Charlamagne tha God Opens Up About His Depression & Childhood Trauma!

I didn't realize it until I got older. (instrumental music plays) I was just a young kid, and I was molested. Oof. Shit. Please welcome Charlamagne Tha God. Co-host of the Breakfast Club.

And America's most influential radio host.

Growing up, my father was telling me, "If you don't change your lifestyle, you're gonna end up in jail, dead, or broke." The problem was, he wasn't practicing what he was preaching. When I started selling drugs, I found out he was selling drugs, and then he had an affair on my mom. So I became a player, because I felt I had to be like my pops. But then, I ended up getting in a situation where a shooting happened and then going to jail. But I was able to finally wake up. And I was smart enough to realize, whatever I want to be doing five years from now, I gotta start doing now.

And then the microphone ultimately changed your life, but I didn't know that you'd had 12 years of rejection.

I got fired four times. I just collected my last unemployment check. I was scared to death. But you can't live life with fear. You gotta live life with faith. Next gig I got was the Breakfast Club. Fast-forward three, four years, I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life. But I just was not happy. I was losing myself. And, um, those suicidal thoughts just cross your mind for no reason, you know? And even, even now. What, what am I still doing here? Man.

We've just hit six million subscribers on the Diary of a CEO. Um, so me and my team would like to do something we've never done before as a little thank you, and we're calling it the Diary of a CEO Subscriber Raffle, and here is how it works. Every episode this month, we're going to pick three current subscribers at random, and we'll send one of you a 1,000 pound voucher, one of you tickets to come and watch the Diary of a CEO behind the scenes live with our team, and one of you will have a 10-minute phone call with me to discuss whatever you want to talk about. If you're a subscriber, you're in the raffle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to do something that me and my team love doing so much. It is the greatest honor of my lifetime, and I hope it, I hope it continues, uh, off into the future. Let's get to the episode. (instrumental music plays) Get Honest or Die Lying. Why did you choose those words? Why did you choose that title?

Um, it's a play, it's a play on 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin'. You know, um, I'm always gonna have, you know, some, some, some ode to hip hop, you know, somewhere. Like, my last book was, was Shook One, you know, that was paying homage to Mobb Deep. But also, um, you know, just talking about how I felt my whole life when I would get in, get panic attacks, get anxiety attacks. And Get Honest or Die Lying, that's, you know, not just a play on 50 Cent's title. That's how I truly feel. It's like, yo, if you don't get honest with yourself, you're gonna die lying. Like, you know, I had a, um ... I, I went to a spiritual retreat, you know, back in February, me and my wife, and like, that's one of the things that came up for me, you know, that, that, that weekend at the retreat there, one of the things that came up for me was, stop lying to yourself, and stop volunteering those lies to others. And I think a lot of us do that, you know, a lot. Like, we, we lie to ourselves, and then we just volunteer those lies to other people, like nobody even asked us, (laughs) you know? When I think, I think social media, you know, uh, contributes to a lot of that, because every day, you feel like you have to, you know, feed this beast. And like, you know, you might go look at your feed, and at some point you gotta ask yourself, "Who is this person?" You know? Or just the, just the things that you, you know, say to people, you know, in your life as you're, as you're, as you're just, you know, growing, and, and, and evolving, just as a human. You might just volunteer lies, you know, for security purposes, or to mask, to mask insecurities, or, you know, to mask fears. And so it's just like, yo, if you don't start getting honest with yourself, you're gonna, you're gonna die, die a liar.