Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) cohosts The Breakfast Club and The Brilliant Idiots, and is the author of Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me.
What We Discuss with Charlamagne Tha God:
- An inside look at someone in the public eye who has struggled with a lifetime of anxiety.
- How concepts we took in stride even 10-20 years ago are shocking by today’s standards.
- Charlamagne’s early memories of dealing with anxiety before he knew it had a name, and how it shaped his world view.
- How is FEAR most commonly applied as an acronym for your life: Face Everything And Rise, or Fear Everything And Run?
- The external pressures we all face and have in common — and what we can do to keep them in check.
- And much more…
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Anxiety is a scourge that many of us face, whether we’re regular 9-5ers, parents, entrepreneurs, or celebrity talk show hosts. Charlamagne Tha God is our guest today, and he knows a few things about the subject — as addressed in his latest book, Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me.
Charlamagne has been dealing with anxiety for his whole life — before he even knew it had a name — and he’ll give us a rundown of how it’s affected his worldview and even served him as a fuel to propel him toward an often controversial but always thought-provoking career as one of FM radio’s most popular hosts. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
Please Scroll Down for Featured Resources and Transcript!
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More About This Show
Anxiety is something Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me author Charlamagne Tha God has always experienced on some level, though he’s only begun in recent years to address and process it.
“I’ve always had the feeling,” says Charlamagne. “I just never knew what it was…on my first day of first grade, I remember being at elementary school just crying my eyes out, not wanting to be left alone in that class and not knowing why. When I think back to that, I was having a panic attack.”
Anxiety made itself known in other ways at this time — like when he’d be called upon to speak in front of the class or participate in the school play; an irrational fear was always present. But it wasn’t until Hurricane Hugo hit the East Coast in 1989 that he had an inkling that this fear could be controlled.
“Hugo was different because that’s when everybody around me was panicking as well. In first grade when you’re crying in class, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be okay! You’re fine!’ But Hugo, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, my God! We might not have a house in the morning!’ The next day…there was damage everywhere and people did lose their houses, but we were alive. I think it did help me cope just a little bit, because I was like, ‘If this is the worst it can get, we’ll figure life out.'”
Being a public figure, Charlamagne concedes that regretful things he’s done or said in the past will always come back to haunt him — often when life is otherwise going smoothly. Whether this is attributable to a higher power providing a means to work through these issues or just the cyclical nature of life’s ups and downs, it just drives home the importance of being honest — especially for anyone in the public eye.
“It’s up to all of us as individuals — we have to share our experiences, because they will help other people,” he says. “If I’ve got to go through the shit because I shared too much, fine. I’m cool with that…in the same way I take the so-called backlash and the heat, I get the rewards, too. I’ve got to take the good with the bad.”
Listen to this episode in its entirety to learn more about how FEAR can be an acronym for “Face Everything And Rise” or “Fear Everything And Run,” why even doing the right thing for those around him still causes Charlamagne anxiety, why Charlamagne refuses to be outraged by what he sees on social media, what Charlamagne has come to realize about the anxiety generating power of social media and what he’s done to reduce its influence in his life, the value of being of service to others no matter how much money you make, and much more.
THANKS, CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD!
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Resources from This Episode:
- Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me by Charlamagne Tha God
- Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It by Charlamagne Tha God
- Charlamagne Tha God at Facebook
- Charlamagne Tha God at Instagram
- Charlamagne Tha God at Twitter
- The Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM
- The Brilliant Idiots
- Uncommon Sense Live
- Guy Code
- Charlamagne Tha God And Wife Clarify His Rape Culture Commentary About Their First Sexual Encounter, Vibe
- Back to the Future
- Juice
- Belly
- Slavery and the Abolition Society, Benjamin Franklin Historical Society
- 10 Facts: The Emancipation Proclamation, American Battlefield Trust
- Stone Soup Activity, Tinkergarten
- Hurricane Hugo Hits Charleston, SC Sept. 22, 1989, STATter911
- The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
- Corey Booker, The Breakfast Club
- Charlamagne Jumped By Five Men Before Breakfast Club Show, Buck TV
- Charlamagne Dealing with Fanatic Fans and Hiring Wax as Security, The Premium Pete Show
- Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
- Cal Newport | Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, The Jordan Harbinger Show 159
- How the Story of a Clash Between a Boy in a MAGA Hat and a Native American Elder Unfolded by Emily Stewart, Vox
- 21 Savage on ICE Detention, the Grammys and His Uncertain Future by Jon Caramanica, The New York Times
- The Official Travel Guide of Anguilla
- The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
- Your Best Life Begins Each Morning: Devotions to Start Every Day of the Year by Joel Osteen
- Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations Podcast
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
- 6ix9ine On Why He Loves Being Hated, Rolling With Crips And Bloods & Why He’s The Hottest, The Breakfast Club
- Kamala Harris Talks 2020 Presidential Run, Legalizing Marijuana, Criminal Justice Reform + More, The Breakfast Club
- Rapsody’s Official Website
Transcript for Charlamagne Tha God | Turning the Tables on Fear and Anxiety (Episode 171)
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. Anxiety is a scourge that many of us face, whether we're regular nine to fivers, parents, entrepreneurs, or celebrity talk show hosts. One of my favorite people to talk to is my friend Charlamagne Tha God, one of the most popular FM radio hosts in the world. I know a lot about Charlamagne from his storied career to his legions of fans – numbering to millions – to his best-selling books. What I didn't know is that anxiety has been plaguing him for years and has dramatically affected his life. Today's discussion centers around an inside look at the life of someone in the public eye, the external pressures we all face, and have in common and, of course, what we can do to manage them.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:43] If you're wondering how I managed to create all these amazing relationships with guests like Charlamagne Tha God, check out Six-Minute Networking over at jordanharbinger.com/course. I've got a lot of tips and tricks in there that I use to systemize my outreach and my network maintenance. So if you want to make personal and professional connections, that's where you go to find out how I do it, jordanharbinger.com/course.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:06] I hope you enjoy this very entertaining conversation with Charlamagne Tha God.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:11] Do you have to be careful of what you say when you're on in other countries or it doesn't matter, right? They just censor out whenever they need to.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:01:17] Nah, man, I don't even care no more like it was like a year of – I walk on eggshells and this and that – and it's like, man, I can't work like that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:26] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:01:26] People are going to get mad anyway. So for me, nowadays, it doesn't even matter what you said today. They're pulling up shit that you said 10 years ago.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:33] I know. I wondered about that because like this new book is Shook One is about anxiety and I'm thinking, "How can you not have anxiety if you're thinking, did I say something accidentally sort of may be out of context could be considered racist in 1997 I don't know. Maybe it's on tape."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:01:52] Oh, I've got things that – I know for a fact, I've probably said a little bit of everything –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:57] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:01:57] – over the past 20 years in radio, television, YouTube, podcasts, whatever it is. I'm sure there's plenty of things that you can take out of context. I've had plenty of moments where I'm trying to explain – like I got in trouble, you know, a little bit last year. I won't say trouble. It wasn't trouble because trouble is when you got to go to jail or the principal's office. I didn't get any trouble, but people were upset because I was trying to explain rape culture. You know what I'm saying? A few years ago, the whole concept of rape culture was something new to us. What is rape culture?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:32] I'm not even sure I know what it is. Is that just – what does that even mean?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:02:35] Ah, basically just American culture as a whole? What I mean by that is like – do you remember Back to the Future?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:42] Yeah. The movie.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:02:43] Yes. I remember when Biff was sexually assaulting George McFly's mom in the car.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:50] Oh yeah. Yes.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:02:51] We didn't look it – probably back then, you probably didn't look at that –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:53] Nah, he was just like a jerk.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:02:55] – as sexual assault, but that's what it was. So something like that would fall under the rape culture. Do you know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:01] I get that though. That's reasonable because he was like grabbing on her in the car.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:03:04] Yeah. I remember Teen Vogue had a headline and Teen Vogue said, "Is drunk sex rape?" Do you know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:10] Yeah, oh man, that's tough.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:03:10] See what you did just now. You thought about it and you questioned it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:14] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:15] That's what I did. My dumb ass just questioned it out loud before I had a chance to like flesh it out. I was having this conversation with my listeners and by the way, three or four years ago, it was fine when we were having this conversation with our listeners, but then four years later when you want to take it and try to paint another narrative about me like, "Oh, Charlamagne is a rapist," then you'll use those clips. They literally had me saying that – they were like, "Oh, look, he admitted he raped his wife." I'm like no. The first time me and my wife ever had sex 20 years ago, she was pretty drunk and so was I.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:52] Yeah, that's what I'm questioning because I'm like if you both rape each other when you're drunk then I guess that is, but if it's just one person's fault and you're both drunk, that's tough.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:04:02] Well, see that wording, they rape each other.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:04] That doesn't make sense to me.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:04:06] Yeah, it sounds wild.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:07] It sounds, yeah – -
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:04:08] It sounds wild, but I don't have a problem laying on that cross because I just feel like those are conversations men should have with themselves and with each other. Because that's the only way, we're going to be able to correct a lot of the bullshit that's out there. We want to make the world a safer place for our women. I got three daughters. I want to make the world a safer place for them. So, I mean, if these are the kind of conversations that you know we have amongst each other and we're questioning past behavior or if I'm saying something, "Okay, if Teen Vogue is asking the question, "Is drunk sex rape?" And I'm like, "You know what, my guys, the smartest thing to do is when you're both intoxicated, don't do anything." Wait until both of you all are sober and you all can make a decision from a sober perspective. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't matter. She's drunk as a matter of you're drunk, no matter if you're drunk together, just if alcohol is involved or drugs or anything, just leave it alone.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:03] Yeah. I agree.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:03] Simple as that. I think that's a good conversation to have.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:06] It is. Have you – by the way, have you ever talked with your guy friends about some of this stuff? It's scary what other guys think.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:13] Absolutely.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:13] Because you and I were thinking like, "Oh yeah, you know I would never do, I would never follow a girl into the bathroom. Like what kind of creep would do that?" And then one of your boys will be like, "Oh, I have done that before." And you'll be like, "Wait, what?"
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:25] Oh, absolutely.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:25] What are you talking about?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:26] Absolutely.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:27] It's shocking.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:27] I mean, look, you know when you get older your perspective changes. You start seeing things through a different lens, whether it's that lens of being a 40-year-old man, which I am now, or that lens of being a father, that lens of being a husband, you do start to look at past behaviors and even things that were normal to you at one point. Like you're like, "Whoa, wait a minute. I can watch a movie like Juice."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:52] Oh yeah, man, I haven't seen that for a long time.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:05:54] Starring Tupac, Omar Epps – they're in that movie. Throughout that whole movie, Q played by Omar Epps is a high school student who's sleeping with a nurse, an older woman, and at one point in the movie, her ex-husband says to her, "Are you still messing with that young boy?" But that was the through-line to the movie and it wasn't a part of the movie, where they were even highlighting the fact that this older woman was messing with this young guy. It was just normal. You know what I mean? A movie like Belly. DMX is in. Then this 16-year-old girl calls DMX's girl and it's like, "Yeah, I'm only 16 when you say we couldn't fuck here, but I just suck his dick the night before last." Like I'm looking at that shit. Like now, I'm like, "What the fuck are we thinking? What the fuck was going on?" Like that's my mindset now. I referenced Back to the Future earlier –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:48] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:06:49] No, Biff was literally trying to sexually assault
Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:52] And it was kind of Back to the Future essentially was like you could take your kids to that movie and they see that and then you're just like, "Biff." You're not like, "This is sexual assault." You're like, "Look at that guy. He has no manners."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:07:02] That's all I'm saying. So now that I'm old, I'm like, "That was wild." We were wailing. Like they were wailing in moving, they're wailing on TV, they're wailing in the music.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:13] That's a good point. All that stuff you do look back and you go, "What the F?" And sometimes I think, is this just my life in the University of Michigan, like super liberal education talking and then, but now it's like that wasn't liberal enough. But back then I remember thinking like, "Wow, everything I know was wrong."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:07:29] Yeah, I didn't, I didn't think that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:32] I went hiking – this is like one experience where I had – I went hiking once I get to the top of this hill and there was this like stone or plaque and it said, "This is a memorial to some guy," I forget his name, whatever, "the first white man to ever climb this hill." And I was like, "What? Who cares about that?" But back then they were like, "Oh, this is special." Because the people who came here before they were Indian, so that didn't matter at all.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:07:55] They've probably been up and down that hill so much.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:57] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:07:58] So yeah, technically, yeah, he was the first white man climbed that hill, but not the first person.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:03] Right. But it was like, oh, anybody who came here before this white guy didn't matter. Now, this white dude climbed it, put a plaque up there, and made sure they put his name on it. And I remember seeing that and going like, "Dang, you wouldn't see that now."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:08:13] But yeah, I mean, listen, man, everything we're talking about right now is absolutely true because yes, it does give you anxiety. But you know, I am at the point where I just don't care no more. And the reason I don't care no more is because I know who I am and I know the work that I've put in to grow. I know the work that I've put in to evolve. And honestly, I still get those feelings. You get phone calls and you get texts, you don't know what somebody's about to tell you. That's why I don't even have like I deleted my Twitter and all of that because –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:50] You did?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:08:50] Yeah, because I mean every day is literally like – my mind goes 99-plus. That's as much as it goes on Twitter. So you just know you got 99-plus messages. Mine should be in the tens of thousands of people talking about things that I don't want to talk about no more.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:05] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:09:06] You understand what I'm saying. Like so what? Okay. You pulled up old tweets. You're pulling up old commentary. I don't care. Like, you can't judge me by those standards anymore. I'm not that person anymore. None of us are. I would hope not. Muhammad Ali said, "The person who is still thinking the same at 50 as he was at 30, wasted 20 years of his life." So I know I'm not the same person, so I can't let you keep bringing me back.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:35] What do you think then when you think about historical figures? Like, oh Benjamin Franklin owned slaves. I don't even know if that's – I assumed that's true. Do you think that that's a value from another time or are you like, "No, that was still like beyond the pale messed up."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:09:51] That's a great question. We have these conversations. I mean, it definitely was a value from another time. I mean Benjamin Franklin did own slaves, but from what I read, Benjamin Franklin was one of those people who had empathy towards his slaves. Or maybe Benjamin Franklin didn't own slaves.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:08] I can't remember. That's why I said I don't know if it's true.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:09] I can't remember. It's fuzzy to me now.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:10] I always get all the founding fathers mixed up.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:13] I read that before. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves at one point and then realized it was wrong and freed to slaves.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:21] Or that's what we read because they were like, "Let's whitewash this shit."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:24] Maybe or he never owned slaves but either way, that whole concept, the whole concept of slavery. Yeah. But the difference between slavery and a lot of other things, slavery was such an inhumane practice.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:37] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:38] Like these are human beings we're talking about.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:40] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:41] We've heard human scream before.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:44] Yeah. And make them speak. Like, how are you not treating them well? That's what I don't get.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:50] This isn't cattle.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:51] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:10:51] You know what I'm saying?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:52] Even then I like it, I feel bad when I see animals and I'm not like vegan or anything. I'm not that empathetic honestly. But I wouldn't want to see somebody kick a cat ever. So how could you have a bunch of people that go, "You know what I need to whip this person? They didn't work hard enough today." I can never wrap my mind around that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:12] When you say you know better, you do better. Cool, but what about – how can you just move on to doing better after you know better when you've actually murdered people and raped people and – like killing people's humanity. Slavery is a little different. Even though that – don't get me wrong – that was the time that was the business of the times. But you got to be a certain cruel-hearted, evil person to even participate in that. You know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:46] Yeah. There's no way that somebody was doing that and wasn't like, "This is a little wrong, but I'm going to do it." For sure, everyone felt a little bit like, I would like to think people felt a little bit like, "This is messed up."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:11:59] I would hope so. I mean, that's why the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, even though I'm pretty sure it was more so about business and politics than actual human empathy. But you know, yeah, you would hope so.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:15] I know you had anxiety plaguing you for a long time, but like where did that come from, because I know last time we talked we were talking about you’re afraid to end up under a tree, like other guys from Moncks Corner and like just be a drunk or like – I don't know, a drug addict or something like that hanging out. Was that what was driving the anxiety or was it something else to it? Like where does it come from?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:12:38] I don't know, man. I've been unpacking this in therapy for the longest and I've always had the feeling. I just never knew what it was. I can remember being dropped off in first grade at Memminger Elementary School in Charleston, South Carolina, and having a panic attack. You know what I'm saying? Freaking out. I can remember –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:55] Like separation anxiety?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:56] Yeah. My mom, my mom dropped me up. I'm sitting here thinking about that day right now. I was just in tears bawling. On my first day of first grade at Memminger Elementary School, just crying my eyes out, like not wanting to be left alone in that class and not knowing why. Like when I think back to that, I was having a panic attack. It was anxiety, you know? So I've always had it. I remember they would talk about it and say it's just stage fright. Like things like that when it came time to like speak in front of the class or do – I remember we used to do Rock Soup. There was a play called Rock Soup. I didn't want to be on stage, little things like that. So I've always had anxiety, like just irrational fear, and didn't quite know why. And I can remember – you know, I write about it in the book about Hurricane Hugo.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:51] Yeah. How did that contribute to that? Because that's like an illustration of uncertainty. Like, "Hey, everything could just get blown away." Literally washed away.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:14:01] Yeah. I mean, for me that was – I said in the book that I was the first time I can remember really having anxiety, but no, it was definitely not, I think about it more in the first grade, but Hugo was different because that's when everybody around me was panicking as well. In first grade, when you sit in there crying in the class, everybody's like, "Oh, it's going to be okay. You're fine. You're going to be fine, whatever, whatever." But Hugo, it's like, everybody's like, "Oh my God, we might not have a house in the morning. Our trailer might be gone. Oh, we might not make it through the night. Hey, get in the hallway and you do the hurricane – " You know, whatever, you got to do like this, which I don't even know what that protects you from.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:37] Nothing – I think it's psychological. It's like, "All right, do something. No, just sit there."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:14:41] Yeah. So it was just like – that was a major panic attack from me. And seeing everybody else flip out around me didn't help the situation at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:51] Yeah, you couldn't reach out and be like, "Hey, we're good. Everybody was freaking out."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:14:55] Everybody was freaking out. And then like the next day, it was just like, "Yo, this too shall pass." And there was damage everywhere and yes, people did lose their houses and yes, people did lose their trailers but we were alive. So I don't, I don't know if the lesson that that taught me was things do move on. Like this too shall pass. I don't know if that was the lesson I was supposed to learn from that situation, but I think indeed kind of helped me cope just a little bit. Because I was like, "If this is the worst it can get, then fine. We'll figure life out."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:29] But you still had anxiety even over the book launch, right? Like what's going on in the head at that point? Because I know what anxiety feels like for me, it's like I go – and Jen, my wife, she knows this – I'll go, "Huh, well if this happens, then this can happen and then this can happen. And then this – " And it's like this domino thing that's so ridiculous that if I was making it physically, like if I was setting up these dominoes, it would take me like six hours.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:15:54] That's what life is. I posted a meme the other day and I was like, "Anxiety – you know, everything's going to go wrong." And then it's like me, "Ah, no, it's not anxiety. But what if it does? You got me there." You know what, I'm saying? That's literally how it feels. And like for me, what would drive me crazy about anxiety is I truly believe your thoughts become things. I believe to law of attraction. I believe Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. So it's like the same way you can hold on the positive thoughts and they'll manifest. I feel like if you hold on to negative thoughts too long, they'll manifest. So when you've got all these negative thoughts in your head about what could go wrong and every bad thing that can possibly happen if you hold onto that for too long, to me, that's when my anxiety kicks in even more. Because I'm like, "All right, the bad thing is going to happen and it's going to be all your fault because you can't stop thinking about it. So for me, that's why I got to flush my anxiety down the toilet. I got to get this out of my mind immediately. But it's literally like what you described, like anything that can possibly go wrong, I will run that scenario through my head before I get to the one thing that could go right. And my anxiety is so stupid that when everything is going too well,
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:10] You start to get suspicious?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:17:14] What? Okay, what's the game?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:15] Where's the shoe going to drop.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:17] Where's the ball? What's the game? You know? And that happened to me. That happened to me last year. Like it was just a couple of things that happened – there's a few things that happened to me –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:24] Good things or bad things.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:17:25] Great things, great things. Like I mean great things. Everything that I was going out pitching, I was selling everything, and then it's just like boom – old tweets come back. Old freaking comments from podcasts, old charges. You know what I'm saying? Stuff that I've gotten expunged from my record. Stuff that I got found not guilty for something. I'm completely innocent of something that I've spoken about, written about it in my books and everything. You know I'm talking about criminal sexual conduct with a minor charge. Like I spoke about all of this before and it just – it came back and then all of that stuff just went away and I'm like, "Hey, that's the shoe dropping."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:06] Do you think that's a function of like, all right, it's hot – every time you go up a couple of rungs, somebody has got to try and take a swipe? Because it's just a visibility thing like, look, Cory Booker, you were just talking about how he was on earlier running for president. We're going to find somebody from his middle school that was like, "Oh, he beat up white kids on the playground. Oh, well, that means he's racist now," or something like that, right? Something like that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:18:28] That's exactly what it is. It comes with the territory. And what I mean when I say it comes with territory is don't ask for this if you're not willing to accept that as well. I'm a stern believer that nothing real can be threatened, and I really truly do believe in God, and I really do believe in the universal. Even when the devil takes a shot at you, even when the devil takes a shot at you, you know, you just got to know that you got to hold on the arm of God and he's protecting you. And sometimes he may be blocking you from things that he doesn't want you to have at this moment. You know what I'm saying? That you may not quite be ready for it because truth be told it's things that I lost and still got paid for. No seriously, because they even know, they know it's like – look man, we noticed there's some bullshit. But we can't do this on our end because of the climate that we're in –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:18] So they just do your pay out and then –
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:19:20] Here's the check. Cool. I'd rather have the opportunity.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:24] Sure.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:19:24] But hey –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:24] Good consolation prize.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:19:26] Great consolation prize, great. I got a great consolation prize.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:31] Your agent must love that. Because he's like, "So let me get this straight. We don't have to do the work, but we get the money and I get to take a cut of that and go sell something else."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:19:37] Well, people don't realize that nowadays you have moral clauses in everything, right?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:42] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:19:42] Moral clauses really only affect what you got going on right now. Like if you do some shit today, like if there's some shit from 15, 20 years ago that was public – like I'm a public figure. I put everything – my truth is all, my experiences are all I have. I don't hide anything. So all of this stuff, things that people knew about, whether it's old comments, old tweets, old charges. I talk about all my criminal charges. I talked about everything I've ever been arrested for here. It's all on the table. Yes, I sold crack. Yes, I was sitting in the back seat of a car. My man shot a pistol. Yes, I did that. That happened. I don't hide anything from my life because I truly feel like sometimes God lets things happened to you so he can work through you. And I think that it's up to all of us as individuals, we have to share our experiences because they will help other people.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:28] Yeah, I agree with that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:20:29] You know what I'm saying? So even if I got to go through this shit because I shared too much, fine, I'm cool with that. Because guess what? I reaped the rewards too. So the same way I reaped the so-called punishments or I take the so-called backlash in the heat, I get the rewards too. And I got to take the good with the bad. Like those same words that I've uttered throughout my career have gotten me to this position. So those same words might cause me some heat every now and again too. But guess what? I'm fine with that. I'm perfectly fine with it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:02] I mean, you're right, it does help other people because I had to start my show over in 2018 February. So I started from scratch and I thought – and I remember thinking if Charlamagne can get fired four times and be where he is now and I can get fired once, then I'll be all right. I got three more firings to go before I even have to worry about things.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:21:19] Oh, man, firings, that's light.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:21] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:21:21] Honestly, I'm still not scared of those nowadays, but that's because –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:25] You've been through it.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:21:27] Or that's because I still shop at Target and I get a lot of free clothes and I saved a lot of money. Okay. You know what I'm saying?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:35] So you can afford to get fired.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:37] Yeah. I mean I don't want to, but yeah, I could. And plus, you know, like that's why ownership is so important. Like you just have to have other outlets of revenue to make money. You know what I mean? Like, I have one job, meaning that I worked for iHeartRadio – great corporation by the way, iHeart is the best cooperation in the mother fucking world.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:57] Good, well-played.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:21:59] I'm being honest.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:59] I know.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:21:59] It just didn't because of the way they ride for their talent. You know what I'm saying? The way Bob Pittman and Richard Bressler ride for their talent and my boss, Thea Mitchem like they're just good people, man. Doc Wynter, they ride for the talent and you know that's my only job and that's the job I don't mind having. Because I don't mind working for those individuals. And there's really a partnership. We work together on a lot of things, but all my other sources of income come are good investments and things that I own, whether it's the podcast, whether it's the books, whether it's the TV production company, whatever it is. So yeah, me getting fired right now, that wouldn't scare me in no way, shape, or form. I guess it never scared me because it's just always like – sometimes when you're not ready to move, God moves you. The universe will move you and say, "You know what? You should really be doing this right now instead of that," and you just got to embrace it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:51] You said in your last book, "Shit is the best fertilizer."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:22:54] Yes sir.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:55] I like that because it does. That has played out in my own life too. Like, Oh my God, what am I going to do now? And then you raise your game up because you go, I got to start over after 11 years. What am I going to do? Be the best at something else or at the same thing but you got to do a hard reset. It's like a kick in the ass. You would not have gotten if you weren't backed into a corner. Like you just don't know.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:23:17] Sometimes you're forced to fight and you don't even know how strong you are until you're forced to fight until you're back in that corner. And all you got to do is – all you have left to do is throw some motherfucking punches.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:26] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:23:27] And some kicks and whatever and you fight your way out that corner, and then now you're looking at your opponent, he's on the ground and you're standing over him. You know what I mean? Like that's very, very rare. You know, it's very, it's very rare for a lot of people to get in that corner and fight their way out. Some people get in that corner and they like give up, they tap out. I've never been one of those tap out type people because I really don't have, I really don't have any other options. And that's why the book Shook One, I use this acronym for fear called face everything and rise or forget everything and run. And I mean sometimes that's what I do, I use my anxiety as fuel. When I get those feelings in my stomach, when I get those feelings in my gut, It's just like, "Damn, this means something to me." You know what I mean? It means something to me, so if it means something to me, then I got to be willing to fight for it. And that's what I do. I face my fears and I rise up from it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:18] I like that. So forget everything and run – do you consider that bad or you consider that an option? So face everything and rise or forget everything and run. Do you consider both options or you always fight?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:24:30] Both of them are options. I almost got jumped in front of the radio station back in late 2012.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:35] I know I remembered.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:24:37] The guy walked up behind me and punched me in the back of the head. You know, I don't know what's behind me, so I run up a little bit, when I turn around, I see a dude, I see another new one with the camera and I see two more dudes coming running at me. So I'm getting the fuck out of here because this is the plan. This is a plot.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:52] So this was like a viral video while Charlamagne got down.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:24:55] Absolutely. And the day before they tried to set it up, it was like, "Let me see if he's by himself. Let me see who's out here with him." They set it up the day before, the day after they made their move. So it was just like, for me, I'm not letting your plan go through. I don't know what you all got planned, but this guy got a camera. This dude hit me in the back of the head. Two dudes ran across the street. They might've laid me on the street and pissed on me or something like that. I don't know what your plan was, but I wasn't sticking around to find out.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:26] You know now what that was all about? That's weird.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:25:28] I still don't know.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:29] That's why you got Wax hanging out though.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:25:31] Well, yeah, and to keep him out of trouble.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:33] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:25:34] You know what I'm saying? Like that's something that would've happened anyway. That's my brother for 17 years. Shit, or longer now, yeah, well 17, 2019. I met Wax in '02 when he was in college. Well at the time he' gone to Island University, then he transferred to Benedict in Columbia, South Carolina. And I was doing radio on the Big DM 101.3 and eventually Hot 103.9. So it was just like the same things me and Wax are doing now, we've been doing. He was with me all the time then, but now he's with me all the time and I can afford to pay him six figures.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:13] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:14] And that's a great feeling, you know, and plus it keeps him out of trouble. You know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:18] I can see him getting bored and doing something.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:21] Yeah, he's grown a lot though. He's grown tremendously. I mean, is he talking about somebody I met when they were like 22 years old and now 35. Totally different ball game. We got kids now. He's got a chicken farm.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:33] He's got a chicken farm?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:34] He got his own chicken farm. Well, he's got a degree in business from Benedict.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:38] Was it a commercial chicken farm.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:40] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:41] Oh, I thought maybe he just had like –
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:43] No, no, he sells chickens. He sells organic chickens.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:46] My wife will love that. She wants a chicken farm.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:48] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:49] She can't wait. We got to talk to Wax, Jen. We'll get the chicken discount, chicken hookup.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:54] That's another form of my anxiety too though.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:56] What is this?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:26:57] Making sure that my people are taken care of.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:00] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:27:00] You know what I'm saying? You never feel like you're doing enough.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:02] That keeps me up at night too, for sure.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:27:04] You never feel like you're doing enough for your people. You know what I'm saying? You feel like you could always be doing more. You could always be putting them in a better position. You want to acquire more so you can give them more but sometimes it's just about giving them the opportunity to do things on their own. So hopefully I'm that kind of person. Hopefully, I'm that kind of leader that's doing that.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:27:33] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Charlamagne Tha God. We'll be right back.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:38] This episode is sponsored in part by HotelTonight. I love this app. I've been using it for years. And what HotelTonight does is it partners with awesome hotels – one of which I am not in right now. I'm on the road here at a conference and I got to tell you, Jason, I've got some funny hotel stories. I wish I booked my hotel through HotelTonight because they do screen the hotels and they have these awesome hotels sell their unsold rooms, which means you get incredible deals instead of staying at a place where you might get murdered at night. Like the one, I'm in right now. And the cool thing is they only work with hotels that they think you'll love and they've got short profiles of each hotel. They've got the info, they've got photos, of course, of what the rooms actually look like, not just the marketing stuff that you get on the hotel's website and even though the name is HotelTonight, you can actually book in advance. You can use it whether you like to plan in advance or play things by ear. It's essentially Jen and I's one stop shop for booking vacations, staycation is a word I hate, but look, it's apropos here. Last minute, ski trips are pretty good. We've got friends who use it for that. Business trips, they use it for that all the time, so go grab the app or go to hoteltonight.com and use promocode JORDANH to get 25 bucks off your first eligible booking.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:28:52] That's hoteltonight.com or go get the HotelTonight app and use promo code at JORDANH to get $25 off your first eligible booking.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:01] This episode is also sponsored by Intuit.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:29:04] If you could live your most prosperous life, what would that look like? Would you open your own business, buy a new home, go back to college, or maybe pay off your loans and save for retirement? Whatever your vision, Intuit can help you get closer to that future with financial tools that help you save time and money. Easy to use software like QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint make invoices, budgeting, taxes, and expenses as simple as possible. From helping you get your maximum tax refund to automating your businesses accounting to helping you manage budgets, Intuit helps make complicated finances easy. With their tools, you can confidently manage your money and work towards a more prosperous future. Your long-term goals could be closer than you think. Join over 50 million people who are using Intuit products to achieve prosperity. Learn more at intuit.com. Intuit proud makers of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mint.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:29:53] Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Charlamagne Tha God that link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Now back to our show with Charlamagne Tha God.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:21] Do you still get social media induced anxiety? Like, are you still – I know you got rid of Twitter, but you're still on Instagram. Do you look at other people and you're like, "Oh man, I should be doing this."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:30:30] Yeah, I just read this great book called Digital Minimalism.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:33] Yeah, I just interviewed Cal Newport yesterday.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:30:35] Wow. I can't wait to interview him, man.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:38] He's great.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:30:39] Have you read the book?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:39] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:30:40] That shit is going to be a game-changer.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:42] I know.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:30:43] That shit is going to be one of those generational like – I mean I'm not saying this – there's no shameless plug – I really feel like the generation needs to read, Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me, which is my book on anxiety and just me dealing with my mental health and therapy and stuff like that and Cal Newport Digital Minimalism. His book is so amazing because everything I was going through he put in this book.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:08] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:31:08] And so now he's just giving me more tips and more tools on how to handle what I already realized. Social media is not good for your mental health. That shit is fucking us up. We are not wired to always be wired. Like we're literally in the information age, but everybody's more engaged than they are actually informed.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:31] Oh yeah. That's a really good point.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:31:33] Yes. And we all fucking – like, you get these bits of information. We don't know if it's factual. We don't know if it's a lie. We don't know what's what.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:44] Right. But I'll share that shit.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:31:46] We share it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:47] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:31:47] And we came to these conclusions about it and we were arguing about things. We've got all these hypotheticals and we based whole opinions and perceptions around these things that aren't even real. So what I learned to do is I refused to be outraged, Jordan.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:04] You refused to be outraged.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:32:05] I refuse to be outraged. I refuse to be outraged because nothing is what it seems on social media. You're only getting a bit of it. You know what I'm saying? Like you can think about – you know, when you saw the kid in the MAGA hat faced off with the native American, and I'm watching that clip. I'm like, I'm not going to repost this because I don't know what the whole context of this is. And you get the whole context and you realize that it wasn't what we thought it was.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:30] What was that all about? I didn't even get the whole context. I just looked at it and I was like, if I was on the news and had a camera in my face, I'd have this weird look on my face too. I don't know if that kid's racist or as he's just uncomfortable. I don't know.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:32:41] It was three groups. You had the black Israelites, you had the native Americans, you had the kids in the MAGA hats. The black Israelites were screaming things that – both parties – the native Americans came overplaying the drums to like try to intervene between the black Israelites and the kids. But they were facing the kids. The kids start dancing and stuff because listen, you got to be a real soulless piece of shit to not appreciate some good ass drums.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:08] Okay.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:33:09] So the native Americans are playing the drums. I don't care when the drums is going, I don't care – if you are racist, bigot, and whatever, those drums are going to move you.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:15] The point is supposed to get you to move, right?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:33:17] It is supposed to get you to move.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:18] That's what it is for.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:33:18] So they started moving and then I guess some of the native Americans or somebody thought that they were mocking them and then the native American walked closer to the crowd and then this kid walks down and it just looked, it looked worse than what it was, basically. You know what I'm saying? But it was a lot more moving parts to it than just this native American – I mean, it's this guy in a MAGA hat walking upon the native American trying to punk him off, being disrespectful, like it was a lot more to it than what that clip showed us. So I didn't repost that. Because like I said, I refuse to be outraged until I get all the context of something. Like even a situation like 21 Savage and getting deported by ICE. When I see that in my mind, I'm like, "That can't be the full story. This guy is 25, 26-year-old rap. All of a sudden ICE is just pulling him over."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:05] And he's from like the UK, he's from like London or something.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:34:08] Dominica. He was born on the Island called Dominica. The UK owns this island. He moved here when he was five years old. You know what I'm saying?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:15] He moved here.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:34:16] He moved to America when he was five.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:17] So how do you deport somebody who has been here for 20 years.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:34:20] I don't know. All of this stuff is like, "Huh?" But when I see stuff like that, the news is reporting, he moved here when he was 14. He got arrested in 2014. It's just all kind of like stuff that can't be possibly true. See you mean to tell me this guy has been living here for 14 years and never mentioned it in minutes since he was five. He's smart enough to know – I'm not here illegally. So I'm trying to figure it out. I mean, it's a long story behind that. Then I'm skipping over, but he's not here illegally. He's got younger brothers and sisters. All of them are, you know, citizens because they were born here and under Barack Obama's Dreamless Program, they became citizens but he's the oldest one. His mom had put in the paperwork and then he turned 18 so he ended up having to do with himself. So he's just been in this holding pattern waiting to become a citizen basically. He got paid 1.8 million dollars taxes last year.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:15] Yeah. Like, "No, come back."
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:35:17] He's not the one.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:18] Pay those taxes.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:35:18] Like you're going after the wrong guy. I'm saying all that to say you see these stories and you really don't know the whole story. So I can't come to an opinion about with limited information, I just won't do it. And you know the book Digital Minimalism has been so good for me, man, to answer your question – I've been saying all of that other shit – it had been so good for me because nothing causes anxiety the way social media causes anxiety. And I'm just at that point in my life where I don't need to be a part of every conversation now.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:52] Definitely not. How do you focus on what matters? Because you've got millions of followers on social media. It's got to be hard for you to ignore social media but also kind of need it for business and have to be a part of it at that level.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:36:06] Well, like Cal says in the book, Digital Minimalism, you got to treat it like a tool.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:10] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:36:10] You got to treat it like a resource. You use it when you need it. I'm on the air at 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. so yeah, I'll be on social media. You know what I'm saying? Oh, it's another practice that he talks about in the book where he talks about doing it for an hour a day though. Just like a cheat meal. If you want to go on social media for an hour late at night or when you're not doing nothing, fine just go. But after that hour, no more.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:39] Yeah, schedule it out, get done.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:36:40] Schedule it out and I think that's actually dope. So it was just like little things like that. Like I deleted Snapchat on my phone. I deleted Facebook off my phone. I deleted Twitter off my phone. I got on my phone Instagram and when I realized that it was really having a toll on my mental health was when I went on vacation on December 27th. And you know, we do big family vacations every year. We go away for the last two weeks of the year or the last week of the year and then the first week of the new year. And I love this Island called Gulett. It's like the most beautiful place in the world and giving me such great peace of mind. And I got on the plane on the 27th. I turned the phone off, I threw it in my wife's bag and right then, and I said, "I'm not touching my phone this whole trip." And I did not touch my phone the whole trip. No social media, no emails, no text messages, no phone calls. It was to the point where close friends of mine were emailing my wife. Like, "Where are you all? What's up?" My daughters are with me. My wife is with me. I got friends with me, family. Who do I need to talk to in this moment? You know what I mean? I wasn't talking to nobody. I tell you that my brain felt like it reset. I just felt like it was like parts of my brain that were missing or growing back. And I liked that feeling. And you know, I can't let that smartphone take away that sense of peace. You know what I'm saying? I can't do it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:06] Do you wake up and check your phone or do you schedule it out for after you're done on the show? Like when do you do it?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:38:10] I checked my phone around 5:45 every morning. So I wake up at 4:20, I pray, take a shower, read my daily affirmations. I got two of them. I read the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and I read Your Best Life by Joel Osteen. And after I read my affirmations, I get in the car and I used to listen to some '90s R&B or I listen to Oprah's SuperSoul Conversation or I listened to nothing.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:42] No, Jordan Harbinger Show, huh? Done with that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:38:44] Not yet. I'm not saying.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:46] Snip that out.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:38:47] Oprah's Soul – no, I listen to your podcast. But I'm saying Oprah is so soothing in the morning.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:52] Oh yeah, don't listen to me in the morning, man. It's too much. I can't even miss myself in the morning.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:38:57] No, Oprah – in the morning. Her voice, her tone, her demeanor, the way she talks to her guests, her guests always are in the same tone in her and there's always something very informative, very educational, very spiritual.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:12] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:39:12] You know, so that's what I like to set the tone with.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:16] Yeah, she's great. I feel like before you go on that show, she must be drink this CBD tea that I got for you. Or if she's like you probably have to meditate with her assistant for 20 minutes before she lets you in the house.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:39:28] Exactly.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:28] Because everybody on their shows is always like, "Oh, hey, how are you?" I can't even get there. You definitely can't. Like on your show, you're never that calm.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:39:37] No.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:37] That's not your thing though.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:39:39] Nah. I mean it depends on what I'm talking to, but I'm just like I get excited.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:43] You're good at that though. I admire that about you. Like I saw you on Bill Maher and my wife goes, "Oh, don't we know him?" I was like, "Yeah, Charlamagne." She goes, "Oh right." And you're funny and you're on, but you're always like that. You don't walk in and go like, "All right, I got to be cool now." Like you're doing that out in the hallway. I heard you in the hallway.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:39:59] Yeah. Because the easiest thing to be is yourself.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:02] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:40:02] And one thing I realized that 40 years old is I don't know who the fuck I am.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:06] I am having that. I don't want to say I have a problem. I'm having that phenomenon happening right now.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:40:11] Is it because of therapy.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:13] Probably introspection, therapy/like having a hard reset last year and going, "Well, what do I want now? I didn't want to do the other thing. That thing ended. Now I get to reset. I don't want to just jump into something because it's convenient." It's like when you break up with somebody, you can either jump into another relationship with somebody and then you're like, "Okay, I guess I'm in this." Or now guys our age, we want to be conscious with it. So it's different.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:40:36] I was listening to somebody on Oprah's SuperSoul Conversation. I don't remember who it was. I want to say it was Eckhart Tolle but don't quote me on that. And I remember – it's so funny because I'm riding and that's what he said, he goes, "If you don't know who you are, that's a good thing."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:50] That's a relief.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:40:51] Yeah. Because I'm like, yo – because you got to think at 40 I'm unlearning everything I've learned because it doesn't serve me anymore.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:00] Right.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:41:00] You know what I'm saying? And I'm just in this new space of fatherhood, even though my daughter is 10, my other daughter is three. I got to fall on full. And you know, being a faithful husband, like giving all to my wife, like not getting caught up in the lifestyle and being – not cheating on my wife or anything like that. Like being a faithful husband. All of this is new space to me. It's a great space, but the wildest thing in the world is when you realize, "Damn everything I thought I knew, I don't know."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:34] Yeah. And all the things you thought were important are not important at all –
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:41:38] Are not important –
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:38] – at all.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:41:39] At all – like complete bullshit.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:41] I bet there was a time where you thought, "I'm going to get a lot of Instagram followers. It's going to be amazing." That must've been a thing at some point, everybody does.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:41:46] Yeah, Twitter – you know what's so funny? Instagram kind of just came with the territory. Twitter was definitely one of those things like, "Oh, I've got to get more Twitter followers." When Instagram just sort of happened, like it was almost like all the Twitter followers started going over to Instagram. I ended up getting more Instagram followers than I did Twitter by accident. And so like for me it's like, "Okay, cool." I got Instagram and Twitter followers. Shit – well, another thing that have me trying to figure things out is when you become a millionaire. Not even just a one millionaire, but you got a few million to paint. You know what I'm saying?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:26] You never expected that of yourself probably?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:42:29] Never thought of it like that. I mean, of course, you think of it.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:33] Well, you wished for it to happen, but you don't think like – seeing the zeros is different.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:42:38] I just wished to be successful. I just wish to be seen. Just like, old habits are – when I used to sell crack, I used to like to see my bank account just get – I just like to see that knot just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:50] You kept the money in the bank from the crack sale.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:42:52] No, no, no, no, no. I mean like literally the knot.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:55] Oh literally.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:42:55] Like the knot gets bigger, bigger. You know what I mean? Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds like that big knot. it might've been just three, four thousand dollars. I just like having that big knot and it's just like, now I like seeing those zeros accumulate. And you're looking at this shit like, "Oh wow, I didn't – when did that happen. Oh, this check. So it was just like, things happened really fast.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:20] But then you got to be careful with that, right? Because what if you look at that and then something happens and you got to spend it, help out a family member. It goes down the drain somehow.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:43:27] I'm fine with that because I don't have vices. I'm not a jewelry guy. I'm not a car guy. I'm not stunting at the strip club. Like I don't have any of those vices. That's why I think God knew when to bless me with those things. I don't have nothing to prove. I don't get no side kids that I got to take care of. Like I don't have any of that. So literally that's where my money goes to. My money goes to investing in myself but also investing in others. Because I always want to be the adult that I needed when I was a kid. I can think about all the times when I was a young up and coming radio personality and it was things that I want to do. I had ideas for certain things, but you know, financially it may have stopped me from doing things the way I want it to. So I get a kick out of watching my young ones, you know, the people I call my nieces like prosper, you know what I'm saying? If they need something and it can help their career in a different way, like, "Yeah, hey, go, go do that." I just got a kick out of that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:27] Out of helping other people.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:44:29] Yeah, but the anxiety comes from, what if I can't do this anymore? Like I maybe that's what you're saying to you.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:36] Yeah, like will I still be – like you might – and I'm not trying to put a negative question in your head, but someone in your position might think, "Will people still care about me the same if I can't be as helpful as I am right now?" Like I would worry about that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:44:49] Yeah, you're right. But that's why help isn't always financial.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:56] Of course. Of course.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:44:57] Saying I feel like anybody can be a public servant. That's what I feel like my main role is. I'm here to serve the needs of the public. You know, Wayne W. Dyer said that your true purpose in life comes through service of others. So I really feel that way. So you can be the richest man in the poorest man. You can be of service to somebody. You might have a bottle of water and give a homeless person. You might can buy a homeless person a couple of hot coco. You can help somebody with their luggage on the plane. Any of us can be of service. You might just have some experience and some knowledge that are young and might need, you know, so anybody can be of service. So it's not always about finance.
Jason DeFillippo: [00:45:35] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Charlamagne Tha God. We'll be back right after this.
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Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:30] Dr. Ish in your book, I thought it was cool how you have your therapist also chime in. It's like every other chapter and he kind of breaks down an idea in a very therapist kind of way. He's smart.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:49:43] Well, he isn't my real therapist. I wanted to use my real therapist, but then again I didn't because I want to be selfish. That's my therapist and what I was trying to do, I was actually trying to transcribe everything my therapist was telling me. So those stories in the book was things I would be talking to my therapist about. And then she would give me her diagnosis on it and I was trying to transcribe that, but I realized that what she was telling me wasn't for me to share with people. It was just for me to have a better understanding of what I was going through so I could share my experiences with people. But I wanted to have a doctor in the book. So my book agents, Nina and Jan, they just had the idea of using Dr. Ish and Dr. Ish was great. He came with those clinical correlations.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:26] He seems really sharp. One thing I loved that he said was our brains will answer any question we ask of it. So we got to make sure to ask good questions because I find that I'm still in many ways childish in that. I blame myself for things that happened to me, which I didn't realize consciously at the time, probably until I read your book that children think that way. Like, "Oh, mom and dad left me at the grocery store, so that means I'm bad." Or, "Mom and dad got divorced. So that means something about me." I think I still do that to a certain extent, but I think probably all adults might do that because why would we outgrow that? It seems like a weird thing to outgrow, you know?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:51:04] Yeah, I definitely still do that. You know what I mean? That's why I beat myself up over any and everything. But sometimes man, you have to realize that it has nothing to do with you. We take things personal way too much.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:18] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:51:19] You know, like a lot of times – I have no reason to take things personal. Like sometimes people are just assholes. Sometimes people would just fuck boys. Like that's just the truth to the matter. So it's like sometimes you encounter these fuck boys and you encounter these assholes and when you encounter them, their negative energy comes into your circumference. And like, you got to deal with that negative energy and sometimes you hold onto it yourself and you're like, "Damn, why didn't I see that coming?" Or, "Damn, why did I stick around this long with this person?" Or, "Why did I allow him to talk to me like that." Man, that's just life. That's just the way that it is. You're going to encounter people like that throughout your journey and you just got to just shake it off. That's not on you. I still do. I blame myself for a lot of things but I don't think there's nothing wrong with accountability. I don't think it's nothing wrong with holding yourself accountable for things you may have said, things you may have done. For example, if somebody pulls up old tweets of mine and our old commentary and they put it out, "Yeah, you can get mad at that person. But you did say it."
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:27] Yeah, sure.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:52:28] You did tweet it. You know what I'm saying? But I'm not going to beat myself up about it because I don't know who that motherfucker was 10 years ago and I'm talking about me.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:37] Yeah. I don't know what I was – 10 years ago, I just know it was some bullshit. And I'm not on that now, you know?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:44] Yeah. So we have to kind of be okay – I don't want to say forgive yourself, but to realize, "Yeah, I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago and that's normal. And I'm not going to feel bad about that stuff.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:52:56] He didn't kill nobody.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:57] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:58] Nobody's dead because of something that you said or something that you did. Like there are certain things that you can never get over. I don't know. I'm not going to say never get over. I just don't know if I could get over certain things that could happen to somebody that'd be permanent. Like permanent damage that was caused to a person – you understand the role you played in whatever the situation was. I can say when you said something or tweeted something like that's 100 percent you, as long as you know you're not there anymore or you can look back on something and say, "Damn, that makes me uncomfortable to even see that I said that or I see that I tweeted that. The lesson has been learned. It's a lesson, not a life sentence. It was a lesson in that situation. It's not a life sentence and not something to hold onto until you die.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:53] New idea for a Facebook social media feature automatically after three years, two years, just be like, oh, can't go back any further.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:54:01] I think it should be four.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:02] Four years.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:03] Because that's graduation.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:05] Oh, yeah, so after you graduate. It's like boom, middle school is cut off. You graduated for college, high school is cut off.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:10] That's it. That's college, four years something. And then you go get a master's. I think it should be 4 years. I think every four years, just like a presidential term. We should be seeing where people are. Where are they at in their lives? Has there been growth? Has there been an evolution? Can we see it? If you can see it, cool. You know what I'm saying? Move on. The only time you should be digging old stuff is when the person has not changed and is still exhibiting the same behaviors now that they did 10 years ago. So then you can pull it up and say, "Look, this motherfucker has a history of this bullshit." You know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:13] Yeah. That makes sense. How glad are you by the way, that stuff you did pre-social media is not archived or memorialized anywhere that people can get it easily. Like you and I are in a weird situation because we got 10, 20 years of radio or something that people could dig up. But before that, I don't know. For most of us, I think, at least we weren't on our phone in a bad mood, typing something, send, tweet, whatever.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:55:06] The worst. I don't know. I mean I got a bunch of air checks and I would have to go back and listen to some of those airchecks. I mean from what I know I've always been this way. You know what I'm saying?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:18] Which way?
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:55:19] Just me. Like I'm just always open, honest. I don't think I got caught up in any shtick of doing things that probably wasn't me until Breakfast Club.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:29] So you think that the stuff that happened that you regret or that you've maybe not regret that you think got you in trouble is a result of what you being not, not yourself or like you're trying to be something different.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:55:43] I think that when you are a radio personality, TV personality, author, whatever – it is when you're a public figure and you see things about yourself – meaning like people write up things about you and magazines. People say things about you on social media, YouTube comments, I think subconsciously that you're taking all of this shit in, then you start giving people what you think they want. You start seeing what people like about you and subconsciously you start giving them that.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:15] You amplify that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:56:16] Yeah. Without even really knowing it. You know what I'm saying? You give them that. Like, "Oh, Charlamagne is black Howard Stern." You're like, "Oh, this is what you all like." But then it's like what Howard are we talking here? Because if you're talking '80s, '90s Howard, that's just the time's up, me too shit waiting to happen. Whenever you're talking about Howard now, then you're talking about a married man who has done a lot of therapy, is a great interviewer, a great observationist. So this is like, which Howard are you referring to?
Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:47] Sure.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:56:47] Me maybe not knowing any better. Okay. They want me talking about wild, crazy, out of control, Howard. So you start doing more of that. He started seeing shit in interviews. You start saying creepy shit in interviews. You know what I'm saying? You do that subconsciously and then people check you. You know, people check you. Your homegirls check you. Your wife checks you and then you’re sitting back and you observing your own behavior and you're like, "Oh that was whack." You know what I mean? Like simple things. I remember I used to always refer to women as vintage vagina which I thought was a compliment. Because like any woman that's over the age of 40 who's aging like wine and not milk and then your homegirl says to you, "You shouldn't say that because you're reducing the woman to their body parts," and you're like, "Oh, I never thought about it." I just thought that was a compliment. I used to tell women, "I want to suck a fart out your butt." I used to say it was a top five list of women, who I wanted to suck a fart out their butt. To me, that's a new way of saying, I drink your bath water, but it's just – .
Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:52] It's just –
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:57:53] It's just as disgusting. But I'm just saying it in a modern way. And people are like, "Suck a fart?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, it's like a bong hit." And everybody laughed. So you know, that was some shit that I used to say.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:04] Uh, I can't tell if I'm laughing because it's uncomfortable or because it's funny. I'm on that line.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:58:08] I think it's both.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:09] It is both.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:58:10] You know, but then you realize like that's not nothing to be saying the women either. Like I said, you go through all of these different things where you listened to all of these things people are saying about you, what people like and you subconsciously give them that. And then you know, realize like that shit is whack.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:30] Especially if you play to the wrong – because like there's a lot of people who write in there like, "Oh I love the intelligent interviews. You get good stuff out of your guests. You know, you ask Charlamagne questions about stuff that we can use, not just about drama, whatever." So, I could play to that and that would make me better. But often those aren't the loud people. The loud people are the ones who were like the lowest common denominator.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:58:50] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:50] And so you play to them, you're turning up the wrong volume. You're amplifying the wrong stuff.
Charlamagne Tha God: [00:58:56] And that's what I did, you know? And that's why I strongly believe that in order to truly lead the orchestra, you got to turn your back on the crowd all together.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:04] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:05] And that's what I have been doing for the past four to five years, whether people realize it or not. It's just like, there are certain things – like I wanted to put more medicine in the candy. And that's why you see more spiritual leaders on Breakfast Club. You see more political people. We've got entrepreneurial. It's like just things that our community can really use in between the Soulja Boys and the Tekashi 6ix9ine and the Kodak Black and all that ratchet shit. It's jewels in there. The only thing I was trying to tell Tekashi 6ix9ine was like, "Bro, if you don't change your lifestyle, you end up in jail in a day." People thought it was a game. Like they thought I was trolling him when I first had him on Breakfast Club. And now like watching guys like him really – they give me anxiety because probably I know how this is going to end. This ain't new. This is a rerun. I've seen your kind of million times. Like this rap shit is not going to save you. This rap shit didn't save Biggie, this rap shit didn't save Pac. What makes you think it's going to save you? You're nowhere near as big as them. You know what I'm saying? So now, he's in jail. So now I can look back on that moment and use that as a teachable moment to these young ones.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:19] So you think being a good example is important? Because I definitely think being a good example is really important and I get disappointed when I see people with a lot of influence be like, "It's not my responsibility to be a good person. Like these kids, they make their own decisions." They make decisions based on looking at people like you and I and that they can relate to and then, they choose – there are people that ask, "What would Charlamagne do in this situation?" And if they think, "Oh, he'd say some ratchet ass shit," they're going to do that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:00:47] You're right. You're a hundred percent correct. Yeah, I think that being a good influence is super important because whether or not, whether we realize it or not, we are influencing a whole nother generation. Like I get that all the time. I'm at my daughter's cheerleading competition yesterday and one of the security dudes came to sit by me? He goes, "Man, I learned so much from you." Bro, I write books, I talk for a living. Like I'm sure they're learning something from me.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:18] Hopefully, yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:01:19] And all I'm doing is sharing my experiences. I'm not an expert at nothing. All I have is some experiences that I've decided to share with people. Good, bad, ugly, it doesn't matter. I'm sharing it all and I think that, yeah, it's our duty to duty to influence people in the right way. I love watching people gravitate towards Angela Rye. I love, you know when people start paying attention to Pastor John Gray because of the Breakfast Club, like whatever it is. I love bringing these new voices or these elders, these old GS. I love bringing them on our platform and like saying here, we gave you this candy last week, gave this candy yesterday, but here's some medicine. I love Cory Booker – Kamala Harris wants to come on the Breakfast Club because they want to talk to our audience. You know what I'm saying? They know that we have a certain amount of influence and they want to call out that for a little bit. I'll have a problem with that as long as you're putting the right things out there to all people.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:26] You're a massive proponent of therapy now though, huh?
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:02:28] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:30] I mean I want to ask what prompted that because we kind of know already that it's good for everyone. But why do you love it? Why do you think – because you're in your book, you're like, everybody should do this. Everybody should do this.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:02:41] I love it because for me, I'm a person who likes to talk. You know what I'm saying? I like to vent. Like, it eats me up when I got to keep things on my chest and things that I have yet to share with the world – that I can't wait to share with the world one day because I know that these things are holding me back.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:00] They're just like baking in the oven right now, ready –
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:03:02] They just bake it in the oven and I'm just waiting for the right opportunity to speak on a lot of things that have happened to me and particularly in this industry. You know what I'm saying? And yeah, I just can't wait to have those conversations, but until I can have those conversations publicly, I've got to have those conversations with my therapist. It's different. You know, it's one thing to share things with friends. It's one thing to just share things with your wife, but sometimes you just need that professional opinion to make sure that you're not bugging out. And you know, therapy to me, it's really like having a junky ass closet and you got clothes everywhere in the closet, sneakers everywhere in the closet and then you're going there with the organizer and you start packing away things that you don't want anymore. Things that don't serve you. You ship those off to goodwill. The things you want to keep, you fold them up, you hang them up nice and neat. You organize them. And then that way you got room to bring in new stuff. That's what therapy is to me. And I think about how like my father, who I love, he told me for the first time over Thanksgiving of last year that he was going to therapy two or three times a week, that he tried to kill himself 30 something years ago, you know, but he didn't because he saw a picture of me and my sister and my mama at the time. There's only four of us at the time. My two younger brother and sister weren't born yet. But yeah, he wanted to kill himself and he's going to therapy 2 to 3 times a week. He tried 10 to 12 different medications for his mental health and he gets a check for mental health issues. If I didn't know that when I was a kid, then I would have known why I would get depressed some time. I would have these scream high and scream lows. I would've known about my anxiety. I would've been able to get a handle on all of this stuff a lot earlier and I probably wouldn't be 40 years old not knowing who the hell I am right now. So I encourage everybody to go to therapy. Same way I encourage everybody to work out. The same way I encourage everybody to go to the gym. That's what therapy is. Therapy is just some brain calisthenics. Go and get that flushed out. You know, like it's like giving your brain a bath. That's how I look at it and I love it.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:29] I thought it was interesting that you said most black people don't go to therapy. It's just not a thing that you do in the community or whatever. I mean, I think that's true for a lot of people, but I didn't even think about it being specifically not that common among people in the black community. Why do you think that is?
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:05:47] Well, I mean think about how many resources black people already don't have.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:52] Yeah, I mean, I guess I never – obviously, of course, I don't think about that though.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:05:56] Growing up in the hood or growing up in a rural area, like Moncks Corner, South Carolina. It's just like a lot of resources and stuff we already don't have. So why would therapy be on that list? You know what I'm saying? And most of the therapists are white. So why would a black person go and sit down and talk to a white person about their problems when in their mind, the white person has caused probably 90 percent of those problems. So that's all I think it is just a lack of information and a lack of resources. Don't like that those resources genuinely are not available. And if they are, nobody's talking about them. Like I said, my father was going, but he never told me. My father never told me that he was in rehab. I just figured that out on my own. I used to go visit him and then realize, oh, he was in rehab. I knew he had problems with drugs and alcohol, but I didn't really, really realize that until I got older and he would talk to me about it a little bit, but nobody was talking about therapy back then. Only time I sought therapy was on Frasier.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:48] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:06:49] You know what I'm saying? Or Toni Childs was – I think she might've been in therapy on Girlfriends. Sure, Jill Marie Jones is my homie. But it's like nobody knew about therapy. Nobody was talking about therapy. That's why I talk about it so openly. I talk about it so openly that I'm trying to make up for all the years in black America that it wasn't being talked about because I know for a fact that if you get your mind right, everything else will fall into place. I truly believe that. I truly believe that your brain is that powerful. When we talk about the law of attraction, when we talk about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, like your thoughts truly can become things. So if your brain is filled with anxiousness and insecurity and low self-esteem, like what do you think you're going to be attracting in your life? So I want all of us to be able to go know that it's normal to have these feelings but it's even more normal to flush them out. It's even more normal to talk them through with somebody. It's even more normal for a therapist to recommend some practices that can help you scrimping your mind. So I'm going to be champion in therapy until the day I die.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:07:54] Do you have people being like, "Oh you changed." Like guys from the old guys and gals from the old neighborhood or where you grew up, are they like, "Oh you changed, you're different now." Because you talk a little bit about people feeling like stuck in where they came from instead of being liberated by that or instead of feeling empowered by that. Tell me why you think it's an idea for people to go back to the hood or it's like go back. You know what I mean?
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:08:20] It's not a bad idea. Like, you've got to go back to make away. You know what I'm saying? You go back to give back but I'm not about to go back and like to sit under the tree with you all and kick in and drink liquor and smoke weed. Like I'm not about to do all of that. Just because that's not my lifestyle anymore. Plus that's just a waste of time. Just like much of a waste of time being on social media. But yeah, people do say I've changed because I have and they should too. Matter of fact, the problem isn't that I changed. The problem is you didn't change. You didn't evolve. You didn't grow. You are still there stuck on stupid. Like I saw somebody on social media, somebody from my hometown, like I thought she was my homegirl, but I guess, she didn't like me, she posted that – she said he's coming out with another book of lies. And then somebody left a comment to her and she said he's fake and wannabe. And I'm like a wannabe. What do I want? A wannabe what? I'm 40 years old. I'm a nationally syndicated radio personality, New York Times best-selling author. I produced TV shows, getting into the film world. I have my own businesses. I have a podcast network. What do I want to be?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:45] Yeah, yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:09:45] Like I want to know. You're in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, my hometown that I love dearly. Want to be what? I want to know what I want to be that I'm already not. I'm not out here pretending to be no gangster, no thug. Because why would I want to be that? I'm not pretending to be no street nigger. Like why would I want to be that? I did that already. Been there, done that. Got me nowhere except to jail and almost dead and almost broke sitting under the tree until I changed my ways and changed my habits and putting myself in a different position to be where I'm at right now. In order for you to be talking about me on Facebook because I put out another national bestseller.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:38] How do you protect your mind then when you see stuff, hear stuff like that? How do you – because I'm sure your gut is like, "You know what? Fuck you." And then you're like, "Wait, hold on, I got to put something on there."
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:10:50] You're right. That's fine. I mean I do say that like fuck you. Or fuck you, come into my mind, and I'd be like, "You know what? God bless you." God bless them. That's how you protect your mind. You protect your mind by really understanding what comes with the territory. Malcolm X said a man who has no critics likely has no success. So I'm used to all the critique. I'm used to all the criticism but what won't be doing is consuming it all. That's why I don't have Twitter on my phone. I don't care what you saying. You know what I'm saying? Like when I post Instagram, you know what I do now? When I post Instagram, pictures or videos and I log out. I post and I log out.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:31] So you can't just open it and scroll. You have to like type your password.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:11:34] I type my password in. And then when I do get in, I got to make a concentrated effort to go look at my comments. I don't do that. Like I don't care. I have no other way of saying how much I don't care what it is you got to say about me. Good, bad, or indifferent. I appreciate it all. You know what I'm saying? The reason I appreciate it all is because there's this thing called engagement and the more you talk about me, whether you know it or not,
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:08] It pops up to the top. So if you don't look at it, you only get the benefit because your stuff pops up top but you don't see any of it so it doesn't matter.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:12:13] It doesn't matter. And by the way, that helps with that. That helps with the budgets too. When these companies are looking and they're like, "Well, he damn show gets mentioned on social media a lot."
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:23] Yeah, 12 hundred comments. Oh they all hate him. I don't give a shit. Give him a raise.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:28] Yeah. Give him a raise. You know what we need those 1200 people that hate him or those 20,000 that hate him to see this fucking ad.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:35] Yeah, that's right. They're going to watch this show because they're going to be like, "Look at this dumb ass. I don't watch every episode of this and that."
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:41] That is the Howard Stern effect.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:42] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:12:44] They used to say that the people who love Howard – no, the people who hate Howard listen twice as much as the people who love him.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:50] I totally believe that. You see these political shows and all the one-star reviews everywhere through iTunes, all this stuff is like, "You're racist piece of shit," and then you're like, "Man, this guy's a top 20 show," Half or more of his audience. Sam Harris has the same problem. Half of his million downloads per episode are people who are like, "I can't wait to see what this idiot, racist piece of crap says this time."
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:13:14] We're in the digital attention age. You know what I'm saying? So it's a digital attention economy and being in a digital attention economy, you really don't lose if you're getting mentioned on social media, like it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad because you got people who hate you who are going to go hard and you got people who love you that's going to go hard. And all they're doing is just constantly keeping your name in the ecosystem.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:41] Yeah. As long as you don't optimize for that because then you make yourself miserable.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:13:45] That's when you become Tomi Lahren. You know what I'm saying? When your goal is to piss people to fuck off, just so you get mentioned, that's when you become her and that's whack. That didn't last. You got to be organic. I don't scribe to piss people off. Not at all. I have an opinion about things. I say things people agree or they don't, they disagree. They liked me for it or they hated me for it or they just had a conversation about it. It might be just something I said, just fucking conversation. I'm cool with that too. Like we had Killer Mike on the show last weekend and DJ going at it, conversation started on social media about public school versus private school. And when I've been out in about all this week, people are coming to me, talking to me about that conversation, public school versus private school. So those are good things. Like we're going to have Cory Booker tomorrow. People are going to be coming to meet Cory in person. And that's great. That's going to spark conversation. So it's just like, as long as the genuine organic conversation is happening, cool. But if you're really just one of these people who's saying shit for attention, to me, you're just like a shock jock and there's no value in shock. Never has been.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:54] When I listen to '70s and '80s – I guess maybe it's just '80s hip hop where it's like they're telling silly stories. They're talking about like, look at this fun thing that happened or I went to my friend's house and the food was really bad, or something like that. It's like it's fun and it's freedom, self-expression, and now it's like drugs, guns, girls. It's different now somehow. I can't put my finger on it, but it's like a different narrative entirely somehow.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:15:23] I get what you're saying, but hip hop is not just that. Hip hop is that on the surface when this radio – you got the biggest rappers in the world are people who have substance. It's Kendrick Lamar.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:15:41] That's true.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:15:41] J. Cole, you know, even Drake, I mean Drake has substance in his music, you know?
Jordan Harbinger: [01:15:47] That's true. I don't know why –
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:15:48] Chance the Rapper.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:15:48] Maybe it's just what they're playing when I was in high school or something like that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:15:52] I mean you're not, you're not entirely wrong. I'm just saying that it's a pie.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:15:57] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:15:57] There's a lot of different toppings on this pie. But it's all one pie. It's all pizza. But there's a lot of different topics on this pizza. It's the pizza with everything on it because you all going to have your guys who rap about the guns and the drug use. And you're all going to rap about the guys who are misogynistic and they over sexualized women. You're going to have all of that but you still have the people who are socially conscious. My favorite rapper right now is a woman, my favorite rapper of all the rappers is a woman from North Carolina named Rapsody. I don't think there's nobody duper than Rapsody. I look forward to hearing her rap. I think she is the best rapper of this new generation, this new era. And like she's just socially conscious, and not even socially conscious in like deep – I won't say most depth, but just like a deep political way, just like regular smugly looking girl from the, from the rural area of North Carolina, that's observant. You know what I'm saying? That knows what's going on in the white house that knows what's going on in the world as far as social justice. Just smart and like that's what I vibed to. But then I might want to throw some 21 Savage too. I might want to throw some Kodak Black too. By the way, two guys who'd people would probably look at it and say, "All they rap about is guns and drugs." But even then they got a lot of socially redeeming value in their music. So it's just really all about where you get your hip hop from and what kind of hip hop I guess you're listening to at the moment.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:17:44] Yeah, I guess I was just thinking about what was on the radio. Probably back when I listened to the radio, which was probably like 10 years plus. the FM band, like of course now everything has been streaming. I've been a nerd for a hell of a long day. So yeah, when you let other people choose your music, I guess you get that shift instead of when you curate it, which is actually kind of a good metaphor for what you should be doing with everything in your life. It's like find what you like, not what other people are putting in front of you.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:18:11] We live in a world of constant curation. So it was just like, yeah, you can make your own playlist. You know what I'm saying? You can subscribe to whatever radio you want to listen to, Pandora Radio, iHeart, whatever it is. Like you can, you can literally listen to just what you want to listen to all the time. And like if you throw on one of these playlists. Like say you say you want to listen to Kendrick Lamar, you might recommend Rapsody, they might recommend Chance the Rapper. They might recommend you know, a Schoolboy Q, Wale, any of these guys that are really on that same wavelength you're looking for.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:18:43] You talk in the book about constructive versus non-constructive worry because I was going to say, do you still worry about anything? Do you see that as constructive but you do a little bit of both, right? I definitely do a lot of both. I feel like.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:18:54] I definitely do a lot of both.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:18:56] Like how do we make the shift if we tend to worry about tons of stuff?
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:19:01] Yeah. It's interesting, right? Because when I think about constructive worry I often wonder if worrying is constructive at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:19:08] Yeah. I don't know because then it makes me get prepared for stuff. Like if I didn't worry at all, would I have read your book? What? I'd been like, "Oh, good. I'll just show up." I don't know.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:19:18] Like worry makes you – does worry make you go to the gym? Does worry make you go to a therapist? Does worry make you eat right? Does worry make you treat your wife like the queen that she is. Does worry make you be the best father? I think so.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:19:34] A little bit. Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:19:35] I definitely think so because I won't cheat on my wife because I worry that I will ruin my family the way I feel like my father ruined our family. You know what I'm saying? I go to the gym because I worry about being fat and overweight and I eat right because I worry about how my skin going to look. Because I know that I get skin discoloration from certain things and I get acne from certain things. I think that's constructive worry. But it's worry but it also makes you take action.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:20:09] Right.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:20:10] You know what I'm saying? I think as long as we're taking action to go along with that worry, I think we'll be fine.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:20:14] Positive action. Not negative – not like I'm never leaving the house because I'm worried people are going to judge me.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:20:19] Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And by the way, I got people, I got friends who have crippling anxiety. And they got to take medication, even think about leaving the house. Their anxiety crippled them so much and they worry so much that they'll just be sitting in the crib, like not doing anything, just sitting there.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:20:36] Oh man, that's got to be terrible. I think about that because I thought, "Oh everybody," – when before I actually had to worry about anything in the past year or so – when people said, "Oh I have anxiety." I was like, "Oh, okay." And then you experienced a couple of weeks of like sleepless nights or like, you know, physical, not eating, whatever it is, you start to then go, "Oh, this is what real anxiety feels like and it's no joke." So I feel I have real compassion for people who got to take medication to even think about leaving the house. Like I don't have that. I can't imagine what that's like, but I can kind of think about what that must feel like. And I've, I have sympathy, the utmost sympathy for that. Imagine the things that you and I worry about like, "Oh, what people are going say?" "Eh, whatever, like forget about it." That's like all those people could think about or that's like they think about that times a hundred and they can't turn it off.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:21:27] Absolutely.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:21:28] That's got to be the worst. I think about making that shift. Think about what kind of action you take. Is it positive action? Then maybe, it's the good kind of worry. If it's negative action, if it's inhibiting you, maybe it's not. Maybe it's not constructive.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:21:41] Yeah. That's what I said. You just don't know what's constructed to worry about until you put a little worry into. You know what I'm saying? Until you actually think about how worried about this shit I get. On a scale of one to, I just got diagnosed with cancer – like, you know what I mean? How much should you worry? So it just depends on what the situation is, I guess.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:22:09] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:22:09] Like I suffered from parental paranoia. I'm going to worry about my kids.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:22:14] Yeah. I think that's normal.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:22:16] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:22:16] I'm worried about worrying about my kids. I don't even have yet.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:22:19] I'm worried about my three daughters. I have a 10-year-old who goes in school, a 3-year-old that's going to be starting school this year, a 4-month-old that's going to be starting school in another four years. Yeah, I got worried like why wouldn't I have worried. I got a house full of sick people right now. My wife is sick, my 4-month-old is sick, my 3-year-old is sick. Yes. I worry about them. Like why would not like that's this. I don't even know if that's constructive worry because there's nothing I can do about it. Like literally, there's nothing I can do other than I went to the doctor. Or hey, you take your medicine. Hey, let your mom sleep. You know what I mean? Like there's nothing I can do. So I don't know.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:22:59] Yeah. Yeah. That's a tricky one. The parental thing is a tricky one because it's like it's not constructive, but you probably can't turn it off. It's probably not hard wired.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:23:08] And I'm not turning it off. I refused to turn it off. You know what I'm saying? It actually increases as they get older, as you get older,
Jordan Harbinger: [01:23:18] You're a successful dude. So do you ever get – you've heard a fear of failure. Everybody I think has that. But do you ever have the fear of success? I first heard about this. I didn't think it could possibly be real.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:23:28] I think the only reason people have a fear of success is because of the fear of success runs parallel with the fear of failure, meaning that a lot of us are motivated to be successful because we don't want to be failures. But then when you get it, you don't want to lose it. So when you get it and you don't want to lose it, then you start, you know –
Jordan Harbinger: [01:23:47] Oh, that's interesting. So it's not really –
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:23:50] You start feeling like you might fail.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:23:51] Right, so it's not really fear of being successful. It's the fear of being successful and having it all go away.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:23:58] Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:23:58] I never thought about it like that.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:23:59] Yes.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:24:01] That's definitely worse.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:24:03] So for me, that's what it is. It's not necessarily the success factor that makes me afraid. It's the fear of not being successful anymore.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:24:13] Yeah.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:24:14] You know what I'm saying? Like that fear of not being successful anymore is what causes me to feel like, "Damn, I don't want to fail." So it's not like I'm sitting around just constantly thinking about, "Oh, I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail." Because you can't be afraid to fail. Every time I got fired, I filled up, allegedly. You can't be afraid to fail. Like you can't be afraid to make mistakes. You can't be afraid to do some things that were wrong. You can't be afraid to fuck up. Like that's just the way life is. So I can't walk around with a sense of fearing to fail, but I can have a sense of being successful and not wanting that to go away.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:24:56] Which is like a camouflage version of fearing to fail. So you'd be like, "Oh, I don't fear failure." But then we do all this other stuff and it's like, what's going on? It's camouflage, fear of failure in your fear of success. I had never thought about that. That's a really good point and I feel like that's a sneaky ass way to sit around and worry. Locked the front door, but the back door is wide open and you're sitting there with the front door. You got your rifle out. You're like, "Nobody's getting through here."
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:25:26] Absolutely.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:25:26] Meanwhile the back door is wide open. You got raccoons coming in the back.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:25:29] That's exactly what it is.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:25:31] Huh. Charlamagne, thank you, man. Always thought-provoking conversation.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:25:34] My brother, Jordan, thank you, man. I'm sorry I yawned a couple of times.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:25:38] That's all right. I take it off.
Charlamagne Tha God: [01:25:39] I've been up since four o'clock this morning. It has nothing to do with your line of questioning at all.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:25:46] Great big thank you to Charlamagne. His new book is titled Shook One. And of course, we'll link to that in the show notes. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people, manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits, I'm teaching you all that for free in my course, Six-Minute Networking. It replaces the Level One class. That's over at jordanharbinger.com/course. And I know you're going to do it later, right? Yeah. Oh, I've got it on my list. The problem with kicking the can down the road, you cannot make up for lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. The number one mistake I see people make is postponing this, not digging the well before they get thirsty. Once you need these relationships, you are too late. These drills take literally less than six minutes per day. This is the stuff I wish I knew a decade ago, so go check it out. jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking to building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Charlamagne Tha God. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.
Jordan Harbinger: [01:26:47] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason "Shook Two" DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So the fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love, and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipe, very excited for upcoming shows and guests. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.
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