Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Introducing Started From The Bottom: Charlamagne Tha God

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Introducing Started From The Bottom: Charlamagne Tha God · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, everyone's justin Richmond. I'm dropping in today to
0:23
Speaker 1: play you an episode from my brand new podcast. Started
0:27
Speaker 1: from the bottom. The idea for the show predates my
0:30
Speaker 1: work with Rick and Malcolm here on Broken Record and
0:33
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to a meeting I had
0:35
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen with Quincy Jones, probably one of the
0:39
Speaker 1: most successful people I've ever and maybe we'll ever meet
0:42
Speaker 1: in my entire life. I think it'll make sense to
0:45
Speaker 1: you why this idea sprung from that meeting when you
0:48
Speaker 1: hear the episode. So, without further ado, I want to
0:51
Speaker 1: play for you my conversation with one of the most
0:53
Speaker 1: successful radio personalities of all time, The Breakfast clubs Charlemagne
0:58
Speaker 1: the God. For me growing up, it was oh, oh, oh,
1:03
Speaker 1: it's the time join our morning show because you know,
1:06
Speaker 1: my mom was a school teacher, so we was up early,
1:09
Speaker 1: so I would listening to the time join up. And
1:11
Speaker 1: then you know, Z ninety three played such a big
1:13
Speaker 1: role in my life because you know, their original morning
1:16
Speaker 1: show that I remember was The Breakfast Club Baby Jay
1:20
Speaker 1: and Tessa. Tessa Spencer, my guest today is someone I've
1:24
Speaker 1: wanted to interview for a long time because of what
1:28
Speaker 1: he's meant over the last decade to the culture, black culture,
1:32
Speaker 1: hip hop culture, internet culture, youth culture, all the cultures
1:36
Speaker 1: you name it. But if I'm being completely honest, the
1:39
Speaker 1: real reason I wanted to sit down and talk to
1:41
Speaker 1: Charlemagne the God is to see if some of his
1:43
Speaker 1: confidence can run off on me. Most of my career,
1:46
Speaker 1: I've been terrified to bring my full self to work
1:50
Speaker 1: out of fear of rejection or fear that I wouldn't
1:52
Speaker 1: be enough. I don't know. I'm working through it with
1:54
Speaker 1: my therapist. But what I admire about Charlemagne is that
1:57
Speaker 1: he seems to not care at all about being rejected
2:01
Speaker 1: by his peers, his co workers, his audience, anyone. And
2:06
Speaker 1: that confidence has led to some of the most pactful
2:09
Speaker 1: and sometimes controversial interviews over the last decade. As co
2:14
Speaker 1: host of one of the most popular radio shows of
2:16
Speaker 1: all time, The Breakfast Club, Charlonte made made time to
2:20
Speaker 1: sit down with me in New York City to discuss
2:22
Speaker 1: all of this, plus his upbringing, parenting, and the criticisms
2:26
Speaker 1: that have come with his success and more. This has
2:30
Speaker 1: started from the bottom, hard earned success stories from people
2:33
Speaker 1: like us. First time I ever saw you was it
2:41
Speaker 1: was you on the Wendy Williams radio show going Toe
2:44
Speaker 1: to Toe with Andrew Dice Club. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that
2:46
Speaker 1: was like two thousand and seven. Yeah. It was one
2:49
Speaker 1: of the most amazing things ever. And even though you
2:53
Speaker 1: kind of got I don't know, I feel like Andrew
2:56
Speaker 1: kind of put it on you that day. It was
2:58
Speaker 1: the way they edited it, too, but it was like, yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: I had some I had some good ones, but they
3:03
Speaker 1: didn't put all of them in. They put the one
3:05
Speaker 1: about me calling them a fat fans. That's all right,
3:07
Speaker 1: looking back, you actually did a lot better than I remember.
3:09
Speaker 1: At the time. I was a gang like still got it.
3:11
Speaker 1: I've been like, oh man, But then I kind of
3:13
Speaker 1: put you on my radar. And then I remember when
3:15
Speaker 1: the Breakfast Club came, I was like, oh, it makes sense,
3:17
Speaker 1: like this guy clearly clearly had it. But yeah, I
3:19
Speaker 1: want to run through your radio trajectory. But first I
3:22
Speaker 1: thought it'd be good to start with growing up in
3:24
Speaker 1: Monk's Corner, South Carolina. Um. It's interesting, right, because you know,
3:29
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that a lot more lately, only
3:32
Speaker 1: because like you know, when I'm in therapy, I'm doing
3:34
Speaker 1: like a lot of um in a child work, you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of the issues that
3:41
Speaker 1: you deal with as an adult, most of them directly
3:44
Speaker 1: connected something that happened in your childhood. And so I've
3:47
Speaker 1: been thinking about, like, what was that upbringing like growing
3:52
Speaker 1: up in Monst Corner, South Carolina, and the word I've
3:55
Speaker 1: come to realize that it is associated with that that upbringing.
4:00
Speaker 1: It's simple, you know, Monst Corner when I was young
4:04
Speaker 1: created a sense of ease in my life that I
4:07
Speaker 1: feel like really helped me growing up because I didn't
4:11
Speaker 1: move too fast and I didn't move too slow. That
4:14
Speaker 1: still is a big, big part of me. So when
4:18
Speaker 1: like you know, that anxiety that I've been feeling my
4:21
Speaker 1: whole life sets in, I feel like, Okay, I might
4:24
Speaker 1: be moving too fast, but then I don't want to
4:26
Speaker 1: move too slow. But then it's just a certain ease,
4:28
Speaker 1: like like baby Bears part just just it's a just
4:31
Speaker 1: right level of ease that growing up in Monk's Corner
4:35
Speaker 1: gave me that I tend to tap into whenever, like
4:38
Speaker 1: things get really hectic. You mentioned thinks some of the
4:40
Speaker 1: anxiety that you have. When did that start? Really Yeah,
4:44
Speaker 1: as long as I know, I mean the first panic
4:47
Speaker 1: attack I remember having was first grade, my mom dropping
4:50
Speaker 1: me off, Like I can feel it right now, my
4:52
Speaker 1: mom dropping me off first grade, first day of first grade,
4:56
Speaker 1: and like I just cried uncontrollably, like like I just
5:00
Speaker 1: felt like abandoned, lost and just scared like that that
5:08
Speaker 1: that same, you know, unexplainable feeling of fear and panic
5:14
Speaker 1: and worry. And I think my mom even says that
5:17
Speaker 1: I might have cried for like the first week. I
5:19
Speaker 1: don't remember the first week. I remember that one particular day,
5:23
Speaker 1: but it's like, yeah, that's the first time I remember
5:25
Speaker 1: ever having like a panic attack. And I had him
5:28
Speaker 1: throughout my life, like I've been going to the emergency
5:31
Speaker 1: room thinking that I'm having a heart attack, you know,
5:34
Speaker 1: thinking that I'm dying, you know, And then you get
5:36
Speaker 1: there and the doctor's like, oh, did you have an
5:37
Speaker 1: energy drink today? And you're like, I did drink a
5:39
Speaker 1: red Bull earlier. And I was like, oh, that's probably
5:41
Speaker 1: why your heart is doing that. That's the worst feeling,
5:43
Speaker 1: you know. It wasn't un till twenty ten that a
5:46
Speaker 1: doctor actually said to me, it sounds like you have anxiety.
5:51
Speaker 1: He was literally was like, it sounds like you had
5:54
Speaker 1: a panic attack, the things that you're describing, And he
5:57
Speaker 1: was like, has this happened to you before? And I'm
5:58
Speaker 1: like all the time. And you know, he asked me
6:01
Speaker 1: what I stretched out about anything, and I'm like, hell yeah,
6:04
Speaker 1: because at the time, I had just been fired for
6:05
Speaker 1: the fourth time from radio, and I'm back living at
6:08
Speaker 1: home with my mom at thirty one, thirty two years old.
6:10
Speaker 1: My daughter's like one or two. My wife is back
6:13
Speaker 1: living at home with her parents, you know what I
6:15
Speaker 1: mean in mom's corner. So it's like I was super
6:17
Speaker 1: stressed out collecting unemployment checks every week. So in my mind,
6:20
Speaker 1: all I had to do was get back in position
6:22
Speaker 1: and get me another job and all of that would
6:24
Speaker 1: go away. And that wasn't the case. You know. I
6:27
Speaker 1: ended up getting the breakfast Club gig and having the
6:30
Speaker 1: most success I've ever had in my life, and it
6:32
Speaker 1: felt like all of those issues I had historically dealt
6:35
Speaker 1: with were magnified times a hundred now. Yeah, you know,
6:40
Speaker 1: And so that's what I decided to, like finally go
6:42
Speaker 1: get some help and like go to therapy. What do
6:44
Speaker 1: you think do you see that? Do you see that
6:46
Speaker 1: same anxiety in your kids? Yeah? I haven't seen it
6:53
Speaker 1: show up as bad as mine was when I was
6:56
Speaker 1: at age. And I think the beauty of life now
7:01
Speaker 1: is not only do I have the language, I have
7:03
Speaker 1: the experience. So it's just like that. And I wish that,
7:06
Speaker 1: you know, somebody had put me in therapy when I
7:08
Speaker 1: was thirteen four, you know me, I definitely needed it
7:10
Speaker 1: because I was getting sexually abused at eight years old.
7:13
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that at the time. I didn't realize
7:16
Speaker 1: that was molestaia till I was twenty something years old.
7:19
Speaker 1: You know. At the time, I just thought I was
7:20
Speaker 1: eight year old kids the neighborhood, Yeah, right, we would.
7:24
Speaker 1: We would all a bunch of young men. We all
7:25
Speaker 1: be around having conversations about older women that we were
7:28
Speaker 1: messing with, you know, in the neighborhood. Like we all
7:31
Speaker 1: thought we were lying, but clearly we allay like telling
7:33
Speaker 1: the truth in different ways. Right. So, um, when I
7:38
Speaker 1: was fourteen, I definitely needed to unpack some of that.
7:41
Speaker 1: Do you think you would have had it at that age?
7:42
Speaker 1: Do you think the trajectory would have been the same,
7:44
Speaker 1: Like you think you would have been ended up in
7:46
Speaker 1: the streets? Did probably not? And the reason probably not,
7:49
Speaker 1: just because you know, even with the screetch, Right, It's
7:51
Speaker 1: like a lot of that is um you trauma bond
7:56
Speaker 1: with people, yeah, because it's all a bunch of individuals
7:59
Speaker 1: that are missing something, and like we all want camaraderie,
8:04
Speaker 1: we all want family, we all want a crew. And
8:08
Speaker 1: it's just sometimes men, we trauma bond over bullshit, you know,
8:12
Speaker 1: So we trauma bond sometimes over crime, you know. We
8:15
Speaker 1: trauma bond over drugs, We trauma bond over alcohol, you know.
8:20
Speaker 1: But most of the time it's like, yoh, we're all
8:22
Speaker 1: trauma bonding to do the wrong thing, Like you know
8:24
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like let's go rob this you know, individual,
8:29
Speaker 1: or go rob this store, or break into this house
8:31
Speaker 1: and let's go, you know, figure out a way to
8:33
Speaker 1: get some a pack to hustle. But it's like what
8:36
Speaker 1: we're all lacking is like togetherness. Like everybody, we're all tribal,
8:42
Speaker 1: and we all long for family, right, And I think
8:44
Speaker 1: that's what that's what a lot of guys do when
8:47
Speaker 1: they when they click up in that way. So I
8:50
Speaker 1: think for me, I definitely was longing for like some
8:53
Speaker 1: type of family structure, even though I grew up in
8:56
Speaker 1: a house with the oldest sister two younger brothers and
8:59
Speaker 1: a younger sister. I was the second oldest. My oldest
9:02
Speaker 1: sisters like ten twelve years older than me, and my
9:05
Speaker 1: younger siblings are like ten twelve years younger than me.
9:07
Speaker 1: So I was kind of I didn't have on an island,
9:08
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So I ended up kicking it with brothers
9:12
Speaker 1: and who are around my age. Man, we all ended
9:14
Speaker 1: up doing a bunch of dirt. And I don't even
9:16
Speaker 1: like to call it peer pressure because I don't believe
9:18
Speaker 1: there's anything. I don't believe peer pressure exists. I believe
9:22
Speaker 1: we all just want to be accepted, you know what
9:24
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And I think that when somebody pushes you
9:28
Speaker 1: to do something, you do it because you don't want
9:31
Speaker 1: to let them down. So it's a lot of people
9:35
Speaker 1: pleasing that goals and age, especially at that age man.
9:39
Speaker 1: And it stays with you though, That people pleasing stays
9:41
Speaker 1: with you. Like that's something that I had to unpacking therapy,
9:43
Speaker 1: like stop being a people pleaser, like, you know, because
9:46
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll be a people pleased to your own detriment. Yeah,
9:48
Speaker 1: you know, I can't believe anyone's ever accused you being
9:50
Speaker 1: the people pleaser. Man, no, I think that a lot
9:53
Speaker 1: of that. Man. That's because you seem you have strong opinions,
9:57
Speaker 1: not scared of voice even if it alienates you. Yeah. Well, no,
10:00
Speaker 1: you're right, I've always been that way. But no, there's
10:03
Speaker 1: there's been plenty of times in my life where I
10:05
Speaker 1: just wanted to be down. Literally, I just wanted to
10:07
Speaker 1: be down. I wanted to be in accepted. I wanted
10:09
Speaker 1: to be embraced, and you know, I can think about
10:12
Speaker 1: you know that time, at that moment, like I just
10:14
Speaker 1: wanted to be embraced by you know, my peers, you know.
10:18
Speaker 1: So that's why I started doing what a lot of
10:19
Speaker 1: my PIDs was doing, which was a lot of bullshit,
10:21
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, because I wanted to be accepted.
10:24
Speaker 1: Some of that early stuff. A couple couple of drug cases.
10:28
Speaker 1: The last one was you were around the shooting. The
10:32
Speaker 1: first one. The first one, yea. The first one, I
10:35
Speaker 1: was in the backseat of a car and my homeboy
10:37
Speaker 1: was in the front seat. Somebody was driving, and we
10:41
Speaker 1: was in this neighborhood like like like a two neighborhoods
10:44
Speaker 1: over from where we are in Monst Corner, two towns
10:46
Speaker 1: over rather from where we are in Monst Corner and
10:49
Speaker 1: we were just having you know, some conversations with some
10:51
Speaker 1: young ladies. Then some guys in the neighborhood didn't like
10:54
Speaker 1: that we would air and you know, I'm on my
10:56
Speaker 1: fake tough guys ship, my fake hardcore shit, so I'm
10:59
Speaker 1: acting like dough boy, and boys in the hood like
11:01
Speaker 1: got my hand under my shirt was up up yo, sup,
11:04
Speaker 1: because like the fuck that means, like, what's up a problem?
11:07
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? And they, you know, drove off.
11:10
Speaker 1: Then we went to like I think it was Burger
11:11
Speaker 1: King McDonald's. I don't remember. I think it was Burger King.
11:13
Speaker 1: So he went to Burger King. As we're leaving, I
11:16
Speaker 1: see the truck that those guys were in pulling up
11:19
Speaker 1: behind us, and I say, I say tell him, I dude, like,
11:21
Speaker 1: oh that some guys from the neighborhood. And so they
11:25
Speaker 1: pulled up on the side of us. So I'm in
11:26
Speaker 1: the back seat of the car, dudes talking shit out
11:29
Speaker 1: the window. One of my guys pulled out and shot
11:32
Speaker 1: from the passenger seat, and you know, luckily nobody was
11:35
Speaker 1: in the fourth seat, so it was a driver passenger
11:38
Speaker 1: and somebody was sitting behind the driver with the bullet
11:41
Speaker 1: hit the headrest in the fourth seat behind the passenger seat.
11:45
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, all praises do the God
11:48
Speaker 1: because you know, that could have been a situation where
11:52
Speaker 1: somebody got killed. Now were all in jail for twenty
11:56
Speaker 1: thirty years, you know what I mean. So so even now,
11:58
Speaker 1: when I think about stuff like that, I'm like, oh, yeah,
12:01
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm a big back to the future guy.
12:03
Speaker 1: You know, you watch those those time heist movies. People
12:06
Speaker 1: go back and little things change here and there and
12:08
Speaker 1: change the whole trajectory of everything. And so yeah, that
12:11
Speaker 1: was the first time I ever got arrested. Didn't change
12:14
Speaker 1: your relationship with your parents, It didn't change my relationship
12:17
Speaker 1: with my parents. That actually made me realize my dad
12:20
Speaker 1: was right, because my dad was always telling me if
12:22
Speaker 1: I don't change my lifestyle, I'm gonna end up in jail, dad,
12:25
Speaker 1: or broke sitting under the tree. You know. So when
12:28
Speaker 1: I came home, I really was just looking for positive
12:31
Speaker 1: things to do. Like, you know, I started working at
12:34
Speaker 1: a warehouse called Industrial Acoustics Company, and you know, from
12:38
Speaker 1: that point on, I wanted to keep a job. But
12:40
Speaker 1: I worked there for like two to three weeks, got
12:43
Speaker 1: fired from there, you know, to supervisor, and I never
12:45
Speaker 1: forget her name. Her name was Gail cop supervisor was like,
12:49
Speaker 1: you don't fit in here. You're not what we're looking for,
12:52
Speaker 1: and now mind you up. My job was literally like
12:55
Speaker 1: I was clearing out an area, like a wooded area.
12:57
Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh god, damn, I'm not fit to
12:59
Speaker 1: clean out a wooded area, you know. But she was like,
13:02
Speaker 1: you don't fit in here. So then I started working
13:05
Speaker 1: out a flower garden just because I was looking to do,
13:07
Speaker 1: you know, something positive. And the flower garden literally and
13:10
Speaker 1: now that I think back on it, it was literally
13:12
Speaker 1: a bunch of like migrants working there, Like you know
13:15
Speaker 1: what I mean, It was clearly a bunch of people
13:17
Speaker 1: who you know, weren't from this country, who were just
13:21
Speaker 1: looking for work. Now now looking back on it, that's
13:25
Speaker 1: what it was. It was literally just a bunch of
13:27
Speaker 1: like Mexicans and you know, who knows what else like
13:30
Speaker 1: just working there, right, And so I was there for
13:34
Speaker 1: like two weeks. Never his name was Dominique, the same thing,
13:37
Speaker 1: and him got into a shouting match because I was
13:39
Speaker 1: just like it, shit, feels like it was a plantation.
13:42
Speaker 1: It literally was a flower garden. It was actually called
13:45
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it was called it something plantation flower garden,
13:49
Speaker 1: but it literally was just we were out there in
13:52
Speaker 1: the hot sun picking flowers and you know, other types
13:55
Speaker 1: of shit. So I quit that, and then that's when
13:58
Speaker 1: I started like flirting with the street, you know what
14:01
Speaker 1: I mean. That's when it was like, man, I forgot
14:04
Speaker 1: some ways to make money, because you know, I still
14:05
Speaker 1: got to pay my probation officer and shit like that.
14:08
Speaker 1: And it was just a stupid mentality, right, because when
14:11
Speaker 1: you're on probation, you got to keep a job. That's
14:13
Speaker 1: number one, and you gotta pay your a probation fees.
14:17
Speaker 1: So I started just saying that I was working with
14:19
Speaker 1: my dad and I was doing tempt services, but also
14:22
Speaker 1: had got a fifty dollars slab. Fifty dollars slabs when
14:25
Speaker 1: you get fifty dollars worth of rock, and you know,
14:28
Speaker 1: I think you posted be like I think it supposed
14:30
Speaker 1: to be one hundred dollars off each gram. So I
14:32
Speaker 1: think a slab was one gram that you paid fifty
14:35
Speaker 1: dollars for and you cut it up and you posted
14:37
Speaker 1: it cuts up into like one hundred dollars worth a rock.
14:40
Speaker 1: So that was the first time I like dabbled in, like, yeah, hustling.
14:45
Speaker 1: So yeah, did did I let my did I feel like, well,
14:48
Speaker 1: how did my relationship my parents change? Yeah? I thought
14:51
Speaker 1: they were right, but I still was young and had
14:54
Speaker 1: to figure things out for myself, which led me, which
14:56
Speaker 1: led me back, which led me into actually hustling. You know.
15:00
Speaker 1: After the break, Charlotta Magne's gonna take us on a
15:02
Speaker 1: ride through his earliest experiences with radio and how that
15:06
Speaker 1: helped build his foundation in the business. When did radio
15:16
Speaker 1: enter your life? Like, not only not as a career,
15:18
Speaker 1: as a listener, like what's your earliest experiences with radio?
15:21
Speaker 1: Like forever forever? And the reason I say forever because
15:26
Speaker 1: like when I said small town monst Gorn to South Carolina.
15:29
Speaker 1: So the radio station was Z ninety three Jams. We
15:32
Speaker 1: were always around the radio. If it wasn't ZE ninety
15:34
Speaker 1: three Jams, it was another station called wpa L one
15:37
Speaker 1: hundred point nine, and one hundred point nine was like
15:40
Speaker 1: more underground with it, so they were playing like underground stuff,
15:43
Speaker 1: not the mainscreen stuff. And like you know, there was
15:46
Speaker 1: always like bone boxes around like my cousin, you know,
15:49
Speaker 1: my cousin Ty Sluke to my cousin ty he was
15:52
Speaker 1: the first person let me hear like a real hip
15:56
Speaker 1: hop record. Like prior to that, my sister had her
15:58
Speaker 1: radio in her room. So my sister was listening to
16:00
Speaker 1: like Kiddn't Play and Salt and Pepper, you know what
16:05
Speaker 1: I mean, stuff like that Hammer all the pop stuff,
16:09
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But my cousin let me
16:11
Speaker 1: hear Eric B and Rock Kemp paid in full. Wow,
16:15
Speaker 1: and that changed everything. Wow. That was like, I don't
16:18
Speaker 1: know what this thing is called hip hop, but I
16:22
Speaker 1: love it. Wow. It felt like Rock Kim was saying stuff,
16:25
Speaker 1: like he was telling stories like you know what I mean. Yeah,
16:30
Speaker 1: just that is what introduced me to radio and always
16:33
Speaker 1: wanting to be around a radio. It felt like we
16:37
Speaker 1: might even have been around radio more than TV. You know,
16:40
Speaker 1: back in the day TV. It was certain shows we
16:42
Speaker 1: were watching, but we weren't just turning the TV on
16:45
Speaker 1: and keeping it on all day. If it wasn't like
16:47
Speaker 1: Nintendo or you know the radio man, we were outside yeah,
16:53
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, running around, playing around.
16:56
Speaker 1: So it's like, for me, radio has always been in
16:59
Speaker 1: my life as a listener, Like for the personalities are
17:02
Speaker 1: because like I know, like in LA and later I
17:04
Speaker 1: came to us, it was like syndicated, but you know,
17:05
Speaker 1: in LA always felt like it was like big Boy
17:07
Speaker 1: was like was huge, you know, and I felt like
17:09
Speaker 1: our guy. For me growing up, it was oh, oh oh,
17:14
Speaker 1: it's the time Join Them morning show because you know,
17:17
Speaker 1: my mom was a school teacher, so we was up
17:19
Speaker 1: early early, so I was listening to the time Join Them.
17:22
Speaker 1: And then you know, ZE ninety three played such a
17:24
Speaker 1: big role in my life because you know, their original
17:27
Speaker 1: morning show that I remember was the Breakfast Club Baby
17:31
Speaker 1: Jay and Tessa, Tessa Spencer, and then you know, in
17:35
Speaker 1: the afternoons it was like um a man, y'all need
17:38
Speaker 1: a rude boy. But then it was like you know
17:41
Speaker 1: the night shows, the Top nine at nine, you know
17:43
Speaker 1: you want to call in and request the song and
17:46
Speaker 1: hear your voice on the radio, shout out your school
17:49
Speaker 1: whatever whatever. But yeah, those were the people like growing up,
17:52
Speaker 1: like Sean, people like Sean Dobe, Like, those are the
17:55
Speaker 1: personalities that I would hear. Reggie c You'd hear these
17:59
Speaker 1: people and they were just like regular voices that you
18:03
Speaker 1: would hear all the time. Ken Moore, like I don't
18:07
Speaker 1: even know if Kim was ki on Ze. I don't
18:09
Speaker 1: know if Kni was on Deep. I just Deep to
18:10
Speaker 1: the voices I remember, yeah, you know, growing up like
18:13
Speaker 1: those voices, those local radio voices, you're growing up about
18:16
Speaker 1: famous as anyone in the country. Absolutely. Do you remember
18:20
Speaker 1: your first time on the radio. I don't remember the
18:23
Speaker 1: very first time, but it definitely one of the first
18:25
Speaker 1: times was my man Willie Will. There was a guy
18:28
Speaker 1: named Willie Will He was the night jock there at
18:32
Speaker 1: the ninety three jams in Charleston, South Carolina. Me and
18:35
Speaker 1: him used to wrap together. I met him at you know,
18:38
Speaker 1: a couple of recording studios that were in Charleston when
18:40
Speaker 1: I got my internship up there. I would always just
18:43
Speaker 1: be up there and I'd be sitting in on his show,
18:46
Speaker 1: and you know, he would definitely, you know, call me
18:48
Speaker 1: to the microphone, you know, and I'd be on the
18:50
Speaker 1: mic talking. So definitely, my first time on air, I'm
18:53
Speaker 1: sure was with Willie Will and in some way, shape
18:57
Speaker 1: or form, because I remember one of the remember the
18:59
Speaker 1: program director telling him, like, you know, you need to
19:02
Speaker 1: get a cardboard cut out of Charlemagne and put it
19:04
Speaker 1: in the studio because your energy goes up, you know,
19:08
Speaker 1: when he's in here, you know, with you. I remember
19:11
Speaker 1: I remember him saying that to him, and yeah, which
19:14
Speaker 1: which probably ultimately led to me being on air because
19:16
Speaker 1: my man Ron White, you know, suoth Iron White. Me
19:19
Speaker 1: and Ron still talked to this day. Round was like
19:21
Speaker 1: he just asked me one day, like, Yo, do you
19:23
Speaker 1: want to be on the radio? And I'm like, sure,
19:26
Speaker 1: why not? And so they started putting me on Sundays
19:29
Speaker 1: eleven am to three pm. When you say sure, like,
19:32
Speaker 1: was there a part of you that had Was that
19:34
Speaker 1: just you playing the cool or were you really not
19:36
Speaker 1: even sure you wanted to be on the radio like that? Yeah?
19:39
Speaker 1: I never had thought about it, you know what I mean.
19:41
Speaker 1: I just was really happy to be working at Z
19:44
Speaker 1: ninety three jams because it was like the most corporate
19:47
Speaker 1: thing I had ever done. Yeah, you know it was.
19:50
Speaker 1: It was the place. It was a place where like
19:53
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, people saw you at ninety three, They're like, oh,
19:55
Speaker 1: he must be he must be doing something, you know
19:57
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like he must be doing something with
19:58
Speaker 1: his with his life, you know what I mean. And
20:01
Speaker 1: for me being like a guy who was in and
20:03
Speaker 1: out of jail at the time and was getting in
20:05
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble and graduated from high school in
20:08
Speaker 1: night school. We had gotten kicked out of two high schools.
20:11
Speaker 1: Like for me, that was a big deal for me
20:13
Speaker 1: to be like pulling up in a most corner driving
20:15
Speaker 1: this station vehicle like the big white band with the
20:19
Speaker 1: Z ninety three jams on the logo, you know what
20:21
Speaker 1: I mean, pulling it down my dim rold, you know
20:23
Speaker 1: what I mean, hoping that some of the girls that
20:25
Speaker 1: lived on my road saw me, you know what I mean.
20:28
Speaker 1: Like that was a big deal for me back then.
20:33
Speaker 1: So yeah, just to be there felt like you did. Yeah,
20:37
Speaker 1: I just was just happy to be there. Like so
20:38
Speaker 1: when he asked me to be on air, like hell yeah, yeah,
20:42
Speaker 1: whatever's gonna keep me here, yea. And of course when
20:46
Speaker 1: you think radio, you think on air personalities. You're not
20:49
Speaker 1: thinking promotions or programming or anything like that. So hell yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: I'd love to be on air. Now I can really
20:55
Speaker 1: say I work here now I'm a personality. And yeah,
21:00
Speaker 1: I really loved it and appreciate it. How was that
21:02
Speaker 1: first show that you had. I was scaring all the
21:05
Speaker 1: church folks because it was what they had me do.
21:07
Speaker 1: They had me to do something called voice track. And
21:09
Speaker 1: when your voice track is when you record your voice,
21:12
Speaker 1: and you got to record your voice, and you know,
21:14
Speaker 1: it's like it's a time slot from like eleven to three,
21:16
Speaker 1: so you're talking like three four times an hour, introducing songs,
21:20
Speaker 1: time temperature and stuff like that. So I didn't know
21:23
Speaker 1: how to do radio, you know, I really didn't. So
21:26
Speaker 1: I was just going in there talking like, yeah, I was.
21:29
Speaker 1: I was actually screaming. When I go back and listening
21:30
Speaker 1: to my old voice tapes, I was screaming. And it's
21:32
Speaker 1: funny because they all were telling me I was screaming,
21:34
Speaker 1: like I'm not screaming. I was just old you I
21:36
Speaker 1: don't understand how we talk about. I was really yelling
21:38
Speaker 1: like ninety three jams are being hip hop, my go
21:41
Speaker 1: by the name is Charlemagne and gods. I was yelling,
21:44
Speaker 1: like screaming at people, and so like, you know, when
21:47
Speaker 1: I finally started listening to the people who actually do
21:50
Speaker 1: this for a living, I started to acquire a more
21:54
Speaker 1: conversational tone. You know, when in the beginning, I was
21:57
Speaker 1: just yelling, like yelling, like literally yelling at people on
22:00
Speaker 1: the radio, and that's what I was doing. And I
22:02
Speaker 1: did that I think I might have voice tracked a
22:03
Speaker 1: few Sundays, and then Ron was like, all right, enough
22:06
Speaker 1: of that. You're gonna have your voice track on Saturday
22:09
Speaker 1: nights now seven to ten, and then you're gonna go
22:11
Speaker 1: live from ten to midnight. And I was everything because
22:15
Speaker 1: it's Saturday nights so I can have this high energy.
22:19
Speaker 1: But then when we go live, or I could take
22:21
Speaker 1: phone calls. Now it's like I'm taking phone calls and
22:24
Speaker 1: I'm working with people when they're calling then making jokes
22:27
Speaker 1: blah blah. So it's just like for me, the best
22:30
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to me was I didn't know
22:31
Speaker 1: how to do radio. Nobody taught me how to do radio.
22:35
Speaker 1: I wasn't a person who came from, you know, doing
22:39
Speaker 1: college radio or nowadays you can have a podcast or
22:42
Speaker 1: a YouTube page. I was just fresh off the dirt
22:44
Speaker 1: road in Monks Corner, South Carolina, getting on the air
22:48
Speaker 1: in Charleston, South Carolina, on the biggest radio station at
22:50
Speaker 1: the time, ninety three, and that rawdness showed. I sounded
22:55
Speaker 1: different than everybody else because I didn't have that announcer,
22:59
Speaker 1: you know, background, So it worked for me. Yeah, you
23:02
Speaker 1: didn't have the announcer broadcast, yeah or whatever, just coming
23:06
Speaker 1: at it with your own angles. What was your journey
23:09
Speaker 1: after that? After z SO, I worked as an intern
23:14
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, started there in ninety nine from the
23:18
Speaker 1: promotions department to um being on there. And then a
23:22
Speaker 1: news station came in the market, Hot ninety eight nine,
23:25
Speaker 1: much smaller station ran by a guy named my Man.
23:29
Speaker 1: George Cook was the program director. I was doing part
23:32
Speaker 1: time at z SO. I had some conversations with Hot
23:34
Speaker 1: ninety eight nine. They wanted me to come over there
23:36
Speaker 1: and do nights. They wanted me to do Monday through Saturday,
23:39
Speaker 1: seven to midnight full time, and I was I think
23:42
Speaker 1: the pay was like nineteen grand a year, and at
23:45
Speaker 1: the time that was a lot of money, and it
23:48
Speaker 1: was a salary. So just to be able to say
23:50
Speaker 1: first time on salary, I didn't go to college, you
23:54
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I graduated from night school and like, so,
23:57
Speaker 1: I didn't just oh, I got a salary, now about
24:01
Speaker 1: how much I'm making an hour? Like yeah, I'm just
24:03
Speaker 1: happy to be making nineteen grand a year like that
24:05
Speaker 1: sounded like some shit. And so yeah, I started working
24:09
Speaker 1: there every night and it wasn't even about to check
24:11
Speaker 1: it was about the opportunity to be on every night
24:13
Speaker 1: and my man, George Cookman, who's still a great mentor
24:17
Speaker 1: to me to this day. He actually, George is not
24:19
Speaker 1: only the first person to give me a full time
24:22
Speaker 1: position on radio, he told me some information that just
24:26
Speaker 1: changed my whole life. And the information was, I want
24:30
Speaker 1: you to have a morning show at night. I want
24:33
Speaker 1: you to treat this night show that you have like
24:36
Speaker 1: a morning show at night. Parody songs and a lot
24:40
Speaker 1: of sketches, and a lot of topics and a lot
24:42
Speaker 1: of interaction with listeners via the phone, and you know,
24:45
Speaker 1: playing new music, and all of that benefited me so
24:50
Speaker 1: well in the future because that's what I ultimately treated
24:54
Speaker 1: every single show like. I treated every single show like
24:56
Speaker 1: it was a morning show. So no matter where I
24:58
Speaker 1: went from High ninety eighty nine to the Big DM
25:01
Speaker 1: in Columbia, then it was Hot one of three nine
25:03
Speaker 1: in Columbia, then it was Wendy Williams Show, then it
25:06
Speaker 1: was my own morning show in Philly. By the time
25:08
Speaker 1: I got to my own morning show in Philly, I
25:11
Speaker 1: had approached every single one of those situations like it
25:14
Speaker 1: was a morning show. So by the time I was
25:16
Speaker 1: ready to do my own morning show. I was overprepared. Yeah,
25:19
Speaker 1: you know, so it was he planned to seed early
25:22
Speaker 1: on that basically stuck with me throughout my whole career
25:26
Speaker 1: and ultimately led to me being the morning guy I am.
25:29
Speaker 1: Now let me come back. You'll get a chance to
25:33
Speaker 1: hear what Charlemagne learned from the legendary radio host Wendy
25:36
Speaker 1: Williams and lessons he had to teach himself to achieve success.
25:49
Speaker 1: Tell me about meeting Wendy Williams, man Man, I met
25:53
Speaker 1: Wendy because I was doing radio in Columbia, South Carolina.
25:57
Speaker 1: Columbia had a really dope station called Hot one with
26:00
Speaker 1: three nine. So Hot one with three nine started syndicating
26:03
Speaker 1: Wendy Williams in the afternoons, and so Wendy and her
26:07
Speaker 1: husband would come down for station visits, Like they would
26:11
Speaker 1: come down and like see the market and stuff like that,
26:14
Speaker 1: and so I just would break bread, you know. And
26:17
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I even tried to break
26:18
Speaker 1: bread with Wendy. Wendy was in the studio trying to
26:21
Speaker 1: do her show, which I totally understand, now, you know
26:23
Speaker 1: what I mean. But I came in there with mixtapes
26:25
Speaker 1: and parody songs, all of this stuff I wanted her
26:28
Speaker 1: to hear and while she was doing her show. Yeah,
26:31
Speaker 1: I mean, but she was in between breaks, you know
26:33
Speaker 1: what I mean. But now when I under now understanding
26:35
Speaker 1: the hecticness of a syndicated show, it wasn't like breaks
26:39
Speaker 1: like us. But we break for twenty minutes, thirty minutes
26:41
Speaker 1: and got time the bullshit she's on like on on
26:45
Speaker 1: on on, Like it might have only been like three
26:46
Speaker 1: minutes in between songs. Wendy goes, look, yo, yo, take
26:50
Speaker 1: that mixtape shit out of here. I'm trying to do
26:54
Speaker 1: my fucking show. Take that mixtape ship through my husband.
26:58
Speaker 1: I didn't feel offended by that. Yeah, I was just like,
27:01
Speaker 1: where's your husband? She's like, I think if he's in
27:03
Speaker 1: that fucking room somewhere, like in the conference room across
27:05
Speaker 1: the hall. Cool. I went across the room, gave him
27:10
Speaker 1: the mixtape, started pitching shit to him, you know, pitching
27:13
Speaker 1: shit to him, and then we started talking and we
27:15
Speaker 1: you know, kept in contact from there, you know, and
27:18
Speaker 1: I used to like give them the heads up on
27:20
Speaker 1: things that were going on at the station. So he
27:23
Speaker 1: invited me to come up to New York for a party.
27:25
Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, wan't you come up to New York.
27:26
Speaker 1: We're having a party, blah blah. And I'm like, all right,
27:29
Speaker 1: went to the party just to kick it. And in
27:32
Speaker 1: the party, Wendy was like, oh shit, Charlemagne, Yo, won't
27:35
Speaker 1: you come to my show? How long are you in town? Like, oh,
27:38
Speaker 1: just for a couple of days. Come to my show tomorrow,
27:41
Speaker 1: Like come to your show tomorrow. Can't tell me shit
27:44
Speaker 1: like that. I'm going I'm going to be like, yo,
27:48
Speaker 1: all right, the who do I call? What do I do?
27:51
Speaker 1: And so I'm hitting cav like yo, keV. Wendy said,
27:54
Speaker 1: come to her show. He was like, all right, I
27:55
Speaker 1: bet so. He just told me that. He told me
27:57
Speaker 1: to go up there, went up there, sat in the
27:59
Speaker 1: pink room to pint the office for a while. Then
28:01
Speaker 1: she invited me on the show and I was there
28:04
Speaker 1: for like twenty five minutes, and literally that evening they
28:08
Speaker 1: were offering me the position is her co host sidekick.
28:12
Speaker 1: And they was like, look, we can't pay you, but
28:14
Speaker 1: we can give you a place to stay. And I'm
28:17
Speaker 1: just like all right, just let me go back down
28:19
Speaker 1: South and like, you know, figure some things out, like
28:22
Speaker 1: just you know, let my girl know what I'm about
28:24
Speaker 1: to do and everything else, And that's what I did.
28:26
Speaker 1: You knew the opportunity, yo, man, you gotta recognize the
28:29
Speaker 1: opportunity even when it's not a paycheck attached to it.
28:32
Speaker 1: So my mindset was never I never I never wanted
28:34
Speaker 1: like how much I'm gonna get paid. It was like,
28:35
Speaker 1: we cannot pay you, but we can give you a
28:38
Speaker 1: place to stay. I'm out the opportunity to be on
28:42
Speaker 1: Wendy Williams Show Monday through Friday in the afternoon, nationally
28:48
Speaker 1: syndicated show. What are some lessons you learned on the
28:50
Speaker 1: Wonder william Show. That Wendy's a legend, no matter how
28:54
Speaker 1: you feel about her, no matter how you feel about her,
28:56
Speaker 1: Bona farre legend, one of the most talented people, one
28:59
Speaker 1: of the most talented media personalities of all time. You know,
29:01
Speaker 1: one of the people few people who can like literally
29:04
Speaker 1: sit down in front of a TV camera and just go. Yeah,
29:09
Speaker 1: person who could just sit down in front of a
29:10
Speaker 1: microphone and just go. And you realize the reason she's
29:14
Speaker 1: able to do that is number one, she had does
29:16
Speaker 1: have just a natural gift to gab. But one of
29:18
Speaker 1: the lessons I learned that everything is showprep. Like a
29:21
Speaker 1: lot of times, you know, back in the day, we
29:23
Speaker 1: would think that show prep is like just picking up
29:24
Speaker 1: the latest magazine, picking up the latest tabloid and just
29:27
Speaker 1: downloading what's in there. Wendy taught me that your whole
29:30
Speaker 1: life is show prep. Every single experience that you go
29:34
Speaker 1: through can be brought to the radio. You know, every
29:37
Speaker 1: single experience that you go through can be bought, you know,
29:40
Speaker 1: the television. I would watch her, I'd be out with
29:42
Speaker 1: her during the day, watch these things happen to her
29:47
Speaker 1: and then watch her get on the radio and talk
29:49
Speaker 1: about these things like, oh, I was there, and of
29:51
Speaker 1: course he's making me part of the story because and
29:53
Speaker 1: Charlemagne said this. Charlemagne was right there, and Charlotmagne acted
29:56
Speaker 1: like he didn't see it, and it isn't that. Like
29:57
Speaker 1: I'm like, god, damn, she's incredible, you know what I mean. Like,
30:00
Speaker 1: he's just an incredible storyteller. So, you know, she taught
30:05
Speaker 1: me how to tell stories via radio, even though I
30:09
Speaker 1: was already doing it, but I was doing it more
30:11
Speaker 1: so through sketches. But now just to make your life
30:15
Speaker 1: a story, to make the things that happened to you
30:17
Speaker 1: throughout the day a story that was like one of
30:20
Speaker 1: the biggest things, like everything is show prep. And the
30:23
Speaker 1: other thing was like you're either going to be of
30:25
Speaker 1: the people or of the industry, because when you're of
30:28
Speaker 1: the people, you're always going to speak like for the people,
30:32
Speaker 1: and you're gonna speak how the people speak. When you're
30:35
Speaker 1: of the industry, like you're gonna try to protect relationships
30:38
Speaker 1: and you're gonna try to, you know, protect people, you know,
30:42
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna have those opinions that you that
30:45
Speaker 1: you probably once had that was good advice at the time.
30:50
Speaker 1: I think that there's an adjustment to be made in
30:53
Speaker 1: that rhetoric because it's gonna come a time where like
30:56
Speaker 1: you're going to be industry yeah you get too big,
30:59
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and everybody around you was gonna be industry
31:02
Speaker 1: through I've been in the game for twenty five years,
31:05
Speaker 1: so not only have I grown as a personality and
31:07
Speaker 1: a businessman and a media just everything right, people around
31:15
Speaker 1: me have to Now. I got people who run record label,
31:18
Speaker 1: I got people who are in rs. I got people
31:20
Speaker 1: who work at these social media platforms, you know what
31:24
Speaker 1: I mean. I got friends that are artists in big celebrities,
31:27
Speaker 1: we all. I've been doing it for twenty five years.
31:30
Speaker 1: We all came up together, and not only just the
31:33
Speaker 1: people I came up with, those next generations of people
31:37
Speaker 1: that now I'm in position. But oh, I see this
31:39
Speaker 1: person coming. Let me embrace this in the VILDI and
31:41
Speaker 1: brace that in the Viddle school. We're all industry, you
31:45
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So your authentic self has to change.
31:47
Speaker 1: It's like reasonable doubt was authentic for jay z or
31:52
Speaker 1: four authentic for jay Zay. What you just said hit
31:55
Speaker 1: it on the head because people don't pay attention to that.
31:59
Speaker 1: Like you saw me when I was one version of myself.
32:04
Speaker 1: If I had stayed that version and never grown into
32:08
Speaker 1: anything else, it's no way I'm being authentic, Yeah, Muhammad,
32:11
Speaker 1: at least said the person who's doing the same thing
32:13
Speaker 1: at fifty that he was at twenty wasted thirty years
32:15
Speaker 1: of his fucking Ain't I believe that, you know what
32:19
Speaker 1: I mean. It's just like you're I'm never going to
32:21
Speaker 1: be that version again. But the only thing I could
32:23
Speaker 1: do is be the best version of my authentic self,
32:27
Speaker 1: whatever that may be, whatever I grow into, you know,
32:31
Speaker 1: And like that's why me at forty four, you got
32:33
Speaker 1: damn right, I'm not the same way I was at
32:34
Speaker 1: thirty one. I better not be. I mean, I'm my true,
32:37
Speaker 1: authentic self right now. And you know, you realize like
32:41
Speaker 1: the power of the platform, and what I mean by
32:43
Speaker 1: that is like, man, this's just certain things that we
32:46
Speaker 1: got to protect people from because we have these platforms,
32:50
Speaker 1: and sometimes the wrong information is viewed over the platform,
32:54
Speaker 1: you know, and people get hurt because of that, you know.
32:58
Speaker 1: And I'm not in the business of hurting nobody. I
33:00
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt nobody, and I don't want the
33:03
Speaker 1: person putting out the information to be hurt. Yeah, you know. So, yeah,
33:08
Speaker 1: well that's interesting because and I don't know if this
33:10
Speaker 1: was necessarily this person being hurt by you. But after
33:13
Speaker 1: Wendy Williams, you get your own show in Philly and
33:17
Speaker 1: you get fired because you bring Beanie siegal on, who's
33:20
Speaker 1: a who's a Philly rapper. Yeah, if I tell me
33:23
Speaker 1: if I'm not getting a story right, if you bring
33:24
Speaker 1: on Beanie Segul, who's a Philly rapper at one point
33:26
Speaker 1: was signed to Rockefeller Records, came up under Jay jay
33:30
Speaker 1: Z and you do an interview with beans on the show,
33:34
Speaker 1: and he said something about Jayla makes Jay madd and
33:37
Speaker 1: you get get fired. That, Yeah, that's the story. The
33:40
Speaker 1: story is that I got fired because Beanie Segul got
33:44
Speaker 1: on the air and aired out jay Z and I'm
33:48
Speaker 1: the one who recorded it and I put it on air.
33:49
Speaker 1: That's the story. I don't know if that's true or not.
33:53
Speaker 1: Jay never has confirmed what Jay. Jay never confirmed or
33:56
Speaker 1: denied on air. Behind the scenes, he has said to
34:00
Speaker 1: me like that that really gets you fired, Like, you
34:02
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And that's the story, right, I don't.
34:05
Speaker 1: I doubt that's highly the case, you know what I mean?
34:07
Speaker 1: What I think back then, I think, um I had
34:10
Speaker 1: a new program director was hired, and I think that
34:13
Speaker 1: new program director just wanted to bring in his people,
34:15
Speaker 1: and that new program director like he don't know, he
34:18
Speaker 1: had his chest out a little bit. I remember the
34:19
Speaker 1: first time I met him, he was like, oh, me,
34:20
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be able to get along. So he
34:22
Speaker 1: came in there on some like snapping the whip ship,
34:25
Speaker 1: let me get this guy in line type thing. And
34:28
Speaker 1: I think that um, it was a combination of just
34:31
Speaker 1: him being new and wanting to bring in his own people,
34:34
Speaker 1: but also a combination of people thinking they're doing the
34:37
Speaker 1: right thing for jay Z. But jay Z's not even
34:40
Speaker 1: thinking about this, He's you know what I mean. It's
34:43
Speaker 1: one of those things like I know, I know Charlotmagne
34:45
Speaker 1: did it, but we got rid of Charlomagne and you
34:47
Speaker 1: let Jay know I did it whatever whatever you know.
34:49
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't know. I do feel like
34:50
Speaker 1: maybe a higher up might have might have just pulled
34:54
Speaker 1: the trigger on that firing just to get in Jay's
34:57
Speaker 1: good graces. But I don't think that was a hey,
35:00
Speaker 1: I'm jay Z, I'm offended, body, just get this guy
35:02
Speaker 1: off the air thing. No, I don't believe that at all. Okay, okay,
35:06
Speaker 1: but that does get you fired. And that was your
35:07
Speaker 1: own I mean, that's like your own show in Philly.
35:09
Speaker 1: That's like and if your first time having like your
35:11
Speaker 1: own show, that's like, yeah, that's that big that I
35:14
Speaker 1: was killing. I was number I think two in the market.
35:17
Speaker 1: I was number two in the market at the time,
35:19
Speaker 1: and that was in a PPM world, so I was
35:22
Speaker 1: I was doing great and it was literally just me
35:24
Speaker 1: and my homegirl s I should shoot to Sasha Katie,
35:27
Speaker 1: that's the homie, you know what I mean? She we
35:29
Speaker 1: used to work together when I used to work at
35:30
Speaker 1: Wendy at WBLS, and so when I got my own
35:33
Speaker 1: show in Philly, just asked, Yo, you want to be
35:35
Speaker 1: my producer and she was like, hell yeah. So we
35:38
Speaker 1: literally would drive from New Jersey every morning back and
35:42
Speaker 1: forth the Pennsylvania like like an hour and a half away.
35:46
Speaker 1: We would drive back and forth every day. Three I
35:50
Speaker 1: have to get up at three in the morning, pick
35:52
Speaker 1: her up by like four three thirty four o'clock to
35:54
Speaker 1: be there on time. And we did that every single day, wow,
35:59
Speaker 1: for like six seven months the Funny Parties. I got
36:02
Speaker 1: fired to day I was supposed to move into the
36:04
Speaker 1: townhouse because I was still living in New Jersey. So
36:08
Speaker 1: me and my wife had got a townhouse, and I'm like, yeah,
36:11
Speaker 1: this is gonna be great. Now. I gotta wake up
36:13
Speaker 1: sore early, like I don't have to drive. Like I'm
36:14
Speaker 1: in my basket. I'm processing all this in my mind.
36:17
Speaker 1: We were living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on the
36:19
Speaker 1: outskirts of Philadelphia. Go and roll my daughter in school here,
36:22
Speaker 1: all of that type of ship. And the day I
36:26
Speaker 1: got fired, I literally had all my stuff in the
36:29
Speaker 1: fucking I had a two thousand and two escalated with
36:31
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, and
36:34
Speaker 1: I had all that in the in the car ready
36:37
Speaker 1: to move into the townhouse. And I got fired on
36:39
Speaker 1: that day, literally that day, and went back to South Carolina,
36:44
Speaker 1: back in Most Corner for a year. And what was
36:46
Speaker 1: going through your hat at that point, failure, I failed.
36:51
Speaker 1: I gotta go back to the Monsts corner. After being
36:54
Speaker 1: you know, on Windy Show, after having my own show
36:57
Speaker 1: in Philly, after having these viral moments, after being on
37:01
Speaker 1: VH one TV with Windy. Now I got to go
37:04
Speaker 1: back to the Mons Corner and collect unemployment for real,
37:07
Speaker 1: because I don't know when I'm gonna get another gig.
37:11
Speaker 1: And now I got a daughter. So I literally was
37:14
Speaker 1: in South Carolina from November two thousand and nine to
37:19
Speaker 1: November two and ten, so I was able to collect
37:22
Speaker 1: a year of unemployment. You know what I mean. I'm
37:24
Speaker 1: living at home with my mom, depressed, this shit, you know,
37:28
Speaker 1: anxiety through the roof, just trying to figure out what's
37:32
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But you know, I used that opportunity to
37:36
Speaker 1: There was a new station launching in Charleston, South Carolina.
37:39
Speaker 1: It was called The Box. I think it was like
37:40
Speaker 1: ninety two five The Box or something like that. So
37:43
Speaker 1: I was there with them, helping them launch the station,
37:45
Speaker 1: helping them write promos and creating imaging for the station.
37:49
Speaker 1: I did the voiceovers for the station. Like in my mind,
37:52
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'm gonna end up getting a
37:54
Speaker 1: shift on ninety two five. I'm gonna make my twenty
37:57
Speaker 1: grand a year here in South Carolina, and we're gonna
38:00
Speaker 1: live a great life. Yeah, that was my mindseting. But
38:03
Speaker 1: you know, clearly God had other plans because the Breakfast
38:06
Speaker 1: Club came shortly after that. How did I come? Um,
38:11
Speaker 1: When I was in Philly, there was a there was
38:14
Speaker 1: a time where I had met with my man g
38:16
Speaker 1: Spen Um before me and g Spen met in a
38:19
Speaker 1: restaurant or something. It was me and at the time
38:22
Speaker 1: my then uh my then manager named it was Kevin
38:26
Speaker 1: Wendy's husband, and you know, you don't have the best
38:29
Speaker 1: reputation in the business man, and so even though we met,
38:33
Speaker 1: g Spen wasn't really feeling it. And then later on
38:37
Speaker 1: that turned into a meeting with my man Cadillac Jack
38:40
Speaker 1: and keV was with me then and it was the
38:42
Speaker 1: same thing. Like literally, I found out that after we
38:44
Speaker 1: left the meeting, mad people came from like the sales
38:48
Speaker 1: department and was like, you cannot Charlotta Magne's great, but
38:52
Speaker 1: if as long as you know Kevin is his manager,
38:55
Speaker 1: you know, we can't hire him, and YadA, YadA YadA,
38:57
Speaker 1: the energy will be bad and terrible all of this
38:59
Speaker 1: type of stuff. I didn't know that, you know. And
39:02
Speaker 1: then you know, me and Kevin ended up having a
39:04
Speaker 1: fallen out parting ways. And so I was in New
39:08
Speaker 1: York because I had moved back to South Carolina, but
39:10
Speaker 1: I was in New York for a couple of days,
39:12
Speaker 1: and I remember just texting g Spinning like Yo, you
39:17
Speaker 1: know where you at? And he was like, I'm in
39:20
Speaker 1: New York where you at? Like, I'm in Jersey right now.
39:22
Speaker 1: I was standing in Fort Lee. I was at the
39:23
Speaker 1: Double Tree in four League and he was like, yo, man,
39:27
Speaker 1: he was like, Yo, come to the station. I'm like
39:30
Speaker 1: where He's like, yeah, yeah, come to the station, Come
39:32
Speaker 1: to the station right now. And so I got in
39:35
Speaker 1: the rental car drove seeing It took me like three
39:38
Speaker 1: hours to get there because it was like four o'clock
39:40
Speaker 1: in the aftern Yeah, So we was at the GW
39:42
Speaker 1: Bridge for what seemed like an hour and trying to
39:44
Speaker 1: get down the West side, creeping down to Tribeca. But
39:47
Speaker 1: I finally get there and g spinn is like, Yo,
39:51
Speaker 1: my boss, Cadillac, Jack has been watching your stuff all
39:55
Speaker 1: day long, watching you and Duval with the Hood, State
39:59
Speaker 1: of the Union and listening under like some old interviews
40:01
Speaker 1: when he was on the radio in Philly. So I
40:03
Speaker 1: sit down with Cadillac, and me and Cadillac just have
40:05
Speaker 1: a great conversation. And one of the first things he
40:07
Speaker 1: says to me is like, you know, is keV still
40:10
Speaker 1: you're managing? I'm like, nah, you know. And that's how
40:16
Speaker 1: the relationship started. So like a few months later, I
40:20
Speaker 1: got high on probably one or five one. I mean,
40:22
Speaker 1: I remember Catillac saying like, how long can you wait
40:24
Speaker 1: for this job? And I'm like, for this job as
40:26
Speaker 1: long as it takes. And so like five six months later,
40:30
Speaker 1: you know, the wheels really started to move where you
40:32
Speaker 1: want them. That whole five six months, Like yo, like,
40:34
Speaker 1: oh yes, yeah, you couldn't just sit back and no, no, no,
40:38
Speaker 1: definitely stayed in touch, would send him new episodes of
40:42
Speaker 1: Me and the Wall Show, you know, just just anything,
40:45
Speaker 1: anything that I was doing in that space, I would
40:47
Speaker 1: because we was early on social media. We was all
40:49
Speaker 1: over my Space and Twitter and everything else. So yeah,
40:52
Speaker 1: like I was definitely keeping in real touch with him
40:56
Speaker 1: and g Span, you know what I mean, and sometimes
40:58
Speaker 1: popping up, popping up, you know, and be like because
41:01
Speaker 1: I knew kind of like the gig might be mine.
41:04
Speaker 1: So I was kind of like popping up. And it
41:05
Speaker 1: felt bad because there was like people who I was
41:08
Speaker 1: like really cool with that work there, and I couldn't
41:11
Speaker 1: say anything, you know about the conversations me and Cadillac
41:16
Speaker 1: we're having, you know what I mean, And I had
41:19
Speaker 1: to like lie to some of these people, and it
41:22
Speaker 1: felt bad, you know what I mean, because I just
41:24
Speaker 1: couldn't tell the truth because it's business still to be handled,
41:29
Speaker 1: you know. So but yeah, that's how I got there.
41:32
Speaker 1: It's amazing, man. And then and then basically from that,
41:35
Speaker 1: I mean, from that point, are you still there obviously
41:38
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club? Yeah, thirteen years later, man. And what's so
41:41
Speaker 1: interesting is that any of them would tell you. Angelie
41:44
Speaker 1: will tell you, NBA will tell you, our radio consultant,
41:47
Speaker 1: Dennis Clark, g Spen, Cadillac, I was the guy saying
41:50
Speaker 1: We're gonna be one of the biggest nationally syndicated shows
41:53
Speaker 1: in the country. Like like I just I knew it.
41:56
Speaker 1: I saw what this show had the potential of being.
42:00
Speaker 1: And like from day one, me Vy Angela, we always
42:04
Speaker 1: recorded our interviews and put them online. That's how I
42:07
Speaker 1: was aware of what Angelie was doing. I was aware
42:09
Speaker 1: of what you know, Envy was doing. You know, people
42:12
Speaker 1: like my homegirl, Kendrew g deVie Brown, we were all
42:14
Speaker 1: utilizing the internet. And so when we got with the
42:17
Speaker 1: Breklast Club, that's all. We didn't have no money from marketing.
42:20
Speaker 1: They don't have no money for marketing, no money for promotions.
42:22
Speaker 1: This was kind of like a last ditch thing to
42:25
Speaker 1: see if something will work, to even keep the lights
42:27
Speaker 1: on that power one oh five one, and so all
42:30
Speaker 1: we asked for was a cameraman every day to come
42:32
Speaker 1: in here and record, you know, these interviews. And that's
42:35
Speaker 1: what we did. We started recording these interviews, putting them
42:37
Speaker 1: up online, recording these interviews, putting them on websites. And
42:40
Speaker 1: then at the time all these blogs and the World
42:43
Speaker 1: Stars and all of these different platforms, these these websites
42:46
Speaker 1: existed sending our interviews out, they started posting them. Yeah,
42:51
Speaker 1: next thing you know, it took off in a real way,
42:56
Speaker 1: and here we are. How do you how do you
42:59
Speaker 1: manage that? Like, how do you manage the expectation of
43:01
Speaker 1: how do you manage the success? How do you manage
43:04
Speaker 1: what is just out of reach at the moment that's
43:07
Speaker 1: that's gonna be coming up for you? I manage it
43:09
Speaker 1: just about like realizing what my daddy always said, You're
43:12
Speaker 1: never as good as it say you are, and you're
43:14
Speaker 1: never as bad as it say you are. Like I've
43:15
Speaker 1: already had my moments of like ego. I've had my
43:19
Speaker 1: moments of like being that narcissistic, arrogant person that you know,
43:25
Speaker 1: you can't tell anything too. Whether people realize that or not,
43:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they did, because I'm sure I projected it,
43:31
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But I went through that,
43:34
Speaker 1: and I went through that at a time where, like God,
43:38
Speaker 1: knew I had to get over that in order to
43:40
Speaker 1: be where I am now. So I knew that I
43:45
Speaker 1: had to start doing some work on myself. I was
43:49
Speaker 1: really becoming everything that I said I didn't like, you know,
43:53
Speaker 1: I was looking in the mirror and really becoming my father.
43:55
Speaker 1: I loved my father, but I hated how my father's
43:58
Speaker 1: infidelity ruined his marriage with my mom, you know, and
44:05
Speaker 1: ruined our family. Right. So for me, I didn't want
44:09
Speaker 1: to do that, and I felt myself going down that
44:12
Speaker 1: path in a real way. So it was just like,
44:15
Speaker 1: let me check myself before I wreck myself. You know, yeah,
44:20
Speaker 1: why let you go? Man? Last question, if you can
44:23
Speaker 1: pick out one thing that's helped you be successful, that's
44:25
Speaker 1: sort of been with you through every period of your career,
44:28
Speaker 1: what do you think that thing would be? Man? For me,
44:34
Speaker 1: it would like to really be authentic. And what I
44:37
Speaker 1: mean by that is you're not authentic when you're being
44:40
Speaker 1: a character to yourself. You're not authentic when you see
44:45
Speaker 1: something working for you and you're getting rewarded for it,
44:47
Speaker 1: so you start doubling and trippling down on that thing.
44:52
Speaker 1: You're not authentic when you're being a second rate version
44:57
Speaker 1: of somebody else instead of a first rate version of yourself.
44:59
Speaker 1: And one of the things that hurt me to most
45:01
Speaker 1: is when they started calling me to hip hop Howard Stern.
45:04
Speaker 1: I love Howard Stern, right, but I didn't even stop
45:07
Speaker 1: to think why they were calling me that. I just
45:10
Speaker 1: took it and ran with it, you know, and started
45:13
Speaker 1: giving them like all of the examples of Howard that
45:18
Speaker 1: Howard might not even be proud of now, you know.
45:20
Speaker 1: For me, it was like a lot of the the
45:23
Speaker 1: frat boy, creepy ass, overly sexual humor, you know, like
45:30
Speaker 1: the low vibrational energy is what I was really doing,
45:35
Speaker 1: the limbo with how low can you go? You know
45:37
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like literally, like how low can you go?
45:40
Speaker 1: Like literally, And that's the type of shit I was doing.
45:43
Speaker 1: So like when you go online and you see like
45:45
Speaker 1: videos of me like sniffing chairs or like tying porn
45:48
Speaker 1: stars up and all of that, it was literally for
45:52
Speaker 1: the shock. Yeah, And so like that stuck with me
45:55
Speaker 1: for like, man, maybe maybe a year or two I
45:58
Speaker 1: was on that and then just started to eat me up, Like, Yo,
46:02
Speaker 1: this ain't making me happy. This shit is whacked. And
46:05
Speaker 1: you got your you know, your wife. You know I
46:07
Speaker 1: got married in twenty fourteen, so you got your wife
46:10
Speaker 1: on your head at the time. She's my girl, Like
46:11
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you doing? Like you know, you
46:14
Speaker 1: out here wilding, you cheating on like me and you
46:17
Speaker 1: you're on the radio and you're damn it bragging about
46:20
Speaker 1: word of the ball like it was that type of conversation.
46:24
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, are you tripping? Like you know you
46:26
Speaker 1: it's just entertainment. That was my life. It's just entertainment.
46:28
Speaker 1: But it's not. Yeah, it's really not, you know, because
46:30
Speaker 1: you know, but when you're influencing mad people, and in
46:33
Speaker 1: this case, I'm hurting somebody and hurting the person that's
46:36
Speaker 1: the closest to me, and you can start to believe
46:39
Speaker 1: your own bullshit. That's the worst. When you get in
46:41
Speaker 1: the character and you start believing that you really are
46:44
Speaker 1: this dude. So it's like for me, man, that's what
46:47
Speaker 1: made me like really start like going to therapy and
46:51
Speaker 1: like doing the work because I did not like the
46:53
Speaker 1: version of myself that I was becoming. So my advice
46:57
Speaker 1: to anybody would just to just be authentic. Always leave
47:02
Speaker 1: yourself open to growth, and don't be afraid of where
47:06
Speaker 1: that growth takes you. I don't give a fuck what
47:08
Speaker 1: people about you today. If you're growing into something else tomorrow,
47:12
Speaker 1: follow that shit, you know what I mean, Because if
47:15
Speaker 1: you don't, you know, you're you're really just stunting your
47:19
Speaker 1: growth and you really don't know how big you could
47:23
Speaker 1: possibly be you're putting a cap on you, like you're
47:26
Speaker 1: literally putting a limit on how far you could possibly grow,
47:31
Speaker 1: how big you could get, because you're like, Nope, that's
47:34
Speaker 1: what they like about me, So I'm gonna keep it
47:36
Speaker 1: here as opposed to just leaving yourself open to see
47:39
Speaker 1: what else is out there and how much more you
47:42
Speaker 1: could continue to grow. So that's what I tell people.
47:44
Speaker 1: Be authentic, man, and just don't be afraid to grow. Yeah, yeah, man,
47:48
Speaker 1: thanks for bringing your authentic self to everything, man. I
47:51
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Thanks, man, appreciate Charlemagne, through the ups and
47:58
Speaker 1: downs of building a media career and one of the
48:00
Speaker 1: most cut throat of mediums radio, has shown up ready
48:04
Speaker 1: to bring his full self to whatever it is he does.
48:07
Speaker 1: And the brilliant of that is he's been impossible to ignore.
48:11
Speaker 1: I want to thank him for that confidence and for
48:13
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk with me. I plan on
48:16
Speaker 1: spending more time working on my fear of being rejected
48:18
Speaker 1: just for being me. Thanks for listening to start it
48:21
Speaker 1: from the bottom, I'm out. Started from the Bottom is
48:25
Speaker 1: produced by David Jah, edited by Keishaw Williams, Engineered by
48:29
Speaker 1: Ben Holliday, Booked by Lord Morgan with production help from
48:33
Speaker 1: Lea Rose. The show's executive produced by Jacob Boldstein, who's
48:38
Speaker 1: not all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our
48:41
Speaker 1: theme music is by Ben Holliday and David jaf featuring
48:44
Speaker 1: Anthony Yaggas and Saint Banna Joe Lack. Listen to start
48:48
Speaker 1: It from the bottom. Wherever you get your podcasts and
48:50
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Speaker 1: sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out Pushkin dot fm
48:57
Speaker 1: or the Apple Show page for more information. If you
49:01
Speaker 1: like your show, please remember to share, rate, and review
49:03
Speaker 1: us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond.