Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: My guest today is a radio legend and author and
Speaker 2: leading voice and mental health discussion.
Speaker 1: You know him from the.
Speaker 2: Breakfast Club on the iHeart Radio. Please welcome Charlemagne, Go God,
Speaker 2: what about Hello?
Speaker 3: What's happening?
Speaker 4: What's happening?
Speaker 1: Happened?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 2: What up?
Speaker 1: Lovely man? We have never got to actually meet.
Speaker 2: We didn't like been in the same places when it
Speaker 2: cross paths we ever met, we said hide each other
Speaker 2: back like.
Speaker 1: This, baby, I'm so glad to finally get to talk
Speaker 1: to you. You look very at home. Man.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, man, absolutely absolutely, I'm trying. I'm trying,
Speaker 5: and I must say having a depressed DIC playlist is nice.
Speaker 1: Jesus on your show is the question? Well, it'd be
Speaker 1: soft and subtle.
Speaker 2: Well okay, let's just get into it now. I want
Speaker 2: you to explain to me why do you think men
Speaker 2: are so scared of therapy?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Man, I think it's societal. You know.
Speaker 5: For me, it came from like my father, because my
Speaker 5: father he went to therapy too, and three times a week.
Speaker 5: And my father, you know, he was on like ten
Speaker 5: to twelve different medications for his mental health issues, but
Speaker 5: he never told me that. I didn't find that out
Speaker 5: until November of twenty eighteen, after I wrote a book
Speaker 5: about it, and after I started discussing my own issues,
Speaker 5: and I remember asking my mom, like, Mom, you know
Speaker 5: dad was going through all of that, And she said,
Speaker 5: I thought he was playing crazy to get a check,
Speaker 5: because that's what they That's what they did in the
Speaker 5: state of South Carolina. They just would give him a
Speaker 5: check because they couldn't figure out, you know, anything else
Speaker 5: that he was going through. And I think about it,
Speaker 5: I'm like, damn, I was dealing with anxiety my whole life.
Speaker 5: I was dealing with, you know, a Boucher depression. If
Speaker 5: he would have if he would have told me that,
Speaker 5: you know, back then, then I would have had the
Speaker 5: tool much much earlier.
Speaker 1: But what I do is.
Speaker 5: And I learned this from my therapist, you got to
Speaker 5: give your parents grace. And you got to give your
Speaker 5: parents grace. You got to give them grace because they
Speaker 5: were doing the best they could with what they had.
Speaker 5: Like we take for granted that we're the first generation
Speaker 5: that has the luxury of here. You know, that generation,
Speaker 5: they was really scratching and surviving on some good time stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean absolutely.
Speaker 2: I think about it all the time that my parents
Speaker 2: were in their twenties and thirties raising two kids, and
Speaker 2: I think about my twenties and thirties. Thank god if
Speaker 2: there was no children involved. What was the reaction when
Speaker 2: you started talking about this type of stuff.
Speaker 1: Did you get a bad reaction? Did you get a
Speaker 1: positive reaction?
Speaker 5: Well, like a lot of things that come out of
Speaker 5: my mouth, I wasn't really caring about what people thought.
Speaker 5: So I was really just having these conversations because it
Speaker 5: was almost like it was a cry for help, you know,
Speaker 5: because I can't get on the radio and you know,
Speaker 5: discuss what everybody else is going through, discussed what I'm
Speaker 5: going through, you know. And I've always been transparent about
Speaker 5: my life, but I think, you know, going to therapy
Speaker 5: made me more vulnerable. So I was flirting with the
Speaker 5: idea for a while. So I'd be having conversations with
Speaker 5: a lot of people around me, you know, Like, you know,
Speaker 5: I got to give credit to people like you know,
Speaker 5: Aman the Seals and Neil Brennan, Pete Davidson, Like even
Speaker 5: though Pete's younger than me, he was somebody that's been
Speaker 5: going to therapy for a long time, and just like
Speaker 5: having conversations with those Why isn't that funny, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 5: we should be applauding man, you know. But it's just like,
Speaker 5: you know, having conversations with those individuals about things that
Speaker 5: I thought were normal, you know, because it took a
Speaker 5: long time for me to realize that your anxiety is
Speaker 5: not normal. You know, these these these Boucher depression aren't normal.
Speaker 5: A lot of times we think we can just you know,
Speaker 5: right anxiety off to being in a better position in life.
Speaker 5: That was my case because I was dealing with panic
Speaker 5: attacks my whole life. And then the fourth time I
Speaker 5: got fired from radio, when I was back at home
Speaker 5: living with my mom at like thirty one, thirty two
Speaker 5: years old, with like a two year old daughter, and
Speaker 5: my now wife was back at home living with her
Speaker 5: parents in Mont Corner, South Carolina, I remember having like
Speaker 5: one of those panic attacks where you couldn't tell me
Speaker 5: I was not about to die, like it was the
Speaker 5: French Stamford, Oh, I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth, like you.
Speaker 1: I thought, like I thought it was over.
Speaker 5: And so I went to the doctor like I usually do,
Speaker 5: and the doctor told me I got an athlete's hard.
Speaker 1: He said, your heart is fine.
Speaker 5: He was the first person to ever say to me, yo,
Speaker 5: do you deal with anxiety? It sounds like what you're
Speaker 5: describing was an anxiety attack. And so he was like,
Speaker 5: are you stretched out about anything? And I'm like, hell yeah.
Speaker 5: So in my mind, as long as I give me
Speaker 5: another gig and get back in position.
Speaker 1: To get out my mama house, I'll be all right.
Speaker 5: Next year I got with the Breakfast Club, so you know,
Speaker 5: three four years later, I got more success, more.
Speaker 1: Money than I've ever experienced. But nothing has changed. Nothing
Speaker 1: has changed.
Speaker 5: Anxiety might even be worse, the depression might even be worse.
Speaker 5: And I really just was looking in the mirror, not
Speaker 5: liking who I was becoming. And listen, I love I
Speaker 5: loved my father, you know what I mean. I love
Speaker 5: him to death. But I saw all myself turning into him, right,
Speaker 5: And I saw myself, you know, really indulging in the
Speaker 5: drugs and really indulging in the alcohol, and really indulging
Speaker 5: in you know, other women, and not treating my woman
Speaker 5: the way I needed to. And I was like, yo,
Speaker 5: for somebody that I thought I resented because of how
Speaker 5: I saw him treat my mom, I'm becoming just like.
Speaker 2: Do you think that that's why black men don't talk
Speaker 2: about therapy too, because they feel like they're snitching on themselves.
Speaker 5: You know, I think we just don't be having the tools,
Speaker 5: we don't be having the resources.
Speaker 1: I think we have it.
Speaker 5: Now because we're having more conversations about it. You know,
Speaker 5: Like I said, I would have never known anything about it.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have known anything. I would have known about
Speaker 5: it if my dad would have told me way way, way,
Speaker 5: way way back when. But I think, you know, man,
Speaker 5: come on, I'm forty four years old. I grew up
Speaker 5: in the era where you had to be hardcore. Like
Speaker 5: literally there was a term like hard core, Like it
Speaker 5: didn't show no emotion. You know, we couldn't cry, We
Speaker 5: couldn't tell anybody we were sad.
Speaker 1: Sad, you better go get a job, sad? You better,
Speaker 1: you better go play outside?
Speaker 4: Why you're sad?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you living? You breathing, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So let me tell you.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, how do you deal with the
Speaker 2: panic attacks? I mean, you wrote a whole book about it,
Speaker 2: so I mean, like, because that can help women just
Speaker 2: as much as men, how do you deal with panic attacks.
Speaker 1: How do you you know, is that breathing exercises? Is
Speaker 1: this something that you do well?
Speaker 5: I got a new therapist now, and my new therapist
Speaker 5: told me something that's really interesting, you know. He said,
Speaker 5: he said, faith and anxiety can't coexist.
Speaker 1: So whenever you have those.
Speaker 5: Panic attacks, whenever you have those anxiety attacks, you got
Speaker 5: to tell yourself.
Speaker 1: Your own hero story. And I know it may.
Speaker 5: Sound arrogant, but no, you really got to tell yourself
Speaker 5: how far you've came. You know, you have to tell
Speaker 5: yourself you know what you've overcome. You know, you have
Speaker 5: to talk about the good things that you know you
Speaker 5: do for yourself, the good things you do for people.
Speaker 5: And I think that's something that we don't do enough.
Speaker 5: We don't tell ourselves our own hero story. So much
Speaker 5: of us are getting on social media waiting for a
Speaker 5: bunch of strangers that we don't even know to validate.
Speaker 1: Us through likes and retweets and everything else. You know.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yo, how how often do you How often.
Speaker 5: Do you wake up and look in the mirror and
Speaker 5: really just tell yourself your own hero story? You know,
Speaker 5: sometimes we laugh at Calid, but catl is right when
Speaker 5: you said, Yo, sometimes you look around like you're smart.
Speaker 1: You know, you beautiful.
Speaker 4: You know I do it too much, But I get you.
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 5: I agree with you on that you might do it
Speaker 5: too much. But maybe we have to have a DJ.
Speaker 5: Khalid level of annoying.
Speaker 1: Absolutely I get in order to encourage each other. You know.
Speaker 1: Marriage Black had a song called good Morning Garden, this
Speaker 1: morning gorgeous. Yes, sometimes you.
Speaker 5: Gotta wake up in the morning and do that for yourself.
Speaker 1: I agree, we're a hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you really got to look.
Speaker 2: At yourself and say, hey, I live with myself. You
Speaker 2: gotta like yourself. That's what you're gonna be with yourself
Speaker 2: all day, all day, when you go to sleep, up,
Speaker 2: when you when you brush your teeth. That's right, that's right,
Speaker 2: it's yourself.
Speaker 5: Tell yourself your own hero story for all your brothers
Speaker 5: out there with the press dict. You know, look in
Speaker 5: the mirror, Look in the mirror and talk to your
Speaker 5: penis about the good time.
Speaker 1: See, that's what y'all you said.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm gonna ask you.
Speaker 2: Do you think do you think therapy like improves you
Speaker 2: as a sexual partner? I mean, please say yes so
Speaker 2: they can go to therapy.
Speaker 5: Please, Yes it does, but it really, it really does,
Speaker 5: because it makes you more vulnerable, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And I think that it makes you more It makes
Speaker 5: you more intimate, you know, And I think that you
Speaker 5: start approaching you know, sex, not just from a physical aspect,
Speaker 5: from a mental and a spiritual aspect, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean.
Speaker 5: There's a great song by Dead Press. It's an old
Speaker 5: it's an old school song. Damn, I can't believe I
Speaker 5: said this old school. But it's called mind sex, and
Speaker 5: it's true, you know what I mean? Like everything is mental,
Speaker 5: it all starts here. So it is gonna make you
Speaker 5: know what happens in the bedroom better. See, I just
Speaker 5: told my Penis my own hero story. I might be
Speaker 5: dealing I might be dealing with a rectond justs frunction,
Speaker 5: And I just told my Penis my own hero story
Speaker 5: means something, all right, that's right.
Speaker 4: So what would you say right now?
Speaker 2: What would be the thing that you say right now
Speaker 2: to tell men to go to therapy? What would be
Speaker 2: your inspirational like, what would you say to all the
Speaker 2: men right now?
Speaker 5: I would say, the life you save may be your own,
Speaker 5: because you know, I saw what you were saying about
Speaker 5: you know, men and being violent, Like, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: that we do a lot of projecting, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. I think that we haven't dealt with our pain,
Speaker 5: we haven't dealt with our hurt, and so we end
Speaker 5: up projecting that pain and that hurt on the other people,
Speaker 5: you know, And and therapy is really just one part
Speaker 5: of it. I got a good friend, I got to
Speaker 5: salute her man. Her name is Debbie Brown, and Debbie
Speaker 5: always told me that, you know, therapy will give you
Speaker 5: the language, and it will give you an understanding of
Speaker 5: what you're going through, but you actually have to go
Speaker 5: out and do things that help you heal, you know,
Speaker 5: because it's one thing to be able to talk about it,
Speaker 5: but what are you doing to actually heal what you're
Speaker 5: dealing with. So if we don't actually deal with our
Speaker 5: issues and actually seek some healing, we're just gonna keep
Speaker 5: projecting that pain and hurt on other people.
Speaker 3: Hey man, I mean, my next best tonight is a rapper.
Speaker 6: Put him in in prison for twenty one years, but
Speaker 6: he recently put out a new album called Son of
Speaker 6: the City. Please welcome Mac Phipps. It must be it
Speaker 6: must be weird to see the very thing you were
Speaker 6: convicted of a long time ago being in the headlines again.
Speaker 4: Huh yeah, and this time with another rapper.
Speaker 3: I know you're glad about that part.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty it, ain't you. Yeah?
Speaker 6: You remember what the lyrics word that they used to
Speaker 6: send you, to send you to prison, to send you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So they used two different songs. It was a song
Speaker 4: I had called shell Shock, and one called Murder Murder.
Speaker 4: So what they did was they took the chorus part
Speaker 4: from Murder Murder, which I say, murder, murder, kill, kill.
Speaker 4: It's rail on the battlefield. So they took murder Murder
Speaker 4: and they took a line that I used from shell
Speaker 4: Shock about my father. Wow, I said something to the
Speaker 4: effect like he gave me his name, he gave me
Speaker 4: the game, and if you f with me, He'll put
Speaker 4: a bullet in your brain. So they put them together
Speaker 4: and they said murder, murder, kill kill, if you f
Speaker 4: with me, I'll put a bullet in your brain. This
Speaker 4: is the words of this young man. And did they
Speaker 4: appointed to me in court?
Speaker 6: That made me scared to finish this interview, let me
Speaker 6: tell you. But interestingly enough, because here's the thing I
Speaker 6: think I'm an artist like you're an artist. I think
Speaker 6: that art should be protected. I think that there should
Speaker 6: be no limits on art. I shouldn't necessarily know if
Speaker 6: you need it or not. That's the purpose of art, right.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, there are a lot of people who say
Speaker 6: a lot of things they actually did, and that's the problem.
Speaker 6: There's a difference between artistic expression and a confession.
Speaker 3: And I think that some.
Speaker 6: People are so determined to prove how hard they are
Speaker 6: and where they came from that they telling on themselves
Speaker 6: and the whole street code snitchers don't get. They get
Speaker 6: a immunity for prosecution. That's what they get, right, And.
Speaker 4: I guess and if you might, and to add to that,
Speaker 4: I think that even if there are people that's doing,
Speaker 4: you know, doing what they're saying, I speak for the majority, right,
Speaker 4: and for the majority is straight fiction. I mean most
Speaker 4: of these guys, I mean not the most the more
Speaker 4: well known artists. Let's talk about some of these artists
Speaker 4: that don't have as big of a name. In this song,
Speaker 4: he says, and I think prosecutors don't get the right
Speaker 4: to cherry pick what is and what is.
Speaker 6: What is not that specifically, the gig what they do
Speaker 6: is they don't care about being right around. They care
Speaker 6: about if they can win right. And I think that
Speaker 6: that what we have, this conflation with words and what
Speaker 6: they mean and their impact. And we just showed you
Speaker 6: an example of the kind of biases that can Like
Speaker 6: I write an essay called how to Murder your Husband
Speaker 6: that isn't admitted. You write murder, murder, kill, kill, and
Speaker 6: it is right, and it is unfair. But I think
Speaker 6: the whole thing is that we have to protect art
Speaker 6: in general, whether we agree like it or not. I
Speaker 6: don't like everything I hear, but art needs to be protected.
Speaker 4: And then I told I told you, and I told
Speaker 4: I totally agree because in one song, this young man
Speaker 4: may say, well I killed four people, but in this
Speaker 4: very same song he says he owned a Bughetti or
Speaker 4: lyric jet or helicopter, and he's sitting here with a
Speaker 4: caught upon in a tournament. So we know this is false.
Speaker 4: So I mean the hip hop we use, we use similes,
Speaker 4: we use math fors, we use hyperboles. You know, we exaggerated.
Speaker 4: Roy Kim said that we like to exaggerate, dreaming, imaginate.
Speaker 4: So I just think that it's unfair when they get
Speaker 4: to cherry pick. Okay, this part of the song is true,
Speaker 4: and this part of the song is fiction. I just
Speaker 4: think that's wrong.
Speaker 6: Even now you've been through everything you've been through, the
Speaker 6: one thing I noticed about you when I walk into
Speaker 6: your room you still got light in your eyes.
Speaker 3: So that's that means.
Speaker 6: And it's not just because of what you do, it's
Speaker 6: because of who you are. And there art does that
Speaker 6: for you.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 6: So the fact that you could go through that, have
Speaker 6: an experience that could turn you sour and you use
Speaker 6: it to create guess what more art that says something.
Speaker 1: Right right and.
Speaker 4: Honestly, just being just being here is a reflection of
Speaker 4: of of that hope that I kept the whole time
Speaker 4: I was there for twenty one years. I made a
Speaker 4: promise to myself. I said, I was never gonna let
Speaker 4: this situation turn me black hearted. I never wanted to
Speaker 4: be bitter mad about it.
Speaker 6: You don't want them to situated it turned you.
Speaker 1: You couldn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 4: I like the wind. I like the wind y'all, and
Speaker 4: you wasn't.
Speaker 3: Going to turn you into.
Speaker 4: Miserable, better person, you know. So when I came out,
Speaker 4: I said, well, I gotta get to work because there's
Speaker 4: other guys who I left behind that are in similar situations.
Speaker 4: Master Pea's brother C murders in a similar situation. So
Speaker 4: you know his image was used against him and C.
Speaker 6: Murder right, So right, you know what's interesting. You have
Speaker 6: a new album now.
Speaker 1: It's called Son, Son of the City.
Speaker 6: Now, did you use any of the murder murder, kill kill?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: None of that.
Speaker 6: No, I bet that ain't an album is no, no, no.
Speaker 4: And I think I think much of that has to
Speaker 4: do with just maturity.
Speaker 1: Is growing up.
Speaker 4: I'm a grandfather, right, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately I was going to mature as a
Speaker 4: musician anyway. A lot of these young men that's rapping
Speaker 4: about what they're wrapping about today, they won't be talking
Speaker 4: about that in ten fifteen years. I mean, this album
Speaker 4: is a reflection of a more mature, grown man on
Speaker 4: this it's ten tracks on it. My favorite track is
Speaker 4: Proverbs because it's what I would tell the world if
Speaker 4: I had the world's attention for four minutes. Those words are.
Speaker 6: What I would say, whine got four minutes, give me
Speaker 6: thirty seconds?
Speaker 4: Thirty seconds? All right, may yor Tomorrow's be filled with
Speaker 4: promise and the opposite of sorrow, amongst other things. For
Speaker 4: I know that it's a struggle just to go with
Speaker 4: the float when fee to take you many places you
Speaker 4: would rather not go. But fret not your soul, and
Speaker 4: not the fear the things that you just might behold
Speaker 4: but cannot control. For in time you'll know the reason
Speaker 4: everything has a season. I swear that not until it's
Speaker 4: cooked that we start eating. I believe in the power
Speaker 4: of us, made in their image and in their likeness.
Speaker 4: The reason we write this is what hopes that will
Speaker 4: inspire others to take it higher and further than those
Speaker 4: before us, because they're waiting for us. See your thoughts
Speaker 4: make your reality. And I wish that I could share
Speaker 4: with y'all all the formalities. But if I had to
Speaker 4: sum it up in just a few words, that only
Speaker 4: take seven on earth, as it is in heaven.
Speaker 3: Now you'll surtay what it a day?
Speaker 6: Look, I'm no composer, but that's a damn show. A
Speaker 6: lot murder murder here, Max Wheelings everybody.
Speaker 4: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 4: searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Speaker 1: Get your podcast.
Speaker 5: Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
Speaker 5: on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.
Speaker 4: This has been a Comedy Central podcast