4 Questions with CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD

1) This is your third book, which is more of a lens on us. What inspired that pivot?

Watching how we're reacting to this new world that we're in. We're not even being reactive. We're being controlled by this new world that we're in. The new world I'm talking about is just this new landscape of social media and everybody is on all the time. Cameras are always rolling. Everybody feels like we're all extras in each other's reality shows.

All of us are extras in each other's reality shows, and we're not really taking the time to connect with what's real anymore. When the last time you went outside and just looked up at the sky? When's the last time you just went walking in a park somewhere? When's the last time you just took a swim in the ocean and really appreciated the moment? When's the last time you enjoyed the moment, period?
Everybody's always looking through the lens of something. It's also performative all the time. And it's just like, yo, I want us to just really sit down, start being honest with ourselves because that's the hardest thing to do, right? The hardest thing to do is look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth.

We're so judgmental of everybody else because this new era makes it easy. You can get on your phone and just talk about everybody all day. You're really doing that to avoid the inner work that you need to be doing. So that's why the book is called Get Honest Or Die Lying, because I feel like we wake up every day, we lie to ourselves and then we volunteer those lies to the world.

2) You've been a continued voice for mental health and so much of your journey has spoke to just this level of awareness, which we all know there's real levels to this. Can you talk to me about how you've had those hard conversations with yourself and how you've been open to vulnerability?

Yeah. My journey started in 2015 just because I think at that point we had been doing five years of the Breakfast Club. I've dealt with panic attacks and bouts of depression literally my whole life, I just didn't know what it was. Then I finally got the language for it in 2010 when I was back at home living with my mom, I was 32 years old. I had been fired four times from radio.

My daughter was like two. My now wife was living back at home with her parents, and I had one of the worst panic attacks I ever had in my whole entire life. When I went to the doctor, like I always did when I had those panic attacks, the doctor told me, he said, "Yo, you're fine. You got an athlete's heart." But he was like, "Do you suffer from anxiety?" I'm like, "No, I don't think so." He's like, "What you're describing sounds like a panic attack." so I was like, oh. He was like, "Are you stressed out about anything? I'm like, "Hell yeah, I'm stressed about everything."

So in my mind, all I had to do was get another gig, get back in position on the radio and everything would be fine. Next you got with Breakfast Club, massive success five years later, but I'm still dealing with the panic attacks, right? Probably even worse. I'm still dealing with bouts of depression, probably even worse.
So I just started listening to people. There was other people that I would be speaking to and having conversations with, and they would be talking to me about going to therapy, and they'd be talking to me about dealing with their anxiety. It was people older than me or people younger than me or people my age, and I'm like, damn, these people got all of these different resources and all of this information.

So I just started going to therapy in 2016, and that's been my journey getting on the radio, telling you all every Friday, it used to be every Friday at three o'clock, I was going to therapy. People thought I was joking, but nah, I was really doing the internal work on myself. It wasn't even something I was attempting to do. I didn't sit back and say, "I'm going to become a mental health advocate."

You don't plan stuff like that out. I just started telling my story like I tell any other story on the radio. I started getting invited to speak at these different mental health conferences, which I didn't even know existed, right? Then you start finding a different type of tribe because you start meeting people who are dealing with the same thing that you're dealing with. They're dealing with anxiety, they're dealing with depression. You start meeting therapists, you start meeting psychiatrists.

I remember being at a, Taraji P. Henson, she does this weekend in DC, it's called the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation. She has her own mental health foundation. I remember they introduced me as a mental health advocate, and I was like, "I'm not no mental health advocate." I remember Tracy J, who worked with Taraji, that's her best friend.

She was like, "Brother, whether you want me or not, you are, because you're out here telling your story. And telling your story is helping to eradicate the stigma. The more we all tell our stories, the more people will realize like, I'm dealing with things too," and they'll go out and seek help." So it wasn't even something that I was attempting to do. It was me doing my own journey and then literally just being on the radio, being transparent about it the same way I am about anything.

3) One of the things that you mentioned in your book is about ego strength. Can you give some insight in your journey of your evolution? It's very hard to build and break habits. What is your insight on really practicing this exercise?

I would encourage all of you all to pick up a book called Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday. If you've never read it, that was a great read. It's so funny now that I think about it. The person who gave me that book was my radio consultant, Dennis Clark, and he gave me that book probably around 2014, 2015. Now that I'm thinking about it, he probably gave me that book on purpose. I'm sure he gave it to me on purpose, but he gave it to me because he wanted me to read it.

It was purposeful. He knew where my life was going, and so he gave me that book to read, and I remember reading that book and I'm like, wow. The book showed you how ego can be your enemy, but also you got to have a healthy dose of ego as well. And it's just something that I think we all have to explore because nowadays, it's so easy for your ego to get out of control. It don't even matter what position you're in. People get out of control, they got 2000 followers on Facebook, literally. So it's just like you always got to have your ego in check because I know for me, there was definitely times where my ego was getting the best of me to the point I talk about it in the book, I was becoming something that I thought I hated. And when I say thought I hated, I don't hate this person, talking about my dad. I love my dad. But there was things about him that I did not like.

I remember when my ego started to get out of control. I remember one time my mom and my dad was having a real big argument when they were together way, way, way back in the day, and I remember she called him a peacock. "Peacock, peacock. You always strutting around here." I remember she was going in on him. "New haircut, Larry, new car." She's going in on him. He deserved it, by the way, because of the way that he was living at the time. I remember I just kept hearing her voice whenever my ego would get out of control, when I was really out here caught up in the caricature of Charlamagne. So it's just like when I started going to therapy, that was one of the biggest things that I had to get in check. You'll naturally get in check when you start doing the internal work on yourself, when you start peeling back those layers. You know how the old folks say, "You're smelling yourself." Sometimes you got to smell yourself, you know what I mean? But you got to smell yourself and be honest with yourself, because you stink. And that's where I was at.

4) Tell me a little about what you learned from your father?
For me it was literally I saw that was something that I really did not like my father doing. I remember approaching my father, and I talk about it in the book, and I remember approaching him about cheating on my mom. I was like maybe 16, 17 or something like that. I remember he looked me in my eyes and he was like, "Oh, you only got one girlfriend?" He was like, "One day you going to understand."

It is crazy. That's gaslighting to the highest level. But I grew up and I over-stood, and not only did I over-stand, he messed me up because it was like, I'm cool with being with one woman. I've always been cool with being with one woman. But he made me feel like I was doing something wrong. So in order to prove myself to him, that whole, "This is what a man does," we got these warped perceptions of what a man is in our society and our culture. So I was thinking, "Okay, let him see me with this woman and that woman, yada, yada yada." So I was living a life that I didn't want to live, and I'm not blaming him. I don't even want to make it seem like I'm blaming him for anything that I did that I had no business doing. But it's like, yeah, that put a seed in my head that it took a long time to unlearn.

I remember just really saying to myself like, "Yo, I'm turning out just like him." I remembered later on in life, he would tell me about how the worst mistake he ever made was causing my mom to leave him. So it was like, "Oh shoot, I'm going down that same path." That's what they say, "Smart people learn from their own mistakes. Wise people learn from mistakes of others." I was making my own mistakes and I was learning from his mistakes as well. So that was all part of the internal healing work that I was doing too. That was actually probably the biggest thing that I started doing. That's why I tell folks all the time. Remember The Color Purple when Celie pointed that finger and she said, "Ain't no good going to come to you until you do right by me." Start doing right and see how great your life is. My life has been fantastic the last decade.

My Final Thoughts
In Get Honest or Die Lying, Charlamagne tha God doesn’t just write a book — he holds up a mirror. Not to celebrities, not to culture at large, but to us — the everyday people trapped in a performance-driven, over-stimulated society that often rewards appearances over authenticity. In this third book, the lens shifts outward only to bring us back inward, asking the realest, hardest question: When was the last time you told yourself the truth?

Through raw vulnerability, Charlamagne traces his own evolution — from radio fame and panic attacks to therapy sessions and fatherhood reckoning. His story reveals that mental health isn’t a destination — it’s a daily decision. And honesty? That’s the compass. He reminds us that doing the inner work isn’t glamorous, but it’s necessary. If you don’t get honest, you’ll keep rehearsing a lie that eventually becomes your reality — and your prison.

Urging you to pause, strip the filters, and sit with the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. Because freedom doesn’t come from pretending. It comes from facing your own reflection and choosing healing over hiding.

The Randall Report