality. And I wish that I could share with y'all all the formalities. But if I had to sum it up in just a few words, that only take seven on earth, as it is in heaven.
Now you'll surtay what it a day?
Look, I'm no composer, but that's a damn show. A lot murder murder here, Max Wheelings everybody.
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