The Breakfast Club co-host Charlamagne Tha God appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening to promote Shook One, his book about dealing with anxiety. Naturally, the first thing Stephen Colbert asked about was Charlamagne’s recently canceled TimesTalk with Kanye West about mental health. Charlemagne drew applause from the studio audience when he admitted that he’s the one who pulled the plug on the talk, which had sold out the 1200-seat Town Hall theater in New York. The event would have taken place on October 17.
Charlamagne explained that he was alarmed by Kanye’s admission that he was off his medication, which the rapper alluded to in his epic Oval Office soliloquy where he claimed to have been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was merely sleep-deprived.
“Me and Kanye have a relationship,” Charlamagne said. “Not as close as him and Trump, but we have a relationship. Every interview that he’s done over the past couple of years, including the interview I did with him earlier this year, he’s always talking about his mental health. He’s always talking about being bipolar; being on medication. I felt like everybody was bypassing that conversation.”
Charlamagne said he realized that trying to hold an event with a celebrity who may not have his own mental health issues under control was counter-productive.
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“For what I’m trying to do which is like elevate the conversation of mental health in the black community and you know, try to eradicate the stigma around mental health, I just didn’t think it’d be a good conversation,” he said. “It’d be a distraction.”
Charlamagne later discussed personally reaching out to Yeezy’s team to cancel the event the day after the rapper’s unhinged White House appearance.
“They were all kind of relieved,” the radio host said. “They just felt like that was the best thing.”
He also said he reached out to Kanye, who Charlamagne claims took the news well.
In May, Charlamagne sat down with a more coherent Kanye in his California mansion to discuss mental health in a long video interview. Watch his chat with Colbert below.
