Charlamagne: ON Being Open About Mental Health

In this episode of On Purpose, I sat down with the co-host of the nationally syndicated hip-hop radio program The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne Tha God. We discussed everything from his biggest fears, his struggles with mental health and his unique take on parenting. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

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• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  The worst advice I've ever got was keeping it real. But keeping it real in the cliche term that the streets give you, which is actually keeping it criminal.

• 3:22Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. I'm so grateful that you keep taking out the time to invest in your growth, your education, and for you to move forward. And today's guest is going to help you do just that. Today's guest is super unique. It doesn't really need an introduction, but I'm going to give him one anyway because I think that it's important for each and every person that we have on the show. Today's guest is Charlemagne. He's best known for co-hosting The Breakfast Club. He's a social media influencer and executive producer and someone who I think has a really interesting way of thinking about culture, media, and what's happening in the world today. And I can't wait to tap into that. Charlamagne, thank you so much for making the time, man.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  What's happening?

• 4:03Jay Shetty?

  For being here. Yeah, really good, man. Thank you.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  But yeah, so today I want to dive straight in. I called the podcast On Purpose. I believe you're someone who's living a purposeful life and I really want to dive into what that is. But I want to start by setting your background up a bit because I want my audience to really learn about what you've been through, where you've come from. And now, growing up, you went to jail quite a few times.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed.

• 4:25Jay Shetty?

  Right? Tell me about what that experience looks like, feels like, and how you were able to evolve from it.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That's an interesting question, because for me, the first time I ever went to jail, I didn't realize how much trouble I was in. Because the first time I ever went to jail was for assaulting Brady when he attempted to kill. And it was me sitting in the backseat with one of my homeboys, another guy that was driving. And, you know, one of my homeboys shot at this car because me, we had just been arguing with the guys. We're not really arguing, we was in the neighborhood talking to their girls. And they drove through and I was acting like Ice Cube and boys in the hood. I had my shirt up, I ain't even had no gun, just got my shirt up like, "What's up? Y'all got a problem? Y'all got a problem?" So then when we left the neighborhood and went to McDonald's, they followed us, they followed behind us. And then they pulled up on the side of us and so my homeboy shot.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And they literally came and arrested me the next day from high school. And, you know, you gotta think, up until that point, I had been getting into a lot of disciplinary problems in high school. But I had never been into a situation serious where I had ended up in jail. So it's like when they put me in handcuffs in high school, I honestly, it didn't even dawn on me that, "Oh shoot, I'm in prison." I mean, I'm in jail, in county jail. In my mind, I was like, "I'll be out by Friday in time for the football game." You know, like I literally thought I was going home that day. And I remember, you know, the police officers giving me a statement to write. And I wrote this long, lying-ass story about how I was hitchhiking and, you know, I jumped in the car with some hitchhikers and I don't know who the people were that shot. Just made up this whole BS story, you know?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And I remember the officers coming back saying to me, you know, "We was gonna, we was gonna let you go, but you know, you sent us on this wild goose chase." And then my father, my father was like, "Look, you know, I'm gonna let you sit here for a while. Because, you know, this is what I've been trying to tell you your whole life. I've been trying to tell you that if you don't change your behavior, you're gonna end up in jail, dead or broke, sitting under the tree." And, you know, he let me sit in there for like 45, 50 days. Wow. Yeah, I mean, he was, he was actually, he was waiting for the bond to go down as well. But he really wanted, wanted me to learn a lesson. And, you know, I didn't learn that lesson the first time I went to jail. You know, I learned it more like the second or third time I went to jail. Because, you know, when I, when I first got out... I was, actually, the day I went out, I went right back to the hood.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And my father told me not to do that. And you gotta think, I hadn't smoked weed for fifty days. So that's, that's kinda like when my love affair with marijuana stopped. Cause I remember getting out after those fifty days and smoking weed and being so paranoid. And all I kept thinking about was, I'm about to go back to jail, I'm about to go back to jail, I'm about to go back to jail. But I didn't realize at the time, I was dealing with anxiety too. So not only was it the weed, it was just the natural anxiety that I had my whole life was causing me to have a panic attack. I remember having a panic attack at, at that football game. So, you know, for me, it was just a learning experience. Cause, cause it was, it was validating everything my father was telling me. And my father was telling me that if I didn't change my behavior, if I didn't change my lifestyle, I was gonna end up in jail, dead or broke, sitting under the tree.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  So when you see things happen to other people, you know, wise people learn from those mistakes. But you know, you know, a lot of times, you know, you, you have to go through things yourself, you know, in order to, to, to really learn from them. That's why they say smart people learn from their own mistakes, wise people learn from the mistakes of others. I wasn't wise then, you know? I, I probably wasn't even smart, but I had to go through all of that, you know, just to, just to learn the lesson that my father had been trying to tell me for years.

• 7:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and what was it about that third time where you were like, okay, now I get it? Like now I get the lesson.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  It was, it wasn't even necessarily just the third time. I remember the second time I, I got locked up, I got locked up for, um, distribution of marijuana, cause I sold it to an undercover. And they, they had a, a drug bust on, on my, my, the, the, the house we used to trap out of. Rest in peace to my man, Jarrell Garnett. And we all was in jail. And I remember just all of us being in the cell and just bleh, I just threw up. Like I literally, I, I wasn't drunk or anything, I just, I was just sick. Cause I'm like, oh my God, I'm back in jail. Like, but I, I was only there for the weekend. And then it was just like, you know, the third time was just like, man, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I put myself in. Such good positions, you know what I mean? But then I put myself in such bad positions.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And it's like, yo, you can't, you know, play both sides. You know what I'm saying? You gotta really do one or the other. So it was just me finally realizing, once again, everything my father is saying is true. If I don't change my lifestyle, I'm gonna end up in jail, dead or broke, sitting under the tree. When you see people that you grew up with, who you used to look up to, and they really are broke, sitting under the tree. Or you got people who end up going to jail for five years. That was the first time. My homeboy, he actually went to jail for five years. He was the first person I knew that had like a longer prison sentence. And those five years seemed like forever until he came home. But those type of situations just finally made me say like, yo, this is real, and I'm not gonna waste my life. And I always had this vision of the future, you know? Because I don't know what I was reading one day,

• 9:22Speaker 01

  would have just said, everything you do in your life today directly impacts what happens in your life tomorrow. And maybe I saw Back to the Future, and I was like, damn. I remember, for real, because I believe in the space-time continuum.

• 9:31Jay Shetty?

  Me too.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  You know, you see what happens if you don't make the right decisions, you know, in your past, that will impact your future. And I always thought about that, you know? I thought about what my friends were doing, or what my cousins were doing, you know? And what was causing them to be washed, so to speak, or causing them to end up in jail. And I just was like, I'm about to do the exact opposite. And that's exactly what I did. I started going to night school. I started, you know, working real jobs. Like, I just did anything I had to do to create positive energy in my life.

• 10:04Jay Shetty?

  I love that, man, because I think a lot of us can have that experience. Maybe not to the same extreme of going to jail multiple times, but I think a lot of people listening right now, watching right now, would say that we're not wise. We don't learn from the mistakes of others. We don't learn from hearing about the mistakes of others. We learn by, unfortunately or fortunately, going through the experiences. And one thing that you sparked was what you said about your father. There's a statement that says, "The day that you realize your parents were right, your kids are telling you that you're wrong." You know, the day you realize your parents are right, your kids are telling you you're wrong.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 10:35Jay Shetty?

  And we go through that process. I'm not a father yet, so I can't, I can't testify to that.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I got three. You need some of my sperm? What you trying to do?

• 10:42Jay Shetty?

  I'm still waiting, I'm still waiting. But I mean, do you have that sometimes? Do your kids, when you're coaching your kids or you're sharing that wisdom with them or insight with them?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I haven't gotten to that point yet. Like, my oldest daughter is 10.

• 10:53Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  My other daughter's three, and I got a seven month old. So I haven't gotten to that point where like my, like, you know, both my daughters have their own personalities. They're both very strong willed. But for the most part, you know, especially my oldest daughter, she really listens to me. My second daughter don't listen to me at all, but she's only three, so I gotta give her time. But my oldest daughter listens to me a lot, and she listens to me.

• 11:12Jay Shetty?

  Well, that's beautiful.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Intently, you know, and, and, you know, she just, I guess maybe because we're both Kansas. You know, my, my, my birthday is the 29th, her birthday is the 27th, so she's just in tune with me in a different way. And I think that she's grasping the concept of whatever happens today will dictate what happens in your life tomorrow. Because I realize she has a lot of plans. Like, you know, she's been talking about going to Harvard for the longest. Then she started talking about going to UCLA because of their gymnastics program, if I'm not mistaken. Or the cheerleading, might be cheerleading or gymnastics, I don't remember. Some program UCLA has that she's really into. But then she says she wants to be a dentist and, you know, she hears me talk about business a lot.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  And the one thing I do is, if I'm on like a business call, if she's riding in the car with me, I have the phone on speaker. Because I don't think, I think kids, we learn, the stuff we think is in the background to kids is actually top of the mind awareness to kids. So when we're having these conversations, kids learn from that. Kids learn from what they hear us say. Kids learn from what they see us do. So, you know, if you walking around your kids yelling and screaming and cursing all the time, don't be surprised when they start yelling and screaming and cursing. But when you having conversations about business and, you know, buying, you know, commercial real estate and franchising and, you know, whatever, whatever it is, like she takes all of that in. Like, she wrote a screenplay the other day.

• 12:29Jay Shetty?

  No way.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  She wrote it for, she just, it was something for school, but it was a screenplay. I'm like, how'd you learn to write a screenplay? And she was like, because I read a Harry Potter book one time, that was a screenplay. I don't know if it was a Harry Potter book. It was some book that she read that was in the form of a screenplay. wrote her own screenplay. Now she's, she says, I'm writing a book. I don't want you to read it till I'm finished. I'm like, do your thing. Like, I'm not gonna stifle anything you do creatively.

• 12:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Go.

• 12:50Jay Shetty?

  That's beautiful, man. I think that's a great trip. Yeah, kids don't do as you say, they do as you do.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's, that, man, that's so funny. You said that. I was having that conversation with somebody earlier today and I was talking about, or maybe it was yesterday, but I don't remember. I was talking about like how, you know, the stupidest thing you could tell somebody, especially when you're a parent is don't do as I do. Do as I say. No. Like, I'm gonna do what I see you do. I'm not like, I don't, I don't care about your, your words and lip service. I care about your actions and deeds.

• 13:17Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  And that's how all of us learn. Like,

• 13:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, all of us.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  We're, we're a visual people. You know, if you show me how to do something as opposed to tell me how to do something, I'm gonna learn faster. Well, at least I do.

• 13:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, me too. No, a hundred percent, man. And, and then this seems like a massive switch in your life because you have this moment or few moments and you're now saying you're going to night school. You start getting real jobs. You shifted to being a local radio station. How does that shift happen? And why do you think you get start getting pushed in that direction of, of music and radio?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  That should have happened because I believe that positive energy activates constant elevation. And I mean, I always wanted to rap. Like, I got, I got Wolverine tattooed on my arm, holding a microphone. I got this when I was seventeen. So I always wanted to rap. And it's, it's, you know, the, the, I got Wolverine holding a mic because I thought that the microphone was gonna change my life. It did, just not the way that I thought it was going to. And so like, you know, when you're a, a black man growing up in a, a certain environment, the people you see who, who are successful that look like you are usually in rap. Or they're usually in, you know, uh, athletics, you know? So, so for me, I wanted to rap. So I, I would be at these local studios. I was at a studio called TNT.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  And, um, then I was at another studio called Never So Deep, you know, Never So Deep. Those are my, that's my family, you know, Dr. Robert Evans and his son, you know, uh, Bless. And for me, I met this guy named Willie Will and he's a radio personality. And he was a local radio personality at Z ninety three Jams in Charleston, South Carolina. And I remember just, you know, I'm like that now. If I see somebody doing something interesting, I just ask them, how did they get into it? You know, what, what, how did you, how did you get into whatever it is that you're doing? And I said, how did you get into radio, man? And he was like, I went down there, I got an internship. And he's like, oh, you went down there and got an internship? Like, like, is that easy? And he was like, yeah. I'm like, you don't have to be in school or nothing? He was like, nah. And this is nineteen ninety eight in Charleston, South Carolina.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  So, you know, the entry, the path to entry was a little bit less difficult than it is now. And so, that's what I did. I went down there and I got an internship. And that's how I got my foot in the door of radio. And for me, a guy who'd never been to college, didn't have no college degree, might have just graduated night school and have my diploma, that was a huge deal for me. Because that was the first environment I was in that was like really corporate. Even though I had worked at, you know, a telemark, a, a, a, a telemarketing place called Paragon Solutions. I worked at Demo in the Mall, which was a clothing store. But that was a big deal. Because that's, you know, for me, that's Z ninety three. I'm from Moncks, Corner, South Carolina. My whole life was Z ninety three. Z ninety three is the heritage station in that area. It's still there right now.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  So, that's what we used to always listen to. So, for me to just be in that building, even though I was just an intern, you know, I was, you know, driving the station vehicle and going to get the Jock's Pizza, or whatever it was, that just felt like such a big deal. Even just driving the truck and people blowing their horn at you and you, they driving down the highway like, oh, Z ninety three? Like, that was such a big deal for me. So, that's, that's how I got into that space. You know what I'm saying? Just, just really following my dreams. And that's why I always say, I'm not afraid to say fuck my dreams. And in my first book, Black Privilege, you know, I have a chapter called Fuck Your Dreams. You know, and it's fuck your dreams if they're not your dream. Because rap really wasn't my dream. Rap was just something I wanted to do because I saw it working for other people. I saw it working for people who looked like me.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  So, me following that dream led me to be in that recording studio. But what was really supposed to happen, I was supposed to have that conversation with Willie Will. And Willie Will was supposed to introduce me to this game that changed my life, which is radio. And that, and that's exactly what happened.

• 16:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that, man. And a lot of people won't know this as well, is that mine's the same. So, I have a microphone tattooed on my neck. Because I grew up wanting to be a rapper as well. So if you're in the Source magazine.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:56Jay Shetty?

  I wanted to be a rapper too, and I used to love spoken word.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  That's a hand around it, right?

• 17:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, Chris holding a microphone.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Got you.

• 17:02Jay Shetty?

  So I used to love, I used to love writing, I used to love word, and that was the same thing for me. And I had the same experience because I used to do internet choice FM. Choice FM was London's, because I grew up, born and raised in London. So Choice FM was London's underground grime, you know, hip hop rap. That was our space. So I was interning there when I was around sixteen, seventeen. And for me, it was the same thing. And then I realized through the same process that what I loved was moving people through language. Moving people through words.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Communication.

• 17:30Jay Shetty?

  Communication. That's what I love. So even though I'm not a rapper now in my life, my whole life revolves around a microphone, whether that's podcasting, whether it's video. But the point is, it's using words to articulate a message that moves and transforms people's lives.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Same here. That's, that's, that's very interesting you say that because that's what I have always known, but just started to really understand. Like I, I tell people, I tell them, I've been doing radio twenty one years, but I feel like the past two years, I've been really walking in my purpose, you know? And, and I think that purpose is, you know, knowing that when you got a certain platform and you know, when that platform gets to a certain level, like you're here to deliver some, some type of messaging. You know, and I feel like that's where, that's where I'm at now with it in my career.

• 18:17Jay Shetty?

  That's awesome. And what is the purpose? Where, where is your purpose right now? Like, what is it exactly? And how's it serving people?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  This is exactly what you just said, serving people. You know, I, I, I wrote an article, I used to write for Ozone magazine back in the day. I don't know if you remember Ozone. But I used to write for Ozone, and I remember writing this article called, what would, it was what would Jesus do? So it was WWJD, but it was what would Jesus do? If Jesus was a jock? So it was all of those initials, basically. And I was saying that if Jesus was alive, he would be a radio personality slash DJ. Because I really truly feel like we're public servants and we're here to serve the needs of the public. You know, we're not public servants like police officers, we're not public servants. Like, you know, firefighters, you know, but we're public servants being that every day.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Somebody gets up in the morning, six AM to 10 AM, and we gotta get them through. You know, we help them get their day started. We give them their news. We give them their information. We entertain them. We educate them, you know, we give them that energy and I truly feel like that is what you're supposed to do when you have access to these big platforms. Like Malcolm X said, the person who controls the media controls the minds of the masses. And I mean, if you notice, we're getting fed, we're getting fed a lot of BS right now. You know, it's a lot of fear mongering going on, you know, it's a lot of anti-intellectualism going on. And I'm not saying I'm the most intellectual motherfucker out here at all, but I know the people who are. And being that I know who the people who are, I got a platform of four to five million people

• 19:52Speaker 01

  that they can talk to whenever they want to. So, so that's what I use my platform for. If it's not me delivering the messaging that may impact somebody's life or affect somebody's life, I know the people that can. So for me, that's what my purpose is to serve the needs of the public. And one of the biggest things I think that the public needs right now is we just need to be mentally healthy. And it's so wild to me, everything that I'm realizing now, I always knew. Like I told you, I wrote that article about being a public servant a long time ago. And before that, I always knew that everything was mental. Like I always knew that. And it can, it can go back to like another bad creation saying everything is mental. Uh, you know, TLC saying everything is mental. Uh, you know, RZA saying everything is mental. Everything starts with your thoughts.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  You know, like when they teach you in kindergarten, if you can conceive it, you can achieve it, like you have to be mentally healthy to even have that kind of optimism. And you wonder why so many brothers in the hood, so many sisters in the hood don't have that kind of optimism. It's because they're dealing with their insecurity and their anxiety and their depression and just trauma and pain. How can I think clearly? How can this tool that can change my life, which is my brain, how can I properly use that if I got all of these, you know, obstacles and these distractions in my head that are keeping me from thinking optimistically. So that my, my biggest thing right now is just to, just to spread that word of investing in your mental wealth.

• 21:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that, man. And that's the same reason why I started social media, like my. My mission on social media is making wisdom go viral. So it's like, how do you take this wisdom that's like hidden away? It was only for the elite or it was only for people who went and had these crazy experiences and adventures. How do we take that and spread it to everyone? So that that average kid in London where I grew up or the average kid in New York City where we are right now can come across it and find it too. They don't need to go read a book right now. They don't need to go and travel halfway across the world to find it. And so with that, how did you start? Cause you talk about how at 40, you had a spiritual awakening. How did you get to a point where you started to confront the fact that there were beliefs, pain, trauma from your past that you'd never faced before?

• 21:58Jay Shetty?

  And that's what's clouding and blocking so many people today. Our mental health or our mental wealth is lost because we're clouded by all this pain from the past, challenges we never looked at. How did you start to confront that? And where can people start too?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  You know, I started unpacking a lot of that in therapy. You know, I always say that when it comes to therapy, you know, therapy is like having a real junky closet. So you got just a messy closet everywhere. So you start to pack up the things that you don't need and things that don't serve you anymore. And you, you get rid of that and the things you want to keep you hang up nice and neat. And then you got room to bring new stuff in. But you know, to, to get to that point, it was just me not only asking myself a whole lot of questions, having conversations with other people, you know? It's so funny, man, I got like friends who used to tell me that they thought I was a sociopath. Cause I didn't really show any emotions or it didn't seem like anything ever got to me, you know? I, I didn't have empathy for other people.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  And some of that could have been true, but you know, I just think that all of us are just so selfish. So we're all just stuck in our own world. And I mean, I'm sure you can attest to the fact that when you really on your grind and you trying to get it, like you not thinking about nobody else. Like when, when I was thinking about everybody else early on in my career, it was like, I had a bunch of stuff weighing me down, you know? And it's like, yo, you can't take everybody with you until you get to where you're supposed to go. So I remember telling my homeboy DJ Frosty, when I first got the job with the Breakfast Club, I said, you know what I'm gonna do, man? This time around, something I've never done before. I'm gonna be completely selfish. I said, I'm gonna focus on me and only me. And then when I get to where I feel like I, I need to be, I'm gonna, you know, start, start bringing everybody else along.

• 23:37Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast.

• 24:20Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

• 25:05Jay Shetty?

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• 25:37Speaker 01

  So for me, when I started just having conversations with other people, right? Stop being selfish, like actually started listening. Because that's one thing social media did do. It woke a lot of people up because, you know, just our language. Like you would say little things. I remember one time I got on Twitter and I said something about females. Like I thought, yo, females, whatever, whatever. And it was just like all these comments, you don't call women females. I'm like, what the, what the fuck? Since when don't we call women females? But that's just, you know, new language, new information. And instead of, at first I dismissed it, like, man, I don't hear that. But then after a while, I had to just stop and say, okay, well, let me see why they don't want to be called female. So they broke it down to me why they don't want to be called females.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Like even, you know, conversations with, with black women, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, we, we, we tend to take for granted, you know, black women, you know? I never, I didn't, I, I, and I told my, I used to work with this young lady named Crystal. I used to have my TV show Uncommon Sense and she used to be on that. I remember saying to her one day, like, I really did not know black women felt the way they felt. You know, because my whole life, the strongest people around me was black women. You know, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, you know, my, my, my girl, who's now my wife. So I just wasn't paying attention to what they were saying. You know, I just assumed that they would always be there for us. And I just assumed that they were strong enough to handle any load. But, yo, they, they was tired, you know what I mean? And they was tired of a lot of the fuck shit that we was doing.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  So for me, just those type of conversations started making me be just way more aware of what was going on around me. And it started making me be more aware of what was going on with myself. And I remember having a conversation with my homegirl Amanda Seals. And I remember Amanda saying, yo, brothers are damaged. They don't want to admit that they're damaged and they don't want to do the work to get no healing. And I remember just hearing that word, healing. And I remember saying to myself, I'm gonna go get me some healing. You know what I mean? I'm gonna go get me some real spiritual, emotional, mental healing. Forget the gym three or four times a week, you know what I'm saying? I'm about to start going to the therapist every week and I'm about to start meditating. And, you know, I'm about to, you know, just, just do whatever I gotta do to really put myself in a mentally healthy space.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And then I wanted to get a handle on my anxiety. So, you know, like panic attacks is something that I experienced my whole life. And the last really, well, not the last really big, really bad one, but the one I had that made me realize I was dealing with anxiety was when I was back at home, living in Moncks Corner, South Carolina with my mother at like thirty-one, thirty-two years old. My daughter was like two. My, my now wife had to move back home to Moncks Corner with her parents. And I had just gotten fired for the fourth time from radio. Finally started collecting unemployment because all the other times I was too proud to do it. So I started collecting my unemployment checks. And I remember driving down I-26 in South Carolina and feeling like I was about to die. Like same feeling, the same shortness of breath, same crazy heart palpitations.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Had to pull over, drink some water, said a quick prayer like, please, God, don't let me die on the side of the road. Like, I promise I'll go to the doctor tomorrow. Went to the doctor the next day. Doctor's like, yo, you got a healthy heart. Your heart is fine, you know? But he said, um, he said, have you, have you, have you, do you suffer from anxiety? And I'm like, no. He's like, it sounds like you had an anxiety attack. And I'm like, I've never had that before, but I thought about it. I'm like, yo, my whole life I've had these things. And then the doctor said, are you stressed out about anything? I'm like, hell, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So in my mind, I could always point to something else, you know? So I didn't deal with it. But then once you, my next gig was The Breakfast Club. Four or five years later, you richer than you ever been. You got more opportunities than you ever had, but you're still having the panic attacks.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  You're still having anxiety. And you're like, okay, where is this coming from? And then finally, my wife was like, yo, take your ass to therapy. Just go see what's up. Instead of flirting with the idea and talking to other people about therapy, go. And that's what I did. And then, you know, when you start going to therapy, you start unpacking all kinds of shit.

• 29:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  You start dealing with trauma from things that happened to you when you was young. Things that you thought you dealt with, that you hadn't, you know? You start focusing on your PTSD from things that happened to you when you was young. And then you start thinking about, you know, the pain and the hurt that you still feel from certain situations. And you don't realize you have been redistributing that pain to other people for so long. That's why you didn't have no empathy for nobody else because you really was hurting. And you've been hurting so long that you numb. To what it is you actually feel, so.

• 30:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  You know.

• 30:01Jay Shetty?

  I love that, man. And that's the challenge, right? Like, all of us have been through stuff. But we've never unpacked it. We've never repacked, we've never unlearned, we've never figured it out. And that's why we end up in this position. And the problem is denial. We sit there and we deny that we have any experience of stress or pressure or anxiety. When the truth is, we're dealing with a lot of it. And I love that. I love the fact that you're making that point clear is that whatever you're experiencing, you're de-stigmatizing mental health. Because we think mental health has to be something super mental, right? Like, we think mental health has to be something like schizophrenia. Or like a complete, a complete personality disorder or something. We don't realize that it could just be regular anxiety.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't realize anxiety was a mental health disorder until I started going to therapy.

• 30:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And I remember when they asked me to write, you know, my second book, where they didn't ask me to write one, but they wanted me to write a second book. And I was like, I really don't have anything to write about. Because at that point, I was really just trying to figure my life out. Because you gotta understand, like, when I started going to therapy, I'm forty now, I might have started going to therapy around thirty-eight, you know? Early thirty-nine. And for me, it was like, yo, can you imagine thinking you had it all together? Thinking you knew exactly what was going on in the world? And then you start sitting down with a therapist and realizing you don't know shit? Realizing that, you know, you've just, everything that you, you was raised totally wrong? From, in a lot of different ways, you know?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  You was raised wrong by the influences you had growing up, you know? You was raised wrong by the music you was listening to growing up. You was raised wrong by your environment. And you've carried all of this stuff with you into your adult world. And you're still trying to function with this level of thinking and this level of understanding of things. But you've lived now, like, you've lived and you've been around the world and you've talked to a lot of people and you've seen other things. And you realize like, nah, this ain't, this ain't it, bro. Like, we, we, we wrong. So imagine. Feeling like you know it all to realizing I don't know shit.

• 32:04Jay Shetty?

  Especially when you're an influencer.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:06Jay Shetty?

  You're an opinion maker. Like people come to you to listen to your thoughts.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  So.

• 32:09Jay Shetty?

  And then you have to go through that process.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So the only thing I could do is like, you know what? I gotta take people on this journey with me. Simple as that. You know, I remember, I remember telling my book publisher, like, look, you know, I've been going to therapy. I've been keeping a journal. I've been dealing with my anxiety, but then I realized I'm dealing with my PTSD. I'm realizing I got trauma from things that happened to me when I was younger. I'm, you know, talking about being molested when I was eight. You know, I'm talking about issues with my father, like all of these different things, you know? Uh, fear of not being a good husband, fear of not being a good father, you know? Fear of, you know, not being a good friend, you know, just all kinds of different things. And so I just started turning these into a pa- in pages of a book. And what I was trying to do, I was trying to translate what my therapist was telling me.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  But that doesn't work, you know, because what, what your therapist is telling you just helps for you to have a better understanding of what it is you're going through. So one thing that my therapist did help me do was to explain what I was going through better. But I brought in a doctor named Dr. Ish to give like the clinical correlations to everything that I was feeling and, and, and that's, that's what was, that was really the most beautiful thing about the book. That was therapeutic for me. And I know people say it all the time when they write books. Oh, it was therapeutic for me, but no, this was really therapeutic for me because this is not a, it's not a book about understanding. Like it's not a, it's a book of confusion. It's a book of unpacking. It's a book of, this is all the shit that don't serve me no more. This is, this is what was fucked up about me, you know? And I don't want this no more. Like here, y'all take this. This is gone.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You know, cause I'm at stage zero right now. And guess what? Happy to be at stage zero. Like it feels good to not know. You know, and it feels good to say you don't know.

• 33:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  And, and I feel like at 40, I'm doing more unlearning than learning.

• 33:51Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  At this point in my life.

• 33:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's the biggest challenge today is like that ability to speed up unlearning, relearning.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:59Jay Shetty?

  Right? Relearning again. And I think so many of us get blocked by thinking we know it all already. So I love that, man. It's a great message. Let's tap into some of those fears in a bit more detail because I think your unlearning and your healing in those are awesome. So if we look at something like parental paranoia, which I know a lot of people have. Like becoming a parent, I'm not a parent yet, that's what I'm asking, but I'm also asking it because one area of wisdom that I don't talk about is parenting because I'm not a parent. And I know my audience cares a lot about this. So let's talk about that parental paranoia, which I think is very normal. How have you kind of grown to deal with that and work with that or heal that?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  You said something earlier, you said something about you, what'd you say? You realize your parent, when you realize your parents-

• 34:38Jay Shetty?

  The day you realize your parents are right, your kids are telling you that you're wrong.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and I guess that was another one of those moments, you know, um, only because you think about all the times your grandmother used to trip out over you, all the times your mother and father used to trip out over you. Wonder where you was at and why you didn't come home. Like I remember my father, you know, gave my sister, my older sister a beating because she broke her few. And I remember everybody running around the town, looking for her, trying to find out where she was and this and that. It's just like, that's a paranoia that only a parent can understand. You know what I'm saying? Like the love you have for your children, like that, those are real, but I got three girls. So those, that's really your heart outside of your body. Like you're looking like somebody just ripped my organ out and threw it on the table. And I'm like, yo, could you be more gentle with my heart, that's my heart.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So it's just like, when my daughter is on the way to school in the morning, you know, her being at school right now. Like I don't feel any sense of relief. Well, I got a sense of relief now because I know it's three o'clock. So she's out of school now, she got out of school at three thirty. But I don't feel any sense of relief until I know she's home. You know, only because I don't know what she's going to experience at school, especially nowadays. You know what I mean? Like these kids are growing up way different than we ever grew up. And then you see stupid shit on the news like school shootings and you like, man. You know, like you start thinking the worst at all times, you know? And it's just like, those are the things that I'm afraid of, you know? And then even just when your, your kids get older, I remember somebody asking me the question one day, somebody said,

• 36:08Speaker 01

  I think Jamelle Hill asked me this. Jamelle Hill said, are you, uh, would you, are you the type, are you the type of man you would want your daughter to date? Or be with? And I was like, yeah, probably me from thirty-five to forty. Anything before that, hell no. You know? But, but that's honestly, think about, think about that question. Like, if you got girls, are you the type of man that you would want your daughter to date? Like, stuff like that is what'll help you go out there and get the healing you need if the answer is no. You know what I'm saying? If the answer is no, then go out there and get that healing you need. Take your ass to therapy, whatever it is you gotta do to, you know, be the man that you would want

• 36:52Speaker 01

  your daughter to date. So like, I'm paranoid about all of that stuff. Like, there's certain things that I've already embraced. Like, I know one day my daughter's gonna have sex. You know what I'm saying? Like, and then it's gonna happen. Like, every woman that we love in our life has sex. Your mama, your grandma, you know, your sisters, your aunt, that's gonna happen. So it's just like, things like that, I'm about to get a panic attack thinking about it, but that's just, you, like, things like that is what you just have to accept. You understand what I'm saying? So it's just like, you know, I always gotta remember my serenity prayer, man. And that's just, God grant me the serenity, accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference, because there's nothing I can do. And that's, somebody else told me that too, and that was like one of the most freeing things to me. They told me that you gotta just let go.

• 37:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Like, no matter how, I can, I can grab my daughter like this and hold on to her tight. I mean, I gotta let go, she's ten. My other daughter's gonna be older in a minute too, she's gonna be in school. Like, they got their own lives that they gotta live, their own lives that they gotta lead. Only thing I can do is just guide them along the way.

• 37:53Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man, absolutely, no, you're spot on. And, and I think that's, like you said, that's a natural feeling everyone's gonna have. I always had that with my younger sisters. I've got a younger sister, I always felt like I fathered her to some degree, and there was always that feeling and that pain of seeing her date or whatever it may be. And you're right, that's just something you have to accept.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:11Jay Shetty?

  And there's a big part of acceptance needed, because you can't control everything. And that's also liberating when you figure that out. That not everything is for yours to control.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 38:20Jay Shetty?

  And it's not for you to control. There is certain things to humanize yourself by and you realize, oh, actually, I'm not that significant because I can't control everything. And I have to learn to accept certain things.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna write a book. I mean, I don't think I'm gonna go with this title anymore just because the energy of it don't feel right. But, you know, at one point, I was gonna write a book called, One Day Your Daughter's Gonna Suck Dick and Other Things You Have To Accept As A Father.

• 38:43Jay Shetty?

  Well, so now what's he gonna change the title to?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  I might not change, I just don't know, that just feels a little too trash, you know what I'm saying? Like, I know that sounds crazy coming from me, but I'm not, I guess I've grown. You know what I'm saying? I guess I've grown because at one point, I'm like, yeah, that's the title, I love that. But then now it's like, eh, I don't know if I wanna put that.

• 39:00Jay Shetty?

  I think it'd be a useful book, though.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Very useful.

• 39:02Jay Shetty?

  Very useful book, yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  But sometimes, man, you know, you gotta present the message in the right package, you know? Sometimes, yeah, people will dismiss you and just because of that title, you know what I mean? Which I think is whack. I'm not that kind of person, you know? I'm the type of person, if I see a book like The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, I'm going to read that book, you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, that's a dope title, like, that grabbed me. But I know I come from a different generation, I come from a different culture. You know, I was gonna name my first book, I Don't Give A Fuck and Neither Should You, a self-help guide on how not to give a fuck. And the book publishers was like, no, you'll never get in the Walmart, you'll never get in the Target, nobody will buy a book with fucking the title. And then here comes The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. Mark Manson sold goddamn over two million copies. And I remember sending that shit to, I wrote about that book in my book

• 39:47Speaker 01

  because I was talking about how, you know, you, sometimes you just gotta listen to yourself.

• 39:52Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  You know, like, sometimes you're ahead of the curve and other people have to just catch up. And that's just the way our society is, especially when it comes to creatives. That's why you gotta let creatives just be creatives because they're already 10 steps ahead of you. But you got all of these suits, whether it's TV, whether it's the film world, whether it's books, like, you just got these suits that are old and stuck in their ways. And being that they've, they've never seen it work before, they'll tell you it can't work.

• 40:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Not knowing that you might be the first that changes the whole game.

• 40:22Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Nobody, nobody wants to be game changers anymore.

• 40:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. You look at Bohemian Rhapsody and Freddie Mercury.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:28Jay Shetty?

  It's like such a game changer. And you look at anyone that we look up to or admire in the world, they've been game changers. They don't write books about people who are not game changers. You don't make movies about people that are not game changers. But we've always been taught about how do you trust other people? We don't get taught how to trust yourself.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:44Jay Shetty?

  Right? We we get taught, how do you communicate with other people? We never learn how to communicate with ourself.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:48Jay Shetty?

  And so if you never trust your own self, you're always looking for validation, like, hey, do you think this is a good idea? Hey, suit, do you think this is a good idea? Hey, suit, do you think this is a good idea? And then that suit becomes your validation and your decision maker.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And those are the most uncreative people in the world. Like, I've never been more confident in my life than I am right now. And I'm confident in the fact that I don't know shit.

• 41:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  And I'm comfortable with that, you know? And I'm confident in the fact that I am a person who truly loves theirself. And the reason I truly love myself, because I've done the work to truly love myself. And it's easier for me. And I guess that's why I get hurt a lot, because I am a loving, trusting person. Because I'm I'm at the point in my life where I just, I try to see the good in everybody, you know what I mean? And and and I don't expect you to fuck me over. That's another lesson I I've recently learned.

• 41:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, go for it, man.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  I used to, I I still believe in the law of attraction, meaning that your thoughts become things. But um, I don't necessarily think I believe in energy as far as like, whatever you put out, you get back. Because it will always be somebody else out there who's having a fucked up day, who will ruin yours. Because you gotta think, all always trying to do every day is avoid crazy.

• 41:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  We're just trying to stay out of the way of negativity, crazy, evil. But guess what? Sometimes there's people out there who are hurt. And they haven't done the work on themselves. And they haven't, you know, gotten to that place where they're trying to do any healing. And so hurt people hurt people. And sometimes we run into those people. And it has nothing to do with anything that we did. We just happened to run into, you know, some of that negativity that day.

• 42:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  So so that's just, that's just something I've been thinking about. So it's just like, yo, you just gotta, you gotta do, you gotta put that kind of energy out there just because you like putting that kind of energy out there, not because you're putting that kind of energy out there because you want to get it back.

• 42:33Jay Shetty?

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• 44:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I've realized actually that when you put out good, it does come back to you just not in the same place as you put it.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:14Jay Shetty?

  Right? Like, that energy will transfer back, but not in the same place as you put it. So just because you put good energy into work, doesn't mean good energy is going to come back to you through work. Just to put good energy into this person, doesn't mean this person's going to give you good energy back.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 44:27Jay Shetty?

  And that's our expectation. It's that we think like, if I'm nice to this person, they'll be nice to me. And that's not going to work like that.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  No, be nice to that person because you want to be nice to that person and put a period on it.

• 44:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. I love that, man. And one thing you mentioned earlier that I want to dive into now, which is more about... Your understanding of culture and where you see it going and you spotted, you said that I grew up listening to the wrong type of music, or there was music that you think created an environment and pushed you down the line. You even said when you were thinking about people that look like you, there were certain things.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:57Jay Shetty?

  Let's, let's talk a bit about how much you think music through all of its, you know, whether it's bad language, whether it's idolizing going to prison, whether it's idolizing guns and gangs, whether it's demeaning women or men even, like where are your thoughts on that? And, and how do you think that needs to evolve? Or do you think it does it all?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Not, I think it, I think it has evolved.

• 45:17Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I grew up in the nineties, so I grew up in the era of gangster rap music. So it was, it was all about, you know, the celebration of violence. It was all about the glorification of the gang culture, the glorification of the drug culture and the extreme disrespect of women. You know, I mean, you talking about, you know, whether it was AMG bitch better have my money or Snoop Dog, bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks, you know what I'm saying? Uh, N W A, I teach you how to suck a dick. Like, you know, I remember Cameron said, you know, niggas think to, uh, what'd he say? Niggas think to reach a bitch, you gotta, what'd he say? Oh yeah, niggas think to reach a bitch, you gotta treat a bitch. Nice dude motherfucker gotta beat a bitch. I say, reach a bitch. Who thinks she all that? Whip it one time, 10 minutes, she'll come back. Like all of these, like, like that's what we were constantly

• 46:02Speaker 01

  listening to all the time. And when you go back and you look at like, see Dolores Tucker and Al Sharpton and all of these people who were saying, yo, this music is messed up, is ruining our kids, like, you know, rappers, y'all need to do better, record labels need to stop pushing this shit. We rebelled against that. You know, you know, you know what we said to see Dolores Tucker?

• 46:21Jay Shetty?

  What?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Shut up bitch. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, and God bless the dead, that's what we did. We rebelled against that. But she was right, you know? And so it's like a whole generation of, of, of us was affected and influenced by that kind of rhetoric. And, you know, I don't think that it's until you get older and you start having daughters of your own, or, you know, that's why I think the Me Too Time's Up movement is so good, because the Me Too Time's Up movement is, is like a, like a, like a day of reckoning, you know, and it's making a lot of people look in the mirror and, and, and, and the culture has shifted and, you know, either you evolve or die, you know? And that's something I saw. Like four years ago, you know, before there was a Me Too Time's Up movement.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Like I, like I said, I don't know if it was my daughter, uh, like my wife checking me, you know, cause I was really on some hip hop Howard Stern shit, like, like that, all of that got to my head. You know, when they was calling me the hip hop Howard Stern and the black Howard Stern. And you know, when I grew up listening to Howard, like Howard was on some frat boy, you know, rapey borderline, borderline rapey culture, not even borderline rape, rape culture.

• 47:27Jay Shetty?

  Rape culture.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And so it's for like, for me, I'm like, okay, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be shocking. I'm gonna say the most creepiest things the women in interviews, you know, I'm gonna bring porn stars in here and tie them up. I'm gonna do like all of that kind of stuff. And that has been the most low energy content that I've putting out, put out there, if you ask me. You know, like when I'm having conversations with people, ain't nobody bringing that up to me. Ain't nobody saying, you know, you did this and you did that. They talking about the more high level stuff that I've, I've putting out there in the past few, few years that has really influenced people. So it's just like, I was doing all that for nothing, you know? If anything, all that did was come back and bite me in the ass later on in life. Cause when they start digging up old tweets and listening to, listening to old commentary,

• 48:11Speaker 01

  they're like, look, I'm like, man, I'm not even remotely that guy anymore. Like he has eight, nine years ago. Like I'm, I'm over here with it, but you gotta deal with that. Cause that's part of me too. I put that out there, you know? So for me, it's just like, I, so I was just reading Howard Stern's new book. Howard Stern got this, his whole introduction is literally about that. His whole introduction is about how he doesn't consider anything he did back then good.

• 48:38Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  He was like, that shit is cheap. It was, it was, it was whack. It was disgusting. And he was, and, and, and this is a guy, he don't, he don't got an answer to nobody.

• 48:46Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  He don't have to admit that, you know? He was just like, that's not who I am anymore. He said, he said, he said, this book, this book that he put out is his legacy book. He was like, this is what I want to be remembered at. I want these long form interviews to be what people remember me for. And so it's like, it's the same thing with me. Like, you know, you grow up a certain way. Like I remember having a, I remember having a conversation with my father. When he was cheating on my mom. And I'm like, oh, you cheating on mom, yada, yada, yada. And I remember him looking at me and laughing and saying, oh, you only got one girl, huh? And like, yeah, one, one, one day you'll understand. So in my mind, from that point, I'm thinking, so I'm not supposed to have one girl. I'm supposed to have a bunch of different girls. And then, you know, you also realize that a lot of that is just ego.

• 49:28Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  You know, men, men, I say it all the time, men only sleep around with a bunch of different women to feed their ego. They're looking for some sort of validation. You know what I'm saying? Like their, their cup is empty.

• 49:38Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  So they're trying to fill their cup up and they keep wondering why. All right, I can sleep with 10 different women and my cup still don't feel full because there's a hole at the bottom of your cup. Like you need a whole new cup, brother.

• 49:46Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  You know? So it's just like, for me, all of these things I'm talking about created just a culture shift. And it created a spiritual awakening in me. Like, I can't pinpoint one specific thing that made me say, you know what? I gotta be a better human being. I gotta be a better man because I was, I was on this journey four years ago, four or five years ago. And that was just from listening to my friends and listening to women around me who, who cared about me. And, and was, were telling me what I was doing wrong, you know? And, you know, even, even some of social media, not all of it, because it's not constructive, but some, a lot of it can be constructive criticism. Because you start seeing things and you're like, am, am I that way?

• 50:27Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Do I really act like that? Do I really move like that? And then when you take a step outside of yourself, you put your ego down, you're like, oh, I see what they're saying.

• 50:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I love hearing that, man, because I think just the fact that you can get that open in front of a mirror and be okay with the fact, and what you've just said about Howard Stern, getting okay with the fact that you don't need to tell anyone you've changed. You don't, you don't owe, you don't feel like you owe anyone anything. You've done your thing, but to be able to go out and just say, I got it wrong. I messed up. That was a waste of time. I think it's amazing that we live in a world where we have people doing that. Because it's so easy to continue playing the facade and faking it the whole way and pretending like it never happened.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:09Jay Shetty?

  Right? You can grow and just pretend like it never happened.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, listen, I, I would never grow and pretend it never happened, only because.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  All my favorite stories growing up were the stories of people's growth and evolution.

• 51:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  You know, I love the autobiography of Malcolm X. And I say it all the time, this generation wouldn't let Malcolm Little become Malcolm X. You know, I, I, I love, I, I was talking about Kim Kardashian earlier today. I'm like, eh, I don't give a fuck how Kim Kardashian career started. Kim Kardashian is out here getting people free from prison. She's become this, you know, criminal justice reform activist. You know, this prison reform activist. And she's using her privilege and she's using her money and she's using her fame to get people free from prison. Who saw that coming?

• 51:57Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? Like, I used to work right over there on 34th Street on Park Avenue, WBLS, when I was Wendy's co-host. I used to watch Kim and Courtney come hang out with my homegirl Nicole Spence. She was Wendy's booker. Like, they used to come and just hang out in Nicole's office, trying to get an interview from Wendy. When she was like organizing Paris Hilton's closets. And Wendy was like, alright, come in. And she came in. And then, you know, when, when, when the sex tape happened, she came back to talk to Wendy exclusively. And I saw, I remember when Kim, Kim ran through the whole urban circuit. Smooth Magazine, King Magazine, was out there kicking it with the rappers, dating the rappers, video vixen. Then she grew into a reality TV star. And now she's a, a wife and a mother and she's a, one of the biggest brands on the planet. And she's getting people released from prison.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Like, you don't know what somebody's ultimate journey is gonna be. You don't know who, we really don't, we really have no idea who's gonna change the world. You can't ever tell. You can't ever look at a person and say, oh yeah, that's gonna happen. You really don't know. Sometimes it comes from the most unlikely places. Who would've thought a pimp from Harlem would've ended up being one of the greatest activists, leaders the world has ever seen? You don't, you, you really don't know. You know, look at Jay-Z, drug dealer from Brooklyn, Marcy. Now, look what he's doing with the Reform Alliance and, you know, and, and, and telling everybody to embrace black ownership and black entrepreneurship. Something that he's been doing from the beginning, honestly. He's been, he's been on his black ownership tip since the beginning.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  But you're looking at this man and you're saying, man, this man is really evolving into the leader of the free world. He said that one time, I remember one on, on, I think it was on Ignorant Shit, he was like, The next Leo, no, more like the leader, the next leader of the free world or something like that. And I'm like, that's really what he's evolving into. It's the guy who made Big Pimpin'. It's the guy, that's not, that's not a more misogynistic video in the world. But now this guy's married to one of the most beautiful women in the world and beautiful kids. And like, he's telling people about therapy and, man, it's like, man, it's a beautiful time, man. But I'm saying all that to say, you just don't know who's going to be who. You just gotta let people grow, you gotta let people evolve, you gotta let people make their mistakes. You know, we're all works in progress.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I don't know when I'm gonna be 10 years from now. I have no idea. And guess what? I'm fine with that. 10 years ago, you'd have asked me when I'm gonna be 10 years from now? I'd have had a whole list of things lined up for you. I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna be that, and guess what? It's all true. You know, but you tell me what I want to do on a professional level? Yeah, I could tell you some things I want to do on a professional level. On a personal level, I just want to continue to grow. I want to continue to heal. I want to be the best I can be mentally. I want to be the best I can be spiritually. I want to be the best I can be emotionally. That's what I want to do on a personal level. The personal growth is more important to me than the professional growth at this point.

• 54:39Jay Shetty?

  I love that. What a powerful message, man. That's just, I love it. I'm just listening and going, this is exactly what the world needs to hear right now. Because we need to let people grow. We need to let people evolve. We need to let people change their story and write another chapter. Because the challenge is, we want them to stay in their chapter. We want people to stay in their lane. We want people to stay in their box and not give them an opportunity to become something else. Because we're like, oh, we know what you did, we know what you did before. But we need to let them grow.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know what they say? They say when you, when you can't stop somebody from, from, from, from who, from being who they are, you keep trying to bring up who they used to be.

• 55:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  You know, and, and I always, I, I talk about how, imagine 15 years ago, you was driving down a highway and the speed limit on the highway was 70 miles per hour. So you would do 70. Sometimes you do 75, 80, because you know you can get away with it, you know? But then 15 years later, they've reduced the speed limit on that highway to 55. Why? Because 70 was too fast. It was too many accidents happening, too many fatalities, you know? People were just really getting hurt. So it was safer for people to be doing 55 miles per hour. Okay, boom, speed limit gets reduced to 55. 15 years later, you're grown, you're evolved, you get it, you're driving 55. Sometimes you might do 60, because you know that's what you can get away with.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  But imagine, you go home and then all of a sudden you start getting tickets in your mailbox. Because you were doing seventy fifteen years ago on this highway that is now a fifty-five. It's like I was doing what I was allowed to do. At the time, that's the information I was presented. They told me seventy was the speed limit I could do. So that's what I was doing. Now that I found out that the speed limit isn't, you know, conducive to me living a healthy lifestyle or anybody on that highway living a healthy lifestyle, I'm gonna drive the speed limit because I want all of us to live and on this journey called life. I want all of us to be peaceful on this journey called life. I want all of us to live safe on this highway called life.

• 56:38Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man. This has been such an amazing conversation. And every podcast, we finish it with the final five. So these are final five rapid fire questions. You can answer in one word, three words, or one sentence maximum. Right? Easy for you. You're a lyricist, you're a rapper. So this is part of the play. So final five. First question, what do you think is the greatest hip hop album of all time?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Only Built For Cuban Links by Raekwon the Chef.

• 57:02Jay Shetty?

  Oh, nice. Okay. Question two, if you could change one thing about humanity, what would it be?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  I would want everybody to love.

• 57:12Jay Shetty?

  Nice. Question three, what's the best advice you've ever received?

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Best advice I've ever received?

• 57:21Jay Shetty?

  Take your time.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Honestly, man, I would have to give that credit to my father when he told me that if you don't change your lifestyle, you're gonna end up in jail, dead, or broke, sitting under the tree. And the reason I gotta credit that to him because what he was telling me back then is you have to grow, you have to evolve. And that is something that even though I don't have no threat of jail, and we all have a threat of death, you know, but I don't have any threat of being broke, sitting under the tree. It's just that at every point in your life, it's gonna be, it's gonna call for a new you. And it's gonna call for you to grow and it's gonna call for you to evolve. And if you don't evolve, you will die.

• 58:04Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man. Question four, what's the worst advice you've ever received?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Worst advice I ever received was fuck that you gonna be a real nigga for the rest of your life, you know, like that's just stupid, you know, cuz cuz there's so many of us, I've seen so many people fall victim to just stuck on that one mindset, like they just had to stay in tune with the hood and they just so much so that they would still hang out in the hood, like I've I've had homeboys who got scholarships to go to college, but they just wanted to come home all the time, just to hang out in the trap, you know what I mean, and that's exactly what happened, they ended up trapped in our hometown, you know, they ended up, you know,

• 58:52Speaker 01

  they ended up just not evolving the way that they probably would have if they would have stayed in school and stayed in college and actually took advantage of the scholarships and stuff that they were presented, so it's just like, yeah, like, you know, just keeping it, keeping it real and the cliche, that's the worst advice I ever got, the worst advice I ever got was keeping it real, but keeping it real in the cliche term that the streets give you, which is actually keeping it criminal, you know?

• 59:17Jay Shetty?

  Keeping you locked.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yes, cuz keeping it real is what I feel like I'm doing now, I'm like, I don't know nothing, I'm in, I'm going to therapy, you know what I'm saying, I'm afraid of being a terrible father, being a terrible husband, so yeah, I feel like I'm more real now than I ever been.

• 59:33Jay Shetty?

  Nice, man, and question five, what's the one thing you're trying to learn this year?

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Hmm, I'm actually trying to unlearn more than I'm trying to learn, I don't think I'm really trying to learn anything, I'm just still unlearning a lot of, a lot of things, I feel like unlearning is learning, at least for me, you know, so it's just like, I'm still just peeling back a lot of layers of, of, of BS and a lot of layers of nonsense, and I'm just, I'm just really just trying to learn how to, how to love more, I know that sounds so cliche, but it's the truth, man, like, I promise you, like, if we all just, first of all, I gotta start with you, your first, last and best love is self-love, if you love yourself, it will be so easy for you to love others, and you know, I started thinking about this a lot when the Nipsey Hussle situation happened, God bless the day, because I never in my life felt empathy for

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Both parties in a situation like that, you know? I knew Nipsey, you know, Nipsey was a great brother, you know? Me and Nipsey used to share books and stuff like that. He's a, he's a good man, you know? And of course I was gonna have empathy for him. Of course I was gonna have empathy for his family. But when I heard what happened and then my, my homegirl Lisa sent me the goddamn video and I don't watch stuff like that, but I didn't know what it was. So I clicked on it and watched it. And I didn't think I was gonna have empathy for the guy who actually shot Nipsey. But I did, and that was a strange feeling for me. And the reason I had empathy is because I understand that that brother was in some type of pain. Hurt people, hurt people.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  And if we don't start healing each other to deal with that hurt, all we're gonna do is redistribute that pain to other people. And that's what happened that day. That was a redistribution of pain. So Nipsey was a loving brother. He was a brother that put out good energy. It didn't matter. It goes back to what I said earlier. Sometimes you run into negative people. Sometimes you run into evil people. Sometimes you run into people who haven't healed at all and all they wanna do is hurt you. So it's just like, when I saw that, I just had a different feeling of, of empathy, you know? For, and I never felt that way before. I never thought I would feel that way about somebody like him. But it just really made me say, man, I just, I just wanna go on this, this, this mission of like, this helping brothers really, really heal.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Like I've been out here talking about mental health and investing in your mental wealth. But no, like I really, really gotta go out here and, and help brothers heal. You know what I mean? So we can stop hurting each other.

• 1:02:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. When you're, when you're hurt, you end up cutting people who didn't make you bleed.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Oof.

• 1:02:10Jay Shetty?

  Right?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Powerful, yeah.

• 1:02:11Jay Shetty?

  You do that all the time. When we're hurt, when we're wounded, we go and cut others, even though they didn't do anything to us.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we bleed on people who didn't cut us.

• 1:02:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. Sharleman, you incredible, man. This has been one of my favorite conversations. Honestly, you really brought your energy, man. I loved it.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  It's been an hour already?

• 1:02:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, man, it's been an hour already. I, I've got like a million more questions to ask you, so we gotta do round two. But thank you so much. And everyone who's been listening or watching, make sure you share your insights on Instagram. Tag both of us, anything that you learned, anything that you gained, share it with your communities. There's so many great talking points in this conversation. Make sure you get those insights. Make sure you get them out there. Make sure you subscribe and rate it to the podcast. And make sure you go find out where Sharleman is. Sharleman, where's the best place that you'd like them to come find you?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  I'm on Instagram @Cthagod, C T H A G O D. I'm on Twitter @Cthagod, C T H A G O D.

• 1:02:59Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Go grab my books, Shook One, Anxiety Playing Tricks On Me, and Black Privilege Opportunity Comes To Those Who Create It, both national bestsellers.

• 1:03:07Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Go get those, guys. We'll put those links in the bottom as well. Thank you so much, Solomon, honestly, man.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  My brother. Thank you, man.

• 1:03:12Jay Shetty?

  Appreciate you, man. It's such a pleasure, man.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:03:19Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're gonna share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to On Purpose. Let me know. Post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share the next episode with you.