The host opens up about his decision to cancel a talk on mental health with the rapper.
Kanye West may have had an audience during his visit with President Donald Trump at the White House, but not everyone is interested in publicly meeting with the controversial rapper.
In fact, radio DJ and book author Charlamagne Tha God recently canceled a sold-out, 1,200-seat New York Times’ Times Talk with Yeezy. Charlamagne explained the decision on Tuesday’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the conversation was supposed to center around mental health.
"Me and Kanye have a relationship, not as close as him and Trump, but we have a relationship,” he quipped. "Every interview that he’s done over the past few years, including the interview that I did with him earlier this year, he’s always talked about his mental health. He’s always talked about being bipolar and being on his medication."
Charlamagne, 40, noted that the 41-year-old rapper has talked several times recently about going off of his medication, and noted that he was interested in speaking to him about how he came to that decision. "I was like, ‘Let’s have a conversation about that. Why are you not on your medication?’"
Charlamagne’s resolve to cancel the talk came after West’s recent televised trip to the White House, where he claimed he was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and was instead just sleep deprived.
“He said that he wasn’t on his meds. He’d gotten misdiagnosed. It wasn’t bipolar. It was sleep deprivation, so I was like, ‘I think he needs to figure that out,’” Charlamagne said. "For what I’m trying to do, which is elevate the conversation of mental health in the black community, and try to eradicate the stigma around mental health, I just didn’t think it would be a good conversation. I thought it would be a distraction.”
Colbert asked Charlamagne how long he waited after the White House meeting to cancel the talk with West.
“I took a day because I didn’t want it to be a knee jerk reaction. Sometimes we’ll see everybody with this backlash on social media and we get caught up in the hype and we’re not really thinking for ourselves,” he explained. "We’re thinking about based on how everybody’s reacting. So I waited a day and then I reached out to his team and I reached out to his people and they were all kind of relieved. They just felt like that was the best thing.”
Charlamagne -- who is currently promoting his new book, Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me, which is about his own struggle with anxiety -- told Colbert that West's team asked that he break the news to the rapper while was in Uganda with his family.
"It was all good. He took it well,” he said.
West has been very outspoken about his mental health journey. On the premiere episode of Raq Rants on Tuesday night, he gave his candid opinions on medication, saying, "I think a little bit of medication is always good, just don’t overdo it. If you’re in Europe and you go into the hospital, they allow you to deal with a little bit of pain, but if you go here your foot is hurting, five people ask you if you want pain killers back to back to back. Everything should be used in moderation.”
For more from West, watch the clip below:
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