March 16, 2023 • 48 mins
Introducing Started from the Bottom.
Every week on Started from the Bottom, host Justin Richmond interviews successful people who grew up on the outside – people of color, people who weren’t part of the old boys’ network, people who grew up in a world where almost nobody went to college. How did they do it? How did they beat the odds while also beating away the feeling of being an imposter?
Over a 25 year career, Charlamagne Tha God clawed his way to the top of the radio industry. In this episode of Started From the Bottom, a new podcast from Pushkin Industries, the long-time host of The Breakfast Club tells us what it took for him — a young man suffering from anxiety, constantly in and out of jail — to become an icon of modern media.
Catch new episodes every week, everywhere you listen to podcasts. To check it on on the iHeart App, https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1297-started-from-the-bottom-108123736/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FM
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Pushkin. For me growing up, it was oh, oh, oh,
it's the time join the morning show because you know,
my mom was a school teacher, so we was up early, early,
so I was listening to the time join them. And
then you know, Z ninety three played such a big
role in my life because you know, their original morning
(00:28):
show that I remember was The Breakfast Club, Baby Jay
and Tessa Tessa Spencer. My guest today is someone I've
wanted to interview for a long time because of what
he's meant over the last decade to the culture, black culture,
hip hop culture, internet culture, youth culture, all the cultures,
you name it. But if I'm being completely honest, the
(00:50):
real reason I wanted to sit down and talk to
Charlotte Magine the God is to see if some of
his confidence can run off on me. Most of my career,
I've been terrified to bring my self to work out
of fear of rejection or fear that I wouldn't be enough.
I don't know. I'm working through it with my therapist.
But what I admire about Charlemagne is that he seems
to not care at all about being rejected by his peers,
(01:14):
his co workers, his audience, anyone, and that confidence has
led to some of the most impactful and sometimes controversial
interviews over the last decade. As co host of one
of the most popular radio shows of all time, The
Breakfast Club, Charlemagne made time to sit down with me
in New York City to discuss all of this, plus
(01:35):
his upbringing, parenting, and the criticisms that have come with
his success and more. This has started from the bottom,
hard earned success stories from people like us. First time
I ever saw you was it was you on the
Wendy Williams radio show going toe to toe with Andrew
(01:56):
Dice Club. Yeah. Yeah, that was like two seven. Yeah.
It was one of the most amazing things ever. And
even though you kind of got uh, I don't know,
I feel like Andrew kind of put it on you
that day. It was the way they edited it too,
But it was like, yeah, I had some I had
some good ones, but they didn't put all of them,
and they put the one about me calling them a
(02:17):
fat fanzie. But that's right. Looking back, you actually did
a lot better than I remember. At the time, I
was a dang like Andrew still got it. I remember
been like, oh man, but then I kind of put
you on my radar, and then I remember when the
Breakfast Club came, I was like, oh, makes sense, like
this guy clearly clearly had it. But yeah, I want
to run through your radio trajectory. But first I thought
it'd be good to start with growing up in Monk's Corner,
South Carolina. Um, it's interesting, right, because you know, I've
(02:41):
been thinking about that a lot more lately, only because,
like you know, when I'm in therapy, I'm doing like
a lot of um in a child work, you know,
because I feel like a lot of the issues that
you deal with as an adult, most of them directly
connected something that happened in your childhood. And so I've
been thinking about, like what was that upbringing, like growing
(03:03):
up in Monst Corner, South Carolina, and the word I've
come to realize that it is associated with that that upbringing.
It's simple. You know, Monst Corner when I was young
created a sense of ease in my life that I
feel like really helped me growing up because I didn't
move too fast and I didn't move too slow. That
(03:25):
still is a big, big part of me. So when like,
you know, that anxiety that I've been feeling my whole life,
sets and I feel like, Okay, I might be moving
too fast, but then I don't want to move too slow.
But then it's just a certain ease, like like baby
Bears part just just it's a just right level of
ease that growing up in Monst Corner gave me that
(03:47):
I tend to tap into whenever, like things get really hectic.
You mentioned some of the anxiety that you have. When
did that start? Really, Yeah, as long as I know.
I mean, the first panic attack I remember having was
first grade, my mom dropping me off, Like I can
feel it right now, my mom dropping me off first grade,
first day of first grade, and like I just cried uncontrollably,
(04:10):
like like I just felt like abandoned, lost and just
scared like that that that same, you know, unexplainable feeling
of fear and panic and worry. And I think my
mom even says that I might have cried for like
(04:30):
the first week. I don't remember the first week. I
remember that one particular day, but it's like, yeah, that's
the first time I remember ever having like a panic attack,
and I had him throughout my life, like I've been
going to the emergency room thinking that I'm having a
heart attack. You know, thinking that I'm dying, you know,
and then you get there and the doctor's like, oh,
did you have an energy drink today? And you're like,
(04:50):
I did drink a red Bull earlier, and it's like, oh,
that's probably why your heart is doing that. That's the
worst feeling, you know. So it wasn't until twenty ten
that a doctor actually said to me, sounds like you
have anxiety. He was literally was like, it sounds like
you had a panic attack the things that you're describing.
And he was like, has this happened to you before?
And I'm like all the time, And you know, he
(05:12):
asked me what I stretched out about anything, and I'm like,
hell yeah, Because at the time, I had just been
fired for the fourth time from radio, and I'm back
living at home with my mom at like thirty one,
thirty two years old. My daughter's like one or two.
My wife is back living at home with her parents,
you know what I mean, in mom's corner. So it's
like I was super stressed out collecting unemployment checks every week.
So in my mind, all I had to do was
(05:32):
get back in position and get me another job and
all of that would go away. And that wasn't the case.
You know. I ended up getting the breakfast club gig
and having the most success I've ever had in my life,
and it felt like all of those issues I had
historically dealt with were magnified times a hundred now. Yeah,
you know, And so that's when I decided to like
(05:53):
finally go get some help and like go to therapy.
What do you think do you see that? Do you
see that same anxiety in your kids? Yeah, I haven't.
I haven't seen it show up as bad as mine
was when I was at age. And I think the
beauty of life now is not only do I have
(06:13):
the language, I have the experience. So it's just like that,
and I wish that, you know, somebody had put me
in therapy when I was thirteen fourteen now me, I
definitely needed it because I was getting sexually abused at
eight years old. I didn't realize that at the time.
I didn't realize that was molestia until I was twenty
something years old. You know, at the time, I just
thought I was eight year old kid. The neighborhood. Yeah, yeah,
(06:34):
we we would all were a bunch of young men.
We all be around having conversations about older women that
we were messing with, you know, in the neighborhood, Like
we all thought we were lying, but clearly we always
like telling the truth in different ways. Right, So, Um,
when I was fourteen, I definitely needed to unpack some
of that. Do you think you would have had it
at that age? Do you think the trajectory would have
(06:55):
been the same, Like you think you would have been
ended up in the streets the way you did? Probably not?
And the reason probably not, just because you know, even
with the screetch, Right, it's like a lot of that is, Um,
you trauma bond with people, yeah, because it's all a
bunch of individuals that are missing something, and like we
all want camaraderie, we all want family, we all want
(07:18):
a crew. And it's just sometimes men, we trauma bond
over bullshit, you know. So we trauma bond sometimes over crime,
you know, we trauma bond over drugs, We trauma bond
over alcohol, you know. But most of the time it's like, yeah,
we're all trauma bonding to do the wrong thing, Like
you know what I mean, Like let's go rob this
(07:39):
you know individual, or go rob this store or break
into this house, and let's go you know, figure out
a way to get some a pack the hustle. But
it's like what we're all lacking is like together this
like everybody, we're all tribal, and we all long for family,
right And I think that's what that's what a lot
of guys do when they when they click up in
(08:01):
that way. So I think for me, I definitely was
longing for like some type of family structure. Even though
I grew up in a house with an older sister,
two younger brothers, and a younger sister. I was the
second oldest. My oldest sisters like ten twelve years older
than me, and my younger siblings are like ten twelve
years younger than me, So I was kind of I
didn't have on an island, yeah exactly. So I ended
(08:22):
up kicking it with brothers and who are around my age,
and we all ended up doing a bunch of dirt.
And I don't even like to call it pear pressure
because I don't believe there's anything. I don't believe peer
pressure exists. I believe we all just want to be accepted,
you know what I'm saying. And I think that when
somebody pushes you to do something, you do it because
(08:42):
you don't want to let them down. So it's a
lot of people pleasing that goals and the age, especially
at that age man. And it stays with you though,
That people pleasing stays with you, Like that's something that
I had to unpacking therapy, like stop being a people pleaser, like,
you know, because sometimes you'll be a people pleased to
your own detriment. Yeah, you know, I can't believe anyone's
ever accused you be the people pleasing man. No, I
(09:04):
think that a lot of that. Man. That's because you
seem you have strong opinions, not scared of voice even
if it alienates you. Yeah, well, no, you're right, I've
always been that way. Um, But no, there's there's been
plenty of times in my life where I just wanted
to be down. Literally, I just wanted to be down.
I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be embraced,
And you know, I can think about you know that time,
(09:24):
at that moment, like I just wanted to be embraced
by you know, my peers. You know. So that's why
I started doing what a lot of my PIDs was doing,
which was a lot of bullshit. You know what I mean,
because I wanted to be accepted some of that early stuff.
A couple of couple of drug cases. U. The last
one was you were around the shooting the first one.
The first one. The first one, I was in the
(09:47):
backseat of a car and my homeboy was in the
front seat. Somebody was driving, and we was in this
neighborhood like like like a two neighborhoods over from where
we are in Mongst Corner, two towns over rather from
where we are in Monst Corner. And we were just having,
you know, some conversations with some young ladies. Then some
guys in the neighborhood didn't like that we would there.
And you know, I'm on my fake tough guys ship,
(10:09):
my fake hardcore shit, so I'm acting like doughboy and
boys in the hood. I got my hand under my
shirt was up up yo, sup, because like the fuck
that means like what's up a problem? You know what
I mean? And they, you know, drove off. Then we
went to like I think it was Burger King McDonald's.
I remember, I think it was Burger King. So he
went to Burger King. As we're leaving, I see the
truck that those guys were in pulling up behind us,
(10:31):
and I say, I say tell him. I dude like, oh,
that some guys from the neighborhood. And so they pulled
up on the side of us. So I'm in the
back seat of the car, dudes talking shit out the window.
One of my guys pulled out and shot from the
passenging seat, and you know, luckily nobody was in the
fourth seat, so it was the driver passenger, and then
somebody was sitting behind the driver with the bullet hit
(10:52):
the headrest in the fourth seat behind the passenger seat,
you know what I mean. Yeah, all praises do to
God because you know, that could have been a situation
where somebody got killed. Now were all in jail for
twenty thirty years, you know what I mean. So so
even now when I think about stuff like that, I'm like, oh, yeah,
(11:12):
you know, because I'm a big back to the future guy.
You know, you watch those those time heist movies. People
go back and little things change here and there and
change the whole trajectory of everything. And so yeah, that
was the first time I ever got arrested. Did it
change your relationship with your parents? It didn't change my
relationship with my parents. That actually made me realize my
dad was right, because my dad was always telling me
(11:33):
if I don't change my lifestyle, I'm gonna end up
in jail, dad, or broke sitting under the tree, you know.
So when I came home, I really was just looking
for positive things to do. Like, you know, I started
working at a warehouse called Industrial Acoustics Company, and you know,
from that point on, I wanted to keep a job.
But I worked there for like two to three weeks,
(11:54):
got fired from there, you know, to supervisor and never
forget her name, her name was Gail cop Supervisor was like, like,
you don't fit in here. You're not what we're looking
for now, mind you up. My job was literally like
I was clearing out an area, like a wooded area.
So I'm like, oh god, damn, I'm not fit to
clean out a wooded area, you know. But she was like,
(12:14):
you don't fit in here. So then I started working
out of Flower Garden just because I was looking to do,
you know, something positive. And the flower Garden literally, and
now that I think back on it, it was literally
a bunch of like migrants working there, Like you know
what I mean, It was clearly a bunch of people
who you know, weren't from this country, who were just
looking for work. Now now looking back on it, that's
(12:37):
what it was. It was literally just a bunch of
like Mexicans and you know, who knows what else, like
just working there, right, And so I was there for
like two weeks to His name was Dominique, the same thing.
Me and him got into a shouting match because I
was just like it, shit feels like it was a plantation.
It literally was a flower garden. It was actually called
the Yeah, it was called just something playing taition flower garden.
(13:01):
But it literally was just we were out there in
the hot sun picking flowers and you know, other types
of shit. So I quit that and then that's when
I started like flirting with the screet you know what
I mean. That's when it was like, man, I gotta
figure out some ways to make money because you know,
I still got to pay my probation officer and shit
like that. And it was just a stupid mentality, right,
(13:22):
because when you're on probation, you got to keep a job.
That's number one, and you got to pay your probation fees.
So I started just saying that I was working with
my dad and I was doing tempt services but also
had got a fifty dollars slab. Fifty dollars slabs when
you're getting fifty dollars worth of rock, and you know,
I think you posted be like I think its supposed
to be one hundred dollars off each gram. So I
(13:43):
think a slab was one gram that you paid fifty
dollars for and you cut it up and you posted
it cuts up into like one hundred dollars worth a rock.
So that was the first time I liked dabbled in like, yeah, hustling.
So yeah, did I left my Did I feel like, well,
how to my relationship my parents changed? Yeah? I thought
they were right, but I still was young and had
(14:05):
to figure things out for myself, which led me, which
led me back, which led me into actually hustling. You know.
After the break, Charlotte Magne's gonna take us on a
ride through his earliest experiences with radio and how that
helped build his foundation in the business. When did radio
(14:27):
enter your life, like, not only not as a career,
as a listener, Like, what's your earliest experiences with radio?
Like forever forever? And the reason I say forever because
like when I said, small town monks going to South Carolina.
So the radio station was Z ninety three Jams. We
were always around the radio. If it wasn't Z ninety
three Jams, it was another station called wpa L one
(14:49):
hundred point nine, and one hundred point nine was like
more underground with it, so they were playing like underground stuff,
not the mainscreen stuff. And like you know, there was
always like bone boxes around like my cousin and you know,
my cousin tis to my cousin Tye. He was the
first person let me hear like a real hip hop record.
Like prior to that, my sister had her radio in
(15:10):
her room. So my sister was listening to like Kidn't
Play and Salt and Pepper, you know what I mean,
stuff like that Hammer all the pop stuff, you know
what I mean. But my cousin let me hear Eric
B and Rock Kemp paid in full. Wow, and that
changed everything. Wow. That was like I don't know what
this thing is called hip hop, but I love it.
(15:35):
It felt like rock Kim was saying stuff like he
was telling stories, like you know what I mean. Yeah,
just just that is what introduced me to radio and
always wanting to be around a radio. It felt like
we might even have been around radio more than TV.
You know, back in the day TV it was certain
shows we were watching, but we weren't just turning the
(15:56):
TV on and keeping it on all day. If it
wasn't like Nintendo or you know the radio. Man, we
were outside, yeah, like you know what I mean, running around,
playing around. So it's like, for me, radio has always
been in my life as a listener, like who are
the personalities are? Because like I know, like in LA
and later I came to us, it was like syndicated,
(16:16):
but you know, in LA always felt like it was
like Big Boy was like was huge, you know, and
I felt like our guy. For me growing up, it
was oh, oh oh, it's the time Join Them morning
show because you know, my mom was a school teacher,
so we was up early early, so I was listening
to the time Join Them. And then you know, ZE
ninety three played such a big role in my life
(16:37):
because you know, their original morning show that I remember
was the Breakfast Club Baby Jay and Tessa Tessa Spencer,
and then you know, in the afternoons, it was like,
um a man, y'all need a rude boy. But then
it was like you know the night shows, the Top
nine at nine, you know, you want to call in
and request the song and hear your voice on the radio,
(16:59):
shout out your school whatever whatever. But yeah, those were
the people like growing up like Sean, people like Sean Dobe, Like,
those are the personalities that I would hear. Reggie c
You'd hear these people and they were just like regular
voices that you would hear all the time. Ken Moore
like I don't even know if Kim was Ki on Z.
(17:20):
I don't know if Ki was one. I just did
the voices I remember. Yeah, you know, growing up like
those voices, those local radio voices. Are you growing up
a famous as anyone in the country. Absolutely? Do you
remember your first time on the radio. I don't remember
the very first time, but it definitely one of the
first times was my man Willy Will. There was a
guy named Willie Will. He was the night jock there
(17:43):
at the ninety three jams in Charleston, South Carolina. Me
and him used to wrap together. I met him at
you know, a couple of recording studios that were in Charleston.
When I got my internship up there. I would always
just be up there and I'd be sitting in on
his show, and you know, he would definitely, you know,
call me to the microphone, you know, and I'd be
on the mike talking. So definitely my first time on air,
(18:04):
I'm sure was with Willie will And in some way,
shape or form, because I remember wanted to remember the
program director telling him like, you know, you need to
get a cardboard cut out of Charlemagne and put it
in the studio because your energy goes up, you know
when he's in here, you know, with you. I remember
I remember him saying that to him, and yeah, which
(18:26):
which probably ultimately led to me being on air because
my man Ron White, you know spootha Ron White. Me
and Ron still talked to this day. Round. Was like
he just asked me one day, like, Yo, do you
want to be on the radio? And I'm like, sure,
why not? And so they started putting me on Sundays
eleven am to three pm. When you say sure, like,
was there a part of you that had was that
just you playing the cool or were you really not
(18:47):
even sure you wanted to be on the radio like that? Yeah?
I never had thought about it, you know what I mean.
I just was really happy to be working at Z
ninety three Jams because it was like the most corporate
thing I had ever done. Yeah, you know, it was.
It was the place. It was a place where, like
in South Carolina, people saw you at ninety three, They're like, oh,
he must be he must be doing something, you know
(19:08):
what I mean, Like he must be doing something with
his with his life, you know what I mean. And
for me being like a guy who was in and
out of jail at the time and was getting in
a lot of trouble and graduated from high school in
night school, had gotten kicked out of two high schools.
Like for me, that was a big deal for me
to be like pulling up in a most corner driving
this station vehicle like the big white band with the
(19:30):
Z ninety three Jams on the logo, you know what
I mean, pulling it down my dr road, you know
what I mean, hoping that some of the girls that
lived on my road saw me, you know what I mean.
Like that was a big deal for me back then.
So yeah, just to be there felt like you did, ye, Yeah,
I just was just happy to be there. Like so
when he asked me to be on air, like hell, yeah, yeah,
(19:54):
whatever's gonna keep me here yea. And of course when
you think radio, you think on air personalities. You're not
thinking promotions or programming or anything like that. So hell yeah,
I'd love to be on it. Now I can really
say I work here and now I'm a personality, and
um yeah, I really loved it and appreciate it. How
was that first show that you had? I was scaring
(20:16):
all the church folks because it was what they had
me do. They had me do something called voice track.
And when your voice track is when you record your voice,
and you got to record your voice, and you know,
it's like it's a time slot from like eleven to three,
so you're talking like three four times an hour, introducing songs,
time temperature and stuff like that. So I didn't know
how to do radio, you know, I really didn't. So
(20:37):
I was just going in there talking like yeah I was.
I was actually screaming. When I go back and listen
to my old voice tapes, I was screaming. And it's
funny because they all were telling me I was screaming,
like I'm not screaming. I was just old you, I
don't understand how we talk about I was really yelling
like nine three jams are being hip hop. Go my
go boy. The name is Charlemagney. God. I was yelling,
like screaming at people, and so like, you know, when
(20:58):
I finally started listening to the people who actually do
this for a living, I started to acquire a more
conversational tone. You know when in the beginning, I was
just yelling, like yelling, like literally yelling at people on
the radio, and that's what I was doing. And I
did that. I think I might have voice tracked a
few Sundays, and then Ron was like, all right, enough
of that. You're gonna have your voice track on Saturday
(21:20):
nights now seven to ten, and then you're gonna go
live from ten to midnight. And I was everything because
it's Saturday nights so I can have this high energy.
But then when we go live or I could take
phone calls. Now it's like I'm taking phone calls and
I'm working with people when they're calling then making jokes
blah blah. So it's just like for me, the best
(21:41):
thing that ever happened to me was I didn't know
how to do radio. Nobody taught me how to do radio.
I wasn't a person who came from, you know, doing
college radio, or nowadays you can have a podcast or
a YouTube page. I was just fresh off the dirt
road in Monks Corner, South Carolina, getting on the air
in Austin, South Carolina on the biggest radio station at
(22:02):
the time, Z ninety three, and that rawdness showed. I
sounded different than everybody else because I didn't have that announcer,
you know, background. So it worked for me. Yeah, you
didn't have the announcer broadcast, yeah or whatever. I was
just coming at it with your own angles. What was
your journey after that? After zm SO, I worked as
(22:25):
an intern in ninety eight, started there in ninety nine
from the promotions department to um being on there, and
then a news station came into market, Hot ninety eight nine,
much smaller station ran by a guy named my Man.
George Cook was the program director. I was doing part
time at z SO. I had some conversations with Hot
(22:46):
ninety eight nine. They wanted me to come over there
and do nights. They wanted me to do Monday through Saturday,
seven to midnight full time, and I was I think
the pay was like nineteen grand a year, and at
the time. That was a lot of money, and it
was a dollary. So just to be able to say,
first time on salary that I didn't go to college,
you know what I mean. I graduated from night school
(23:08):
and like, so I didn't just oh I got a salary. Now, yeah,
I'm just happy to be making nineteen grand a year.
Like that sounded like some shit, And so yeah, I
started working there every night and it wasn't even about
to check. It was about the opportunity to be on
every night. And my man, George Cookman, who's still a
great mentor to me to this day. He actually George
(23:31):
is not only the first person to give me a
full time position on radio. He told me some information
that just changed my whole life. And the information was,
I want you to have a morning show at night.
I want you to treat this night show that you
have like a morning show at night. Parody songs and
(23:51):
a lot of sketches and a lot of topics and
a lot of interaction with listeners via the phone and
you know, playing new music and all of that benefited
me so well in the future because that's what I
ultimately treated every single show like I treated every single
show like it was a morning show. So no matter where,
I went from High ninety eighty nine to the big
(24:12):
DM in Columbia, and then it was Hot one of
three nine in Columbia, then it was Wendy Williams show,
then it was my own morning show in Philly. By
the time I got to my own morning show in Philly,
I had approached every single one of those situations like
it was a morning show. So by the time I
was ready to do my own morning show, I was overprepared. Yeah,
you know. So it was he planned to seed early
(24:33):
on that basically stuck with me throughout my whole career
and ultimately led to me being the morning guy I am.
Now let me come back. You'll get a chance to
hear what Charlemagne learned from the legendary radio host Wendy
Williams and lessons he had to teach himself to achieve success.
(25:01):
Tell me about meeting Wendy Williams, man Man, I met
Wendy because I was doing radio in Columbia, South Carolina.
Columbia had a really dope station called Hot one with
three nine. So Hot one with three nine started syndicating
Wendy Williams in the afternoons, and so Wendy and her
husband would come down for station visits, like they would
(25:23):
come down to like see the market and stuff like that,
and so I just would break bread, you know. And
I remember the first time I even tried to break
bread with Wendy. Wendy was in the studio trying to
do her show, which I totally understand, now, you know
what I mean. But I came in there with mixed
tapes and parody songs, all of this stuff I wanted
her to hear and while she was doing her show, yeah,
I mean, but she was in between breaks, you know
(25:44):
what I mean. But now, when I under now understanding
the hecticness of a syndicated show, it wasn't like breaks
like us. But we break for twenty minutes, thirty minutes
and got time to bullshit. She's on like on on
on on, Like it might have only been like three
minutes in between songs. Wendy goes, look, yo, yo, take
that mixtape shit out of here. I'm trying to do
(26:05):
my fucking show. Take that mixtape shit to my husband.
I didn't feel offended by that. Yeah, I was just like,
where's your husband? She's like, I think if he's in
that fucking room somewhere, like in the conference room across
the hall. Cool. So I went across the room, gave
him the mixtape, started pitching ship to him, you know,
pitching shit to him. And then we started talking and
(26:26):
we you know, kept in contact from there, you know,
and I used to like give them the heads up
on things that were going on at the station. So
he invited me to come up to New York for
a party. He was like, yeah, want you to come
up to New York. We're having a party, blah blah.
And I'm like all right. I went to the party
just to kick it. And in the party, Wendy was like,
oh shit, Charlemagne, Yo, wan't you come to my show?
(26:48):
How long are you in town? Like, oh, just a
couple of days. Come to my show tomorrow, Like come
to your show tomorrow. Can't tell me shit like that.
I'm going I'm going to be like, yo, all right,
the who do I call? What do I do? And
so I'm hitting keV like yo, keV. Whendy said, come
to our show. He was like all right, I bet
So he just told me that he told me to
go up there, went up there, sat in the pink
(27:11):
room to paint the office for a while. Then she
invited me on the show and I was there for
like twenty five minutes, and literally that evening they were
offering me the position as her co host sidekick, and
they was like, look, we can't pay you, but we
can give you a place to stay. And I'm just like,
all right, just let me go back down South and like,
(27:31):
you know, figure some things out, like just you know,
let my girl know what I'm about to do and
everything else. And that's what I did. You knew the opportunity, yo. Man,
you gotta recognize the opportunity even when it's not a
paycheck attached to it. So my mindset was never I
never I never once was like how much I'm gonna
get paid. It was like, we cannot pay you, but
we can give you a place to stay. I'm out
(27:52):
the opportunity to be on Wendy Williams Show Monday through
Friday in the afternoon, nationally syndicated show. What are some
lessons you learned on the Wonder william Show? That Wendy's
a legend no matter how you feel about her, matter
how you feel about her, bona Fire legend, one of
the most talented people, one of the most talented media
personalities of all time. You know, one of the people
(28:13):
few people who can like literally sit down in front
of a TV camera and just go. Yeah, person who
could just sit down in front of a microphone and
just go. And you realize the reason she's able to
do that is Number one, she does have just the
natural gift to gab. But one of the lessons I
learned that everything is showprep. Like a lot of times,
you know, back in the day, we would think that
(28:35):
show prep is like just picking up the latest magazine
or picking up the latest tabloid and just downloading what's
in there. Wendy taught me that your whole life is showprep.
Every single experience that you go through can be brought
to the radio. You know, every single experience that you
go through can be bought, you know, the television. I
would watch her, I'd be out with her during the day,
(28:55):
watch these things happen to her, and then watch her
get on the rad and talk about these things like, oh,
I was there, and of course he's making me part
of the story because and Charlemagne said this. Charlemagne was
right there and Charlemagne acted like he didn't see it
and it isn't that like, and I'm like, god, damn,
she's incredible, you know what I mean, Like he's just
an incredible storyteller. So you know, um, she taught me
(29:17):
how to tell stories via radio, even though I was
already doing it, but I was doing it more so
through sketches. But now just to make your life a story,
to make the things that happened to you throughout the
day a story. That was like one of the biggest things,
like everything is show prep. And the other thing was
like you're either gonna be of the people or of
(29:37):
the industry, because when you're of the people, you're always
going to speak like for the people and you're gonna
speak how the people speak. When you're of the industry,
like you're gonna try to protect relationships and you're gonna
try to you know, protect people. You know, so you're
not gonna have those opinions that you that you probably
(29:58):
once had that was good advice at the time. I
think that there's an adjustment to be made in that
rhetoric because it's gonna come a time where like you're
going to be industry. Yeah, you get too big. Yeah,
and everybody around you is gonna be industry too. I've
been in the game for twenty five years. So not
only have I grown as a personality and a businessman,
(30:21):
a media just everything right, people around me have to Now.
I got people who run record labels. I got people
who are in rs. I got people who work at
these social media platforms, you know what I mean. I
got friends that are artists and big celebrities. We all
I've been doing it for twenty five years. We all
(30:42):
came up together. And not only just the people I
came up with, those next generations of people that now
I'm in position. But oh, I see this person coming.
Let me embrace this in the VILDI embrace that individdle school.
We're all industry, you know what I mean. So your
authentic self has to change. It's like reasonable doubt was
authentic for jay Z or for its authentic for jay
(31:05):
Z today. What you just said hit it on the
head because people don't pay attention to that. Like you
saw me when I was one version of myself. If
I had stayed that version and never grown into anything else,
it's no way I'm being authentic. Yeah, Muhammad at last said,
the person who's doing the same thing at fifty that
(31:25):
he was at twenty wasted thirty years of his fucking
I ain't I believe that, you know what I mean.
It's just like you're I'm never going to be that
version again. But the only thing I could do is
be the best version of my authentic self, whatever that
may be, whatever I grow into, you know, And like
that's why me at forty four, you god damn right,
I'm not the same way I was at thirty one.
(31:46):
I better not be. I mean, I'm my true authentic
self right now. And you know, you realize like the
power of the platform, and what I mean by that
is like, man, this is certain things that we got
to protect people from because we have these platforms, and
sometimes the wrong information is fewed over the platform, you know,
and people get hurt because of that. Yeah, you know,
(32:09):
And I'm not in the business of hurting nobody. I
don't want to hurt nobody, and I don't want the
person putting out the information to be hurt. Yeah you know.
So yeah, well that's interesting because and I don't know
if this was necessarily this person being hurt by you,
but after Wendy Williams. You get your own show in
Philly and you get fired because you bring Beanie siegal on,
(32:31):
who's a who's a Philly rapper? Yeah, tell me if
I'm not getting a story right. But you bring on
Beanie Seagull, who's a Philly rapper at one point was
signed to Rockefeller Records, came up under Jay jay Z.
And you do an interview with beans on the show
and he said something about Jay that makes Jay madd
and you get get fired that. Yeah, that's the story.
The story is that I got fired because Beanie Seagull
(32:55):
got on the air and aired out Jay Z. And
I'm the one who recorded it and I'll put it
on air. That's the story. I don't know if that's
true or not. Jay never has confirmed what Jay has
Jay never confirmed or denied on air. Behind the scenes,
he has said to me like that, that really gets
you fight, like you know what I mean? And that's
the story, right, I don't. I doubt that's highly the case,
(33:18):
you know what I mean? When I think back then,
I think um I had a new program director was hired,
and I think that new program director just wanted to
bring in his people and that new program director like
he don't know. He had his chest out a little bit.
I remember the first time I met him, he was like,
oh me, and you're gonna be able to get along.
So he came in there on some like snapping the
whip ship, let me get this guy in line type thing,
(33:39):
and I think that, um, it was a combination of
just him being new and wanting to bring in his
own people, but also a combination of people thinking they're
doing the right thing for jay Z. But jay Z's
not even thinking about this ship. He's you know what
I mean. It's one of those things like I know,
I know Charlotmagne did it, but we got rid of
Charlomagne and you let Jay know I did it whatever.
(34:00):
You know, So I don't. I don't know. I do
feel like maybe a higher up might have might have
just pulled the trigger on that firing just to get
in Jay's good graces. But I don't think that was
a Hey, I'm jay Z, I'm offended by this get
this guy off the airthing. No, I don't believe that
at all. Okay, okay, but that does get you fired,
and that was your own show. I mean, that's like
your own show in Philly. That's like and if your
(34:21):
first time happened like your own show, that's like, yeah, um,
that's that big that I was killing. I was number
I think two in the market. I was number two
in the market at the time, and that was in
a PPM world, So I was I was doing great.
And it was literally just me and my homegirl, Sasha.
So I should suit to Sasha Katie, that's the homie,
you know what I mean. She we used to work
together when I used to work at Wendy at WBLS,
(34:43):
and so when I got my own show in Philly,
just asked, yo, you want to be my producer and
she was like hell yeah. So we literally would drive
from New Jersey every morning back and forth the Pennsylvania
like like an hour and a half away. We would
drive back and forth every day three I have to
get up at three in the morning, pick her up
(35:04):
by like four three thirty four o'clock to be there
on time. And we did that every single day, wow,
for like six seven months. The funny part is I
got fired the day I was supposed to move into
the townhouse because I was still living in Jersey. So
me and my wife had got a townhouse, and I'm like, yeah,
this is gonna be great. Now, I gotta wake up
(35:24):
sore early, like I won't have to drive, Like I'm
in my basket. I'm processing all this in my mind.
We was living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on the
outskirts of Philadelphia. Go and roll my daughter in school here,
all of that type of ship. And the day I
got fired, I literally had all my stuff in the
fucking I had a two thousand and two escalated with
like one hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, and
(35:45):
I had all that in the car, ready to move
into the townhouse. And I got fired on that day,
literally that day, and went back to South Carolina, back
in Most Corner for a year. And what was going
through your head at that point, Oh, yeah, I failed.
I gotta go back to the Mons corner. After being
(36:05):
you know, on Wendy Show, after having my own show
in Philly, after having these viral moments, after being on
VH one TV with Wendy. Now I got to go
back to the man's corner and collect unemployment for real,
because I don't know when I'm gonna get another gig.
And now I got a daughter. So I literally was
in South Carolina from November two thousand and nine to
(36:30):
November two and ten, so I was able to collect
the year of unemployment. You know what I mean. I'm
living at home with my mom, depressed this shit, you know,
anxiety through the roof, just trying to figure out what's
gonna happen. But you know, I used that opportunity to
m There was a new station launching in Charleston, South Carolina.
It was called The Box. I think it was like
(36:52):
ninety two five The Box or something like that. So
I was there with them, helping them launch the station,
helping them write promos and create an imaging for the station.
I did the voiceovers for the station. Like in my mind,
I was like, Okay, I'm gonna end up getting a
shift on ninety two five. I'm gonna make my twenty
grand a year here in South Carolina, and we're gonna
live a great life. Yeah that was my mindseting. But
(37:14):
you know, clearly God had other plans because the Breakfast
Club came shortly after that. How did that come? When
I was in Philly, there was a there was a
time where I had met with my man g Spend.
Before me and g Spen met in a restaurant or something.
It was me and at the time my then uh
(37:35):
my then manager named it was Kevin, Wendy's husband, and
you know, you don't have the best reputation in the
business man, and so even though we met, g Spen
wasn't really feeling it. And then later on that turned
into a meeting with my man Cadillac Jack and cad
was with me then and it was the same thing.
Like literally I found out that after we left the meeting,
(37:57):
mad people came from like the sales department and was like,
you cannot Charlotta, Agne's great, but if as long as
you know Kevin is his manager, you know we can't
hire him, and YadA, YadA, YadA, the energy will be
bad and terrible all of this type of stuff. I
didn't know that, you know. And then you know, me
and Kevin ended up having a fallen out parting ways.
(38:19):
And so I was in New York because I had
moved back to South Carolina, but I was in New
York for a couple of days, and I remember just
texting g Spend like, yo, you know where you at
And he was like I'm in New York where you at, Like,
I'm in Jersey right now. I was standing in Fort Lee.
I was at the Double Tree in four League, and
he was like, yo, man, he was like, yo, come
(38:40):
to the station. I'm like where He was like, yeah, yeah,
come to the station. Come to the station right now.
And so I got in the rental car drove seem
it took me like three hours to get there because
it was like four o'clock in the after Yeah. Yeah.
So we was at the GW Bridge for what seemed
like an hour and trying to get down the West Side,
creeping down and Tribeca. But I finally get there and
(39:00):
g spinn is like, yo, um my, boss, Cadillac. Jack
has been watching your stuff all day long, watching you
and Duval with the Hood, State of the Union, and
listening under like some old interviews when you was on
the radio in Philly. So I sit down with Cadillac,
and me and Cadillac just have a great conversation. And
one of the first things he says to me is like,
you know, is cass still you're managing I'm like, nah,
(39:25):
you know. And that's how the relationship started. So like
a few months later, I got high on probably one
or five one. I remember Cadillac saying like, how long
can you wait for this job? And I'm like, for
this job as long as it takes. And so like
five six months later, you know, the wheels really started
to move and where you want him that whole five
six months like yo, like, oh yes, yeah, you couldn't
(39:49):
just sit back and no, no, no, definitely stayed in touch,
would send him new episodes of me and Duvall show,
you know, just just anything anything that I was doing
in that space, I would because we was early on
social media. We was all over my Space and Twitter
and everything else. So yeah, like I was definitely keeping
in real touch with him and g span, you know
what I mean, and sometimes popping up, popping up, you know,
(40:12):
and be like because I knew kind of like the
gig might be mine, So I was kind of like
popping up. And it felt bad because there was like
people who I was like really cool with that work there,
and I couldn't say anything, you know about the conversations
me and Cadillac we're having, you know what I mean,
And I had to like lie to some of these people,
(40:33):
and it felt bad, you know what I mean because
I just couldn't tell the truth because this business still
to be handled, you know, so, but yeah, that's how
I got there. It's amazing, man. And then basically from that,
I mean, from that point, are you still there obviously
Breakfast Club, Yeah, thirteen years later, man. And what's so
interesting is that any of them would tell you. Angelie
(40:55):
will tell you, and Bill tell you. Our radio consultant,
Dennis Clark g Span Catillac, I was the guy saying
We're gonna be one of the biggest nationally syndicated shows
in the country. Like, like, I just I knew it.
I saw what this show had the potential of being.
And like from day one, me N V. Angela, we
always recorded our interviews and put them online. That's how
(41:18):
I was aware of what Angela was doing. I was
aware of what you know, Envy was doing. You know,
people like my homegirl Kendred g deVie Brown, we were
all utilizing the internet. And so when we got with
the Breakfast Club, that's all. We didn't have no money
from marketing. They didn't have no money from marketing, no
money for promotions. This was kind of like a last
ditch thing to see if something will work to even
keep the lights on that power one oh five one.
(41:41):
And so all we asked for was a cameraman every
day to come in here and record, you know, these interviews.
And that's what we did. We started recording these interviews,
putting them up online, recording these interviews, putting them on websites.
And then at the time all these blogs and the
world Stars and all of these different platforms, these websites existed,
sending our interview was out, they started posting them. Yeah,
(42:03):
next thing, you know, it took off in a real way,
and here we are. How do you how do you
manage that? Like, how do you manage the expectation of
how do you manage the success? How do you manage
what is just out of reach at the moment that's
that's gonna be coming up for you. I manage it
just by like realizing what my daddy always says, You're
(42:24):
never as good as it say you are, and you're
never as bad as it say you are. Like I've
already had my moments of like ego, I've had my
moments of like being that narcissistic, arrogant person that you know,
you can't tell anything too whether people realize that or not.
I'm sure that they did, because I'm sure I projected it,
you know what I mean. But I went through that,
(42:46):
and I went through that at a time where, like God,
knew I had to get over that in order to
be where I am now. So I knew that I
had to start doing some work on myself. I was
really becoming everything that I said I didn't like. You know,
I was looking in the mirror and really becoming my father.
(43:07):
I loved my father, but I hated how my father's
infidelity ruined his marriage with my mom, you know, and
ruined our family. Right. So for me, I didn't want
to do that, and I felt myself going down that
path in a real way. So it was just like,
let me check myself before I wrecked myself. You know
(43:32):
why let you go? Man, last question, if you can
pick out one thing that's helped you be successful, that's
sort of been with you through every period of your
of your career, what do you think that thing would be? Man?
For me, it would like to really be authentic. And
what I mean by that is you're not authentic when
you're being a character to yourself. You're not authentic when
(43:55):
you see something working for you and you're getting rewarded
for it, so you start double and trippling down on
that thing. You're not authentic when you're being a second
rate version of somebody else instead of a first rate
version of yourself. And one of the things that hurt
me to most is when they started calling me to
hip hop Howard Stern. I love Howard Stern, right, but
(44:18):
I didn't even start to think why they were calling
me that. I just took it and ran with it,
you know, and started giving them like all of the
examples of Howard that Howard might not even be proud
of now, you know. For me, it was like a
lot of the the frat boy, creepy ass, overly sexual humor,
(44:41):
you know, like the low vibrational energy is what I
was really doing, the limbo with how low can you Go?
You know what I mean? Like literally like how low
can you go? Like literally, And that's the type of
shit I was doing. So like when you go online
and you see like videos of me like sniffing chairs
or like tyeing poem orange stars up and all of that,
it was literally for the shock. Yeah, And so like
(45:06):
that stuck with me for like man, maybe maybe a
year or two I was on that and then just
started to eat me up, Like, Yo, this ain't making
me happy. This shit is whacked. And you got your
you know, your wife. You know I got married in
twenty fourteen, so you got your wife on your head
at the time. She's my girl, Like what the fuck
are you doing? Like, you know, you out here wilding,
(45:27):
you cheating on you like me and you you're on
the radio and you're, damn it bragging about word of
the ball like it was that type of conversation. I'm like, man,
are you tripping? Like you know you it's just entertainment.
That was my life. It's just entertainment. But it's not. Yeah,
it's really not, you know, because you know, but when
you're influencing mad people, and in this case, I'm hurting
somebody and hurting the person that's the closest to me,
(45:49):
and you can start to believe your own bullshit. That's
the worst. When you get in the character and you
start believing that you really are this dude. So it's
like for me, man, that's what made me like really
start like going to therapy and like doing the work
because I did not like the version of myself that
I was becoming. So my advice to anybody would just
(46:10):
to just be authentic, always leave yourself open to growth,
and don't be afraid of where that growth takes you.
I don't give a fuck what people like about you today.
If you're growing into something else tomorrow, follow that shit,
you know what I mean, Because if you don't, you know,
you're really just stunting your growth and you really don't
(46:32):
know how big you could possibly be. You're putting a
cap on you, like you're literally putting a limit on
how far you could possibly grow, how big you could get,
because you're like, Nope, that's what they like about me,
So I'm gonna keep it here as opposed to just
leaving yourself open to see what else is out there
(46:52):
and how much more you could continue to grow. So
that's what I tell people. Be authentic, man, and just
don't be afraid to grow. Yeah. Yeah, man, thanks for
bringing your authentic self to everything, man. I appreciate thanks. Man,
appreciate Charlemagne, who the ups and downs are building a
media career in one of the most cut throat of
(47:12):
mediums radio, has shown up ready to bring his full
self to whatever it is he does, and the brilliance
of that is he's been impossible to ignore. I want
to thank him for that confidence and for taking the
time to talk with me. I plan on spending more
time working on my fear of being rejected just for
being me. Thanks for listening to start it from the bottom,
(47:34):
I'm out. Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jah,
edited by Keishaw Williams, engineered by Beentaliday, Booked by Laura
Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show's executive
produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music is by Beentaliday
(47:54):
and David Jah, featuring Anthony Aggs and s Vannah Joe Lack.
If you like her show, please remember to share, rate
and reviewers on your podcast staff. I'm just Richmond H.
Pushkin. For me growing up, it was oh, oh, oh,
it's the time join the morning show because you know,
my mom was a school teacher, so we was up early, early,
so I was listening to the time join them. And
then you know, Z ninety three played such a big
role in my life because you know, their original morning
(00:28):
show that I remember was The Breakfast Club, Baby Jay
and Tessa Tessa Spencer. My guest today is someone I've
wanted to interview for a long time because of what
he's meant over the last decade to the culture, black culture,
hip hop culture, internet culture, youth culture, all the cultures,
you name it. But if I'm being completely honest, the
(00:50):
real reason I wanted to sit down and talk to
Charlotte Magine the God is to see if some of
his confidence can run off on me. Most of my career,
I've been terrified to bring my self to work out
of fear of rejection or fear that I wouldn't be enough.
I don't know. I'm working through it with my therapist.
But what I admire about Charlemagne is that he seems
to not care at all about being rejected by his peers,
(01:14):
his co workers, his audience, anyone, and that confidence has
led to some of the most impactful and sometimes controversial
interviews over the last decade. As co host of one
of the most popular radio shows of all time, The
Breakfast Club, Charlemagne made time to sit down with me
in New York City to discuss all of this, plus
(01:35):
his upbringing, parenting, and the criticisms that have come with
his success and more. This has started from the bottom,
hard earned success stories from people like us. First time
I ever saw you was it was you on the
Wendy Williams radio show going toe to toe with Andrew
(01:56):
Dice Club. Yeah. Yeah, that was like two seven. Yeah.
It was one of the most amazing things ever. And
even though you kind of got uh, I don't know,
I feel like Andrew kind of put it on you
that day. It was the way they edited it too,
But it was like, yeah, I had some I had
some good ones, but they didn't put all of them,
and they put the one about me calling them a
(02:17):
fat fanzie. But that's right. Looking back, you actually did
a lot better than I remember. At the time, I
was a dang like Andrew still got it. I remember
been like, oh man, but then I kind of put
you on my radar, and then I remember when the
Breakfast Club came, I was like, oh, makes sense, like
this guy clearly clearly had it. But yeah, I want
to run through your radio trajectory. But first I thought
it'd be good to start with growing up in Monk's Corner,
South Carolina. Um, it's interesting, right, because you know, I've
(02:41):
been thinking about that a lot more lately, only because,
like you know, when I'm in therapy, I'm doing like
a lot of um in a child work, you know,
because I feel like a lot of the issues that
you deal with as an adult, most of them directly
connected something that happened in your childhood. And so I've
been thinking about, like what was that upbringing, like growing
(03:03):
up in Monst Corner, South Carolina, and the word I've
come to realize that it is associated with that that upbringing.
It's simple. You know, Monst Corner when I was young
created a sense of ease in my life that I
feel like really helped me growing up because I didn't
move too fast and I didn't move too slow. That
(03:25):
still is a big, big part of me. So when like,
you know, that anxiety that I've been feeling my whole life,
sets and I feel like, Okay, I might be moving
too fast, but then I don't want to move too slow.
But then it's just a certain ease, like like baby
Bears part just just it's a just right level of
ease that growing up in Monst Corner gave me that
(03:47):
I tend to tap into whenever, like things get really hectic.
You mentioned some of the anxiety that you have. When
did that start? Really, Yeah, as long as I know.
I mean, the first panic attack I remember having was
first grade, my mom dropping me off, Like I can
feel it right now, my mom dropping me off first grade,
first day of first grade, and like I just cried uncontrollably,
(04:10):
like like I just felt like abandoned, lost and just
scared like that that that same, you know, unexplainable feeling
of fear and panic and worry. And I think my
mom even says that I might have cried for like
(04:30):
the first week. I don't remember the first week. I
remember that one particular day, but it's like, yeah, that's
the first time I remember ever having like a panic attack,
and I had him throughout my life, like I've been
going to the emergency room thinking that I'm having a
heart attack. You know, thinking that I'm dying, you know,
and then you get there and the doctor's like, oh,
did you have an energy drink today? And you're like,
(04:50):
I did drink a red Bull earlier, and it's like, oh,
that's probably why your heart is doing that. That's the
worst feeling, you know. So it wasn't until twenty ten
that a doctor actually said to me, sounds like you
have anxiety. He was literally was like, it sounds like
you had a panic attack the things that you're describing.
And he was like, has this happened to you before?
And I'm like all the time, And you know, he
(05:12):
asked me what I stretched out about anything, and I'm like,
hell yeah, Because at the time, I had just been
fired for the fourth time from radio, and I'm back
living at home with my mom at like thirty one,
thirty two years old. My daughter's like one or two.
My wife is back living at home with her parents,
you know what I mean, in mom's corner. So it's
like I was super stressed out collecting unemployment checks every week.
So in my mind, all I had to do was
(05:32):
get back in position and get me another job and
all of that would go away. And that wasn't the case.
You know. I ended up getting the breakfast club gig
and having the most success I've ever had in my life,
and it felt like all of those issues I had
historically dealt with were magnified times a hundred now. Yeah,
you know, And so that's when I decided to like
(05:53):
finally go get some help and like go to therapy.
What do you think do you see that? Do you
see that same anxiety in your kids? Yeah, I haven't.
I haven't seen it show up as bad as mine
was when I was at age. And I think the
beauty of life now is not only do I have
(06:13):
the language, I have the experience. So it's just like that,
and I wish that, you know, somebody had put me
in therapy when I was thirteen fourteen now me, I
definitely needed it because I was getting sexually abused at
eight years old. I didn't realize that at the time.
I didn't realize that was molestia until I was twenty
something years old. You know, at the time, I just
thought I was eight year old kid. The neighborhood. Yeah, yeah,
(06:34):
we we would all were a bunch of young men.
We all be around having conversations about older women that
we were messing with, you know, in the neighborhood, Like
we all thought we were lying, but clearly we always
like telling the truth in different ways. Right, So, Um,
when I was fourteen, I definitely needed to unpack some
of that. Do you think you would have had it
at that age? Do you think the trajectory would have
(06:55):
been the same, Like you think you would have been
ended up in the streets the way you did? Probably not?
And the reason probably not, just because you know, even
with the screetch, Right, it's like a lot of that is, Um,
you trauma bond with people, yeah, because it's all a
bunch of individuals that are missing something, and like we
all want camaraderie, we all want family, we all want
(07:18):
a crew. And it's just sometimes men, we trauma bond
over bullshit, you know. So we trauma bond sometimes over crime,
you know, we trauma bond over drugs, We trauma bond
over alcohol, you know. But most of the time it's like, yeah,
we're all trauma bonding to do the wrong thing, Like
you know what I mean, Like let's go rob this
(07:39):
you know individual, or go rob this store or break
into this house, and let's go you know, figure out
a way to get some a pack the hustle. But
it's like what we're all lacking is like together this
like everybody, we're all tribal, and we all long for family,
right And I think that's what that's what a lot
of guys do when they when they click up in
(08:01):
that way. So I think for me, I definitely was
longing for like some type of family structure. Even though
I grew up in a house with an older sister,
two younger brothers, and a younger sister. I was the
second oldest. My oldest sisters like ten twelve years older
than me, and my younger siblings are like ten twelve
years younger than me, So I was kind of I
didn't have on an island, yeah exactly. So I ended
(08:22):
up kicking it with brothers and who are around my age,
and we all ended up doing a bunch of dirt.
And I don't even like to call it pear pressure
because I don't believe there's anything. I don't believe peer
pressure exists. I believe we all just want to be accepted,
you know what I'm saying. And I think that when
somebody pushes you to do something, you do it because
(08:42):
you don't want to let them down. So it's a
lot of people pleasing that goals and the age, especially
at that age man. And it stays with you though,
That people pleasing stays with you, Like that's something that
I had to unpacking therapy, like stop being a people pleaser, like,
you know, because sometimes you'll be a people pleased to
your own detriment. Yeah, you know, I can't believe anyone's
ever accused you be the people pleasing man. No, I
(09:04):
think that a lot of that. Man. That's because you
seem you have strong opinions, not scared of voice even
if it alienates you. Yeah, well, no, you're right, I've
always been that way. Um, But no, there's there's been
plenty of times in my life where I just wanted
to be down. Literally, I just wanted to be down.
I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be embraced,
And you know, I can think about you know that time,
(09:24):
at that moment, like I just wanted to be embraced
by you know, my peers. You know. So that's why
I started doing what a lot of my PIDs was doing,
which was a lot of bullshit. You know what I mean,
because I wanted to be accepted some of that early stuff.
A couple of couple of drug cases. U. The last
one was you were around the shooting the first one.
The first one. The first one, I was in the
(09:47):
backseat of a car and my homeboy was in the
front seat. Somebody was driving, and we was in this
neighborhood like like like a two neighborhoods over from where
we are in Mongst Corner, two towns over rather from
where we are in Monst Corner. And we were just having,
you know, some conversations with some young ladies. Then some
guys in the neighborhood didn't like that we would there.
And you know, I'm on my fake tough guys ship,
(10:09):
my fake hardcore shit, so I'm acting like doughboy and
boys in the hood. I got my hand under my
shirt was up up yo, sup, because like the fuck
that means like what's up a problem? You know what
I mean? And they, you know, drove off. Then we
went to like I think it was Burger King McDonald's.
I remember, I think it was Burger King. So he
went to Burger King. As we're leaving, I see the
truck that those guys were in pulling up behind us,
(10:31):
and I say, I say tell him. I dude like, oh,
that some guys from the neighborhood. And so they pulled
up on the side of us. So I'm in the
back seat of the car, dudes talking shit out the window.
One of my guys pulled out and shot from the
passenging seat, and you know, luckily nobody was in the
fourth seat, so it was the driver passenger, and then
somebody was sitting behind the driver with the bullet hit
(10:52):
the headrest in the fourth seat behind the passenger seat,
you know what I mean. Yeah, all praises do to
God because you know, that could have been a situation
where somebody got killed. Now were all in jail for
twenty thirty years, you know what I mean. So so
even now when I think about stuff like that, I'm like, oh, yeah,
(11:12):
you know, because I'm a big back to the future guy.
You know, you watch those those time heist movies. People
go back and little things change here and there and
change the whole trajectory of everything. And so yeah, that
was the first time I ever got arrested. Did it
change your relationship with your parents? It didn't change my
relationship with my parents. That actually made me realize my
dad was right, because my dad was always telling me
(11:33):
if I don't change my lifestyle, I'm gonna end up
in jail, dad, or broke sitting under the tree, you know.
So when I came home, I really was just looking
for positive things to do. Like, you know, I started
working at a warehouse called Industrial Acoustics Company, and you know,
from that point on, I wanted to keep a job.
But I worked there for like two to three weeks,
(11:54):
got fired from there, you know, to supervisor and never
forget her name, her name was Gail cop Supervisor was like, like,
you don't fit in here. You're not what we're looking
for now, mind you up. My job was literally like
I was clearing out an area, like a wooded area.
So I'm like, oh god, damn, I'm not fit to
clean out a wooded area, you know. But she was like,
(12:14):
you don't fit in here. So then I started working
out of Flower Garden just because I was looking to do,
you know, something positive. And the flower Garden literally, and
now that I think back on it, it was literally
a bunch of like migrants working there, Like you know
what I mean, It was clearly a bunch of people
who you know, weren't from this country, who were just
looking for work. Now now looking back on it, that's
(12:37):
what it was. It was literally just a bunch of
like Mexicans and you know, who knows what else, like
just working there, right, And so I was there for
like two weeks to His name was Dominique, the same thing.
Me and him got into a shouting match because I
was just like it, shit feels like it was a plantation.
It literally was a flower garden. It was actually called
the Yeah, it was called just something playing taition flower garden.
(13:01):
But it literally was just we were out there in
the hot sun picking flowers and you know, other types
of shit. So I quit that and then that's when
I started like flirting with the screet you know what
I mean. That's when it was like, man, I gotta
figure out some ways to make money because you know,
I still got to pay my probation officer and shit
like that. And it was just a stupid mentality, right,
(13:22):
because when you're on probation, you got to keep a job.
That's number one, and you got to pay your probation fees.
So I started just saying that I was working with
my dad and I was doing tempt services but also
had got a fifty dollars slab. Fifty dollars slabs when
you're getting fifty dollars worth of rock, and you know,
I think you posted be like I think its supposed
to be one hundred dollars off each gram. So I
(13:43):
think a slab was one gram that you paid fifty
dollars for and you cut it up and you posted
it cuts up into like one hundred dollars worth a rock.
So that was the first time I liked dabbled in like, yeah, hustling.
So yeah, did I left my Did I feel like, well,
how to my relationship my parents changed? Yeah? I thought
they were right, but I still was young and had
(14:05):
to figure things out for myself, which led me, which
led me back, which led me into actually hustling. You know.
After the break, Charlotte Magne's gonna take us on a
ride through his earliest experiences with radio and how that
helped build his foundation in the business. When did radio
(14:27):
enter your life, like, not only not as a career,
as a listener, Like, what's your earliest experiences with radio?
Like forever forever? And the reason I say forever because
like when I said, small town monks going to South Carolina.
So the radio station was Z ninety three Jams. We
were always around the radio. If it wasn't Z ninety
three Jams, it was another station called wpa L one
(14:49):
hundred point nine, and one hundred point nine was like
more underground with it, so they were playing like underground stuff,
not the mainscreen stuff. And like you know, there was
always like bone boxes around like my cousin and you know,
my cousin tis to my cousin Tye. He was the
first person let me hear like a real hip hop record.
Like prior to that, my sister had her radio in
(15:10):
her room. So my sister was listening to like Kidn't
Play and Salt and Pepper, you know what I mean,
stuff like that Hammer all the pop stuff, you know
what I mean. But my cousin let me hear Eric
B and Rock Kemp paid in full. Wow, and that
changed everything. Wow. That was like I don't know what
this thing is called hip hop, but I love it.
(15:35):
It felt like rock Kim was saying stuff like he
was telling stories, like you know what I mean. Yeah,
just just that is what introduced me to radio and
always wanting to be around a radio. It felt like
we might even have been around radio more than TV.
You know, back in the day TV it was certain
shows we were watching, but we weren't just turning the
(15:56):
TV on and keeping it on all day. If it
wasn't like Nintendo or you know the radio. Man, we
were outside, yeah, like you know what I mean, running around,
playing around. So it's like, for me, radio has always
been in my life as a listener, like who are
the personalities are? Because like I know, like in LA
and later I came to us, it was like syndicated,
(16:16):
but you know, in LA always felt like it was
like Big Boy was like was huge, you know, and
I felt like our guy. For me growing up, it
was oh, oh oh, it's the time Join Them morning
show because you know, my mom was a school teacher,
so we was up early early, so I was listening
to the time Join Them. And then you know, ZE
ninety three played such a big role in my life
(16:37):
because you know, their original morning show that I remember
was the Breakfast Club Baby Jay and Tessa Tessa Spencer,
and then you know, in the afternoons, it was like,
um a man, y'all need a rude boy. But then
it was like you know the night shows, the Top
nine at nine, you know, you want to call in
and request the song and hear your voice on the radio,
(16:59):
shout out your school whatever whatever. But yeah, those were
the people like growing up like Sean, people like Sean Dobe, Like,
those are the personalities that I would hear. Reggie c
You'd hear these people and they were just like regular
voices that you would hear all the time. Ken Moore
like I don't even know if Kim was Ki on Z.
(17:20):
I don't know if Ki was one. I just did
the voices I remember. Yeah, you know, growing up like
those voices, those local radio voices. Are you growing up
a famous as anyone in the country. Absolutely? Do you
remember your first time on the radio. I don't remember
the very first time, but it definitely one of the
first times was my man Willy Will. There was a
guy named Willie Will. He was the night jock there
(17:43):
at the ninety three jams in Charleston, South Carolina. Me
and him used to wrap together. I met him at
you know, a couple of recording studios that were in Charleston.
When I got my internship up there. I would always
just be up there and I'd be sitting in on
his show, and you know, he would definitely, you know,
call me to the microphone, you know, and I'd be
on the mike talking. So definitely my first time on air,
(18:04):
I'm sure was with Willie will And in some way,
shape or form, because I remember wanted to remember the
program director telling him like, you know, you need to
get a cardboard cut out of Charlemagne and put it
in the studio because your energy goes up, you know
when he's in here, you know, with you. I remember
I remember him saying that to him, and yeah, which
(18:26):
which probably ultimately led to me being on air because
my man Ron White, you know spootha Ron White. Me
and Ron still talked to this day. Round. Was like
he just asked me one day, like, Yo, do you
want to be on the radio? And I'm like, sure,
why not? And so they started putting me on Sundays
eleven am to three pm. When you say sure, like,
was there a part of you that had was that
just you playing the cool or were you really not
(18:47):
even sure you wanted to be on the radio like that? Yeah?
I never had thought about it, you know what I mean.
I just was really happy to be working at Z
ninety three Jams because it was like the most corporate
thing I had ever done. Yeah, you know, it was.
It was the place. It was a place where, like
in South Carolina, people saw you at ninety three, They're like, oh,
he must be he must be doing something, you know
(19:08):
what I mean, Like he must be doing something with
his with his life, you know what I mean. And
for me being like a guy who was in and
out of jail at the time and was getting in
a lot of trouble and graduated from high school in
night school, had gotten kicked out of two high schools.
Like for me, that was a big deal for me
to be like pulling up in a most corner driving
this station vehicle like the big white band with the
(19:30):
Z ninety three Jams on the logo, you know what
I mean, pulling it down my dr road, you know
what I mean, hoping that some of the girls that
lived on my road saw me, you know what I mean.
Like that was a big deal for me back then.
So yeah, just to be there felt like you did, ye, Yeah,
I just was just happy to be there. Like so
when he asked me to be on air, like hell, yeah, yeah,
(19:54):
whatever's gonna keep me here yea. And of course when
you think radio, you think on air personalities. You're not
thinking promotions or programming or anything like that. So hell yeah,
I'd love to be on it. Now I can really
say I work here and now I'm a personality, and
um yeah, I really loved it and appreciate it. How
was that first show that you had? I was scaring
(20:16):
all the church folks because it was what they had
me do. They had me do something called voice track.
And when your voice track is when you record your voice,
and you got to record your voice, and you know,
it's like it's a time slot from like eleven to three,
so you're talking like three four times an hour, introducing songs,
time temperature and stuff like that. So I didn't know
how to do radio, you know, I really didn't. So
(20:37):
I was just going in there talking like yeah I was.
I was actually screaming. When I go back and listen
to my old voice tapes, I was screaming. And it's
funny because they all were telling me I was screaming,
like I'm not screaming. I was just old you, I
don't understand how we talk about I was really yelling
like nine three jams are being hip hop. Go my
go boy. The name is Charlemagney. God. I was yelling,
like screaming at people, and so like, you know, when
(20:58):
I finally started listening to the people who actually do
this for a living, I started to acquire a more
conversational tone. You know when in the beginning, I was
just yelling, like yelling, like literally yelling at people on
the radio, and that's what I was doing. And I
did that. I think I might have voice tracked a
few Sundays, and then Ron was like, all right, enough
of that. You're gonna have your voice track on Saturday
(21:20):
nights now seven to ten, and then you're gonna go
live from ten to midnight. And I was everything because
it's Saturday nights so I can have this high energy.
But then when we go live or I could take
phone calls. Now it's like I'm taking phone calls and
I'm working with people when they're calling then making jokes
blah blah. So it's just like for me, the best
(21:41):
thing that ever happened to me was I didn't know
how to do radio. Nobody taught me how to do radio.
I wasn't a person who came from, you know, doing
college radio, or nowadays you can have a podcast or
a YouTube page. I was just fresh off the dirt
road in Monks Corner, South Carolina, getting on the air
in Austin, South Carolina on the biggest radio station at
(22:02):
the time, Z ninety three, and that rawdness showed. I
sounded different than everybody else because I didn't have that announcer,
you know, background. So it worked for me. Yeah, you
didn't have the announcer broadcast, yeah or whatever. I was
just coming at it with your own angles. What was
your journey after that? After zm SO, I worked as
(22:25):
an intern in ninety eight, started there in ninety nine
from the promotions department to um being on there, and
then a news station came into market, Hot ninety eight nine,
much smaller station ran by a guy named my Man.
George Cook was the program director. I was doing part
time at z SO. I had some conversations with Hot
(22:46):
ninety eight nine. They wanted me to come over there
and do nights. They wanted me to do Monday through Saturday,
seven to midnight full time, and I was I think
the pay was like nineteen grand a year, and at
the time. That was a lot of money, and it
was a dollary. So just to be able to say,
first time on salary that I didn't go to college,
you know what I mean. I graduated from night school
(23:08):
and like, so I didn't just oh I got a salary. Now, yeah,
I'm just happy to be making nineteen grand a year.
Like that sounded like some shit, And so yeah, I
started working there every night and it wasn't even about
to check. It was about the opportunity to be on
every night. And my man, George Cookman, who's still a
great mentor to me to this day. He actually George
(23:31):
is not only the first person to give me a
full time position on radio. He told me some information
that just changed my whole life. And the information was,
I want you to have a morning show at night.
I want you to treat this night show that you
have like a morning show at night. Parody songs and
(23:51):
a lot of sketches and a lot of topics and
a lot of interaction with listeners via the phone and
you know, playing new music and all of that benefited
me so well in the future because that's what I
ultimately treated every single show like I treated every single
show like it was a morning show. So no matter where,
I went from High ninety eighty nine to the big
(24:12):
DM in Columbia, and then it was Hot one of
three nine in Columbia, then it was Wendy Williams show,
then it was my own morning show in Philly. By
the time I got to my own morning show in Philly,
I had approached every single one of those situations like
it was a morning show. So by the time I
was ready to do my own morning show, I was overprepared. Yeah,
you know. So it was he planned to seed early
(24:33):
on that basically stuck with me throughout my whole career
and ultimately led to me being the morning guy I am.
Now let me come back. You'll get a chance to
hear what Charlemagne learned from the legendary radio host Wendy
Williams and lessons he had to teach himself to achieve success.
(25:01):
Tell me about meeting Wendy Williams, man Man, I met
Wendy because I was doing radio in Columbia, South Carolina.
Columbia had a really dope station called Hot one with
three nine. So Hot one with three nine started syndicating
Wendy Williams in the afternoons, and so Wendy and her
husband would come down for station visits, like they would
(25:23):
come down to like see the market and stuff like that,
and so I just would break bread, you know. And
I remember the first time I even tried to break
bread with Wendy. Wendy was in the studio trying to
do her show, which I totally understand, now, you know
what I mean. But I came in there with mixed
tapes and parody songs, all of this stuff I wanted
her to hear and while she was doing her show, yeah,
I mean, but she was in between breaks, you know
(25:44):
what I mean. But now, when I under now understanding
the hecticness of a syndicated show, it wasn't like breaks
like us. But we break for twenty minutes, thirty minutes
and got time to bullshit. She's on like on on
on on, Like it might have only been like three
minutes in between songs. Wendy goes, look, yo, yo, take
that mixtape shit out of here. I'm trying to do
(26:05):
my fucking show. Take that mixtape shit to my husband.
I didn't feel offended by that. Yeah, I was just like,
where's your husband? She's like, I think if he's in
that fucking room somewhere, like in the conference room across
the hall. Cool. So I went across the room, gave
him the mixtape, started pitching ship to him, you know,
pitching shit to him. And then we started talking and
(26:26):
we you know, kept in contact from there, you know,
and I used to like give them the heads up
on things that were going on at the station. So
he invited me to come up to New York for
a party. He was like, yeah, want you to come
up to New York. We're having a party, blah blah.
And I'm like all right. I went to the party
just to kick it. And in the party, Wendy was like,
oh shit, Charlemagne, Yo, wan't you come to my show?
(26:48):
How long are you in town? Like, oh, just a
couple of days. Come to my show tomorrow, Like come
to your show tomorrow. Can't tell me shit like that.
I'm going I'm going to be like, yo, all right,
the who do I call? What do I do? And
so I'm hitting keV like yo, keV. Whendy said, come
to our show. He was like all right, I bet
So he just told me that he told me to
go up there, went up there, sat in the pink
(27:11):
room to paint the office for a while. Then she
invited me on the show and I was there for
like twenty five minutes, and literally that evening they were
offering me the position as her co host sidekick, and
they was like, look, we can't pay you, but we
can give you a place to stay. And I'm just like,
all right, just let me go back down South and like,
(27:31):
you know, figure some things out, like just you know,
let my girl know what I'm about to do and
everything else. And that's what I did. You knew the opportunity, yo. Man,
you gotta recognize the opportunity even when it's not a
paycheck attached to it. So my mindset was never I
never I never once was like how much I'm gonna
get paid. It was like, we cannot pay you, but
we can give you a place to stay. I'm out
(27:52):
the opportunity to be on Wendy Williams Show Monday through
Friday in the afternoon, nationally syndicated show. What are some
lessons you learned on the Wonder william Show? That Wendy's
a legend no matter how you feel about her, matter
how you feel about her, bona Fire legend, one of
the most talented people, one of the most talented media
personalities of all time. You know, one of the people
(28:13):
few people who can like literally sit down in front
of a TV camera and just go. Yeah, person who
could just sit down in front of a microphone and
just go. And you realize the reason she's able to
do that is Number one, she does have just the
natural gift to gab. But one of the lessons I
learned that everything is showprep. Like a lot of times,
you know, back in the day, we would think that
(28:35):
show prep is like just picking up the latest magazine
or picking up the latest tabloid and just downloading what's
in there. Wendy taught me that your whole life is showprep.
Every single experience that you go through can be brought
to the radio. You know, every single experience that you
go through can be bought, you know, the television. I
would watch her, I'd be out with her during the day,
(28:55):
watch these things happen to her, and then watch her
get on the rad and talk about these things like, oh,
I was there, and of course he's making me part
of the story because and Charlemagne said this. Charlemagne was
right there and Charlemagne acted like he didn't see it
and it isn't that like, and I'm like, god, damn,
she's incredible, you know what I mean, Like he's just
an incredible storyteller. So you know, um, she taught me
(29:17):
how to tell stories via radio, even though I was
already doing it, but I was doing it more so
through sketches. But now just to make your life a story,
to make the things that happened to you throughout the
day a story. That was like one of the biggest things,
like everything is show prep. And the other thing was
like you're either gonna be of the people or of
(29:37):
the industry, because when you're of the people, you're always
going to speak like for the people and you're gonna
speak how the people speak. When you're of the industry,
like you're gonna try to protect relationships and you're gonna
try to you know, protect people. You know, so you're
not gonna have those opinions that you that you probably
(29:58):
once had that was good advice at the time. I
think that there's an adjustment to be made in that
rhetoric because it's gonna come a time where like you're
going to be industry. Yeah, you get too big. Yeah,
and everybody around you is gonna be industry too. I've
been in the game for twenty five years. So not
only have I grown as a personality and a businessman,
(30:21):
a media just everything right, people around me have to Now.
I got people who run record labels. I got people
who are in rs. I got people who work at
these social media platforms, you know what I mean. I
got friends that are artists and big celebrities. We all
I've been doing it for twenty five years. We all
(30:42):
came up together. And not only just the people I
came up with, those next generations of people that now
I'm in position. But oh, I see this person coming.
Let me embrace this in the VILDI embrace that individdle school.
We're all industry, you know what I mean. So your
authentic self has to change. It's like reasonable doubt was
authentic for jay Z or for its authentic for jay
(31:05):
Z today. What you just said hit it on the
head because people don't pay attention to that. Like you
saw me when I was one version of myself. If
I had stayed that version and never grown into anything else,
it's no way I'm being authentic. Yeah, Muhammad at last said,
the person who's doing the same thing at fifty that
(31:25):
he was at twenty wasted thirty years of his fucking
I ain't I believe that, you know what I mean.
It's just like you're I'm never going to be that
version again. But the only thing I could do is
be the best version of my authentic self, whatever that
may be, whatever I grow into, you know, And like
that's why me at forty four, you god damn right,
I'm not the same way I was at thirty one.
(31:46):
I better not be. I mean, I'm my true authentic
self right now. And you know, you realize like the
power of the platform, and what I mean by that
is like, man, this is certain things that we got
to protect people from because we have these platforms, and
sometimes the wrong information is fewed over the platform, you know,
and people get hurt because of that. Yeah, you know,
(32:09):
And I'm not in the business of hurting nobody. I
don't want to hurt nobody, and I don't want the
person putting out the information to be hurt. Yeah you know.
So yeah, well that's interesting because and I don't know
if this was necessarily this person being hurt by you,
but after Wendy Williams. You get your own show in
Philly and you get fired because you bring Beanie siegal on,
(32:31):
who's a who's a Philly rapper? Yeah, tell me if
I'm not getting a story right. But you bring on
Beanie Seagull, who's a Philly rapper at one point was
signed to Rockefeller Records, came up under Jay jay Z.
And you do an interview with beans on the show
and he said something about Jay that makes Jay madd
and you get get fired that. Yeah, that's the story.
The story is that I got fired because Beanie Seagull
(32:55):
got on the air and aired out Jay Z. And
I'm the one who recorded it and I'll put it
on air. That's the story. I don't know if that's
true or not. Jay never has confirmed what Jay has
Jay never confirmed or denied on air. Behind the scenes,
he has said to me like that, that really gets
you fight, like you know what I mean? And that's
the story, right, I don't. I doubt that's highly the case,
(33:18):
you know what I mean? When I think back then,
I think um I had a new program director was hired,
and I think that new program director just wanted to
bring in his people and that new program director like
he don't know. He had his chest out a little bit.
I remember the first time I met him, he was like,
oh me, and you're gonna be able to get along.
So he came in there on some like snapping the
whip ship, let me get this guy in line type thing,
(33:39):
and I think that, um, it was a combination of
just him being new and wanting to bring in his
own people, but also a combination of people thinking they're
doing the right thing for jay Z. But jay Z's
not even thinking about this ship. He's you know what
I mean. It's one of those things like I know,
I know Charlotmagne did it, but we got rid of
Charlomagne and you let Jay know I did it whatever.
(34:00):
You know, So I don't. I don't know. I do
feel like maybe a higher up might have might have
just pulled the trigger on that firing just to get
in Jay's good graces. But I don't think that was
a Hey, I'm jay Z, I'm offended by this get
this guy off the airthing. No, I don't believe that
at all. Okay, okay, but that does get you fired,
and that was your own show. I mean, that's like
your own show in Philly. That's like and if your
(34:21):
first time happened like your own show, that's like, yeah, um,
that's that big that I was killing. I was number
I think two in the market. I was number two
in the market at the time, and that was in
a PPM world, So I was I was doing great.
And it was literally just me and my homegirl, Sasha.
So I should suit to Sasha Katie, that's the homie,
you know what I mean. She we used to work
together when I used to work at Wendy at WBLS,
(34:43):
and so when I got my own show in Philly,
just asked, yo, you want to be my producer and
she was like hell yeah. So we literally would drive
from New Jersey every morning back and forth the Pennsylvania
like like an hour and a half away. We would
drive back and forth every day three I have to
get up at three in the morning, pick her up
(35:04):
by like four three thirty four o'clock to be there
on time. And we did that every single day, wow,
for like six seven months. The funny part is I
got fired the day I was supposed to move into
the townhouse because I was still living in Jersey. So
me and my wife had got a townhouse, and I'm like, yeah,
this is gonna be great. Now, I gotta wake up
(35:24):
sore early, like I won't have to drive, Like I'm
in my basket. I'm processing all this in my mind.
We was living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on the
outskirts of Philadelphia. Go and roll my daughter in school here,
all of that type of ship. And the day I
got fired, I literally had all my stuff in the
fucking I had a two thousand and two escalated with
like one hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, and
(35:45):
I had all that in the car, ready to move
into the townhouse. And I got fired on that day,
literally that day, and went back to South Carolina, back
in Most Corner for a year. And what was going
through your head at that point, Oh, yeah, I failed.
I gotta go back to the Mons corner. After being
(36:05):
you know, on Wendy Show, after having my own show
in Philly, after having these viral moments, after being on
VH one TV with Wendy. Now I got to go
back to the man's corner and collect unemployment for real,
because I don't know when I'm gonna get another gig.
And now I got a daughter. So I literally was
in South Carolina from November two thousand and nine to
(36:30):
November two and ten, so I was able to collect
the year of unemployment. You know what I mean. I'm
living at home with my mom, depressed this shit, you know,
anxiety through the roof, just trying to figure out what's
gonna happen. But you know, I used that opportunity to
m There was a new station launching in Charleston, South Carolina.
It was called The Box. I think it was like
(36:52):
ninety two five The Box or something like that. So
I was there with them, helping them launch the station,
helping them write promos and create an imaging for the station.
I did the voiceovers for the station. Like in my mind,
I was like, Okay, I'm gonna end up getting a
shift on ninety two five. I'm gonna make my twenty
grand a year here in South Carolina, and we're gonna
live a great life. Yeah that was my mindseting. But
(37:14):
you know, clearly God had other plans because the Breakfast
Club came shortly after that. How did that come? When
I was in Philly, there was a there was a
time where I had met with my man g Spend.
Before me and g Spen met in a restaurant or something.
It was me and at the time my then uh
(37:35):
my then manager named it was Kevin, Wendy's husband, and
you know, you don't have the best reputation in the
business man, and so even though we met, g Spen
wasn't really feeling it. And then later on that turned
into a meeting with my man Cadillac Jack and cad
was with me then and it was the same thing.
Like literally I found out that after we left the meeting,
(37:57):
mad people came from like the sales department and was like,
you cannot Charlotta, Agne's great, but if as long as
you know Kevin is his manager, you know we can't
hire him, and YadA, YadA, YadA, the energy will be
bad and terrible all of this type of stuff. I
didn't know that, you know. And then you know, me
and Kevin ended up having a fallen out parting ways.
(38:19):
And so I was in New York because I had
moved back to South Carolina, but I was in New
York for a couple of days, and I remember just
texting g Spend like, yo, you know where you at
And he was like I'm in New York where you at, Like,
I'm in Jersey right now. I was standing in Fort Lee.
I was at the Double Tree in four League, and
he was like, yo, man, he was like, yo, come
(38:40):
to the station. I'm like where He was like, yeah, yeah,
come to the station. Come to the station right now.
And so I got in the rental car drove seem
it took me like three hours to get there because
it was like four o'clock in the after Yeah. Yeah.
So we was at the GW Bridge for what seemed
like an hour and trying to get down the West Side,
creeping down and Tribeca. But I finally get there and
(39:00):
g spinn is like, yo, um my, boss, Cadillac. Jack
has been watching your stuff all day long, watching you
and Duval with the Hood, State of the Union, and
listening under like some old interviews when you was on
the radio in Philly. So I sit down with Cadillac,
and me and Cadillac just have a great conversation. And
one of the first things he says to me is like,
you know, is cass still you're managing I'm like, nah,
(39:25):
you know. And that's how the relationship started. So like
a few months later, I got high on probably one
or five one. I remember Cadillac saying like, how long
can you wait for this job? And I'm like, for
this job as long as it takes. And so like
five six months later, you know, the wheels really started
to move and where you want him that whole five
six months like yo, like, oh yes, yeah, you couldn't
(39:49):
just sit back and no, no, no, definitely stayed in touch,
would send him new episodes of me and Duvall show,
you know, just just anything anything that I was doing
in that space, I would because we was early on
social media. We was all over my Space and Twitter
and everything else. So yeah, like I was definitely keeping
in real touch with him and g span, you know
what I mean, and sometimes popping up, popping up, you know,
(40:12):
and be like because I knew kind of like the
gig might be mine, So I was kind of like
popping up. And it felt bad because there was like
people who I was like really cool with that work there,
and I couldn't say anything, you know about the conversations
me and Cadillac we're having, you know what I mean,
And I had to like lie to some of these people,
(40:33):
and it felt bad, you know what I mean because
I just couldn't tell the truth because this business still
to be handled, you know, so, but yeah, that's how
I got there. It's amazing, man. And then basically from that,
I mean, from that point, are you still there obviously
Breakfast Club, Yeah, thirteen years later, man. And what's so
interesting is that any of them would tell you. Angelie
(40:55):
will tell you, and Bill tell you. Our radio consultant,
Dennis Clark g Span Catillac, I was the guy saying
We're gonna be one of the biggest nationally syndicated shows
in the country. Like, like, I just I knew it.
I saw what this show had the potential of being.
And like from day one, me N V. Angela, we
always recorded our interviews and put them online. That's how
(41:18):
I was aware of what Angela was doing. I was
aware of what you know, Envy was doing. You know,
people like my homegirl Kendred g deVie Brown, we were
all utilizing the internet. And so when we got with
the Breakfast Club, that's all. We didn't have no money
from marketing. They didn't have no money from marketing, no
money for promotions. This was kind of like a last
ditch thing to see if something will work to even
keep the lights on that power one oh five one.
(41:41):
And so all we asked for was a cameraman every
day to come in here and record, you know, these interviews.
And that's what we did. We started recording these interviews,
putting them up online, recording these interviews, putting them on websites.
And then at the time all these blogs and the
world Stars and all of these different platforms, these websites existed,
sending our interview was out, they started posting them. Yeah,
(42:03):
next thing, you know, it took off in a real way,
and here we are. How do you how do you
manage that? Like, how do you manage the expectation of
how do you manage the success? How do you manage
what is just out of reach at the moment that's
that's gonna be coming up for you. I manage it
just by like realizing what my daddy always says, You're
(42:24):
never as good as it say you are, and you're
never as bad as it say you are. Like I've
already had my moments of like ego, I've had my
moments of like being that narcissistic, arrogant person that you know,
you can't tell anything too whether people realize that or not.
I'm sure that they did, because I'm sure I projected it,
you know what I mean. But I went through that,
(42:46):
and I went through that at a time where, like God,
knew I had to get over that in order to
be where I am now. So I knew that I
had to start doing some work on myself. I was
really becoming everything that I said I didn't like. You know,
I was looking in the mirror and really becoming my father.
(43:07):
I loved my father, but I hated how my father's
infidelity ruined his marriage with my mom, you know, and
ruined our family. Right. So for me, I didn't want
to do that, and I felt myself going down that
path in a real way. So it was just like,
let me check myself before I wrecked myself. You know
(43:32):
why let you go? Man, last question, if you can
pick out one thing that's helped you be successful, that's
sort of been with you through every period of your
of your career, what do you think that thing would be? Man?
For me, it would like to really be authentic. And
what I mean by that is you're not authentic when
you're being a character to yourself. You're not authentic when
(43:55):
you see something working for you and you're getting rewarded
for it, so you start double and trippling down on
that thing. You're not authentic when you're being a second
rate version of somebody else instead of a first rate
version of yourself. And one of the things that hurt
me to most is when they started calling me to
hip hop Howard Stern. I love Howard Stern, right, but
(44:18):
I didn't even start to think why they were calling
me that. I just took it and ran with it,
you know, and started giving them like all of the
examples of Howard that Howard might not even be proud
of now, you know. For me, it was like a
lot of the the frat boy, creepy ass, overly sexual humor,
(44:41):
you know, like the low vibrational energy is what I
was really doing, the limbo with how low can you Go?
You know what I mean? Like literally like how low
can you go? Like literally, And that's the type of
shit I was doing. So like when you go online
and you see like videos of me like sniffing chairs
or like tyeing poem orange stars up and all of that,
it was literally for the shock. Yeah, And so like
(45:06):
that stuck with me for like man, maybe maybe a
year or two I was on that and then just
started to eat me up, Like, Yo, this ain't making
me happy. This shit is whacked. And you got your
you know, your wife. You know I got married in
twenty fourteen, so you got your wife on your head
at the time. She's my girl, Like what the fuck
are you doing? Like, you know, you out here wilding,
(45:27):
you cheating on you like me and you you're on
the radio and you're, damn it bragging about word of
the ball like it was that type of conversation. I'm like, man,
are you tripping? Like you know you it's just entertainment.
That was my life. It's just entertainment. But it's not. Yeah,
it's really not, you know, because you know, but when
you're influencing mad people, and in this case, I'm hurting
somebody and hurting the person that's the closest to me,
(45:49):
and you can start to believe your own bullshit. That's
the worst. When you get in the character and you
start believing that you really are this dude. So it's
like for me, man, that's what made me like really
start like going to therapy and like doing the work
because I did not like the version of myself that
I was becoming. So my advice to anybody would just
(46:10):
to just be authentic, always leave yourself open to growth,
and don't be afraid of where that growth takes you.
I don't give a fuck what people like about you today.
If you're growing into something else tomorrow, follow that shit,
you know what I mean, Because if you don't, you know,
you're really just stunting your growth and you really don't
(46:32):
know how big you could possibly be. You're putting a
cap on you, like you're literally putting a limit on
how far you could possibly grow, how big you could get,
because you're like, Nope, that's what they like about me,
So I'm gonna keep it here as opposed to just
leaving yourself open to see what else is out there
(46:52):
and how much more you could continue to grow. So
that's what I tell people. Be authentic, man, and just
don't be afraid to grow. Yeah. Yeah, man, thanks for
bringing your authentic self to everything, man. I appreciate thanks. Man,
appreciate Charlemagne, who the ups and downs are building a
media career in one of the most cut throat of
(47:12):
mediums radio, has shown up ready to bring his full
self to whatever it is he does, and the brilliance
of that is he's been impossible to ignore. I want
to thank him for that confidence and for taking the
time to talk with me. I plan on spending more
time working on my fear of being rejected just for
being me. Thanks for listening to start it from the bottom,
(47:34):
I'm out. Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jah,
edited by Keishaw Williams, engineered by Beentaliday, Booked by Laura
Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show's executive
produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music is by Beentaliday
(47:54):
and David Jah, featuring Anthony Aggs and s Vannah Joe Lack.
If you like her show, please remember to share, rate
and reviewers on your podcast staff. I'm just Richmond H.
The Breakfast Club News
Hosts And Creators
Charlamagne Tha God
DJ Envy
Jess Hilarious
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