*Charlamagne ‘Tha God aka Lenard McKelvey and Comedy Central’s “Tha God’s Honest Truth” show runner and executive producer Rachel Edwards chop it up with Radio and Television personality Jazmyn Summers ‘Jaz’ on the exciting new addition to late night comedy “Tha God’s Honest Truth,” executive produced by Stephen Colbert.
Charlamagne uses his ‘gubmint’ name Lenard on the Friday night show. Does that mean there’s a change in his edginess? After all, this is the man who called Drake “pretty little albino girl” and Post Malone a “cup of mayonnaise that smells like beer and cigarettes.”
The short answer is no way. Recently he termed Facebook “Satan’s anus,” but there is a difference as Lenard.
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“It’s hard to have those types of feelings for individuals now because I know everybody is dealing with their own trauma,” Lenard shares with Jaz. “Everybody’s dealing with their own hurt and everybody’s just trying to do the best they can. Let’s go at institutions like Facebook, lets go at the big fish. l go after white supremacy, after the institutions that are really keeping their foots on our necks. I don’t have any reason to go after people anymore unless they’re doing something that’s just detrimental to society.”
Using the name his mom gave him is important he tells EURweb Spotlight. “When I hear the name Lenard, it keeps me grounded. That’s a tool I learned in therapy I hear my grandma, I hear my wife, I hear my mom, I hear close friends. There’s something about Lenard that keeps me from being a caricature of myself. ”
Charlamagne has come a long way from the time he was trappin’ as a teenager. He reportedly even did 41 days in jail after his dad wouldn’t bail him out. He’s been fired four times since he got in radio, but now dominates the media world with popular podcasts, one of the nation’s top syndicated radio shows “Breakfast Club,” best selling books, and a publishing company. Lenard says the secret was never letting the obstacles keep you down.
“I kept getting up. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have anything to fall back on. It’s so crazy. Everytime I got fired, every single time, I would elevate to something better. The fourth time i got fired i got the gig at “Breakfast Club”. I never had a plan B.”
But Charlamagne, er, Lenard tells Jaz that perhaps his most important journey was to focus on his mental health.
“Honestly I got to the point in 2016 I had all of this success but I just wasn’t happy. I’ve always dealt with panic attacks my whole life but I was dealing with bouts of depression in a real, real way so i started going to therapy to do the work on myself.”
In looking at his life he reveals his top three apologies would be “to my wife, parents and myself. My wife has been with me 23 years. She took me to the radio stations to fill out the applications back in the day. I had animosity to my dad – I apologize because he was just a man doing the best he could. He had his own mental health issues, substance abuse issues. I had issues with him for the things he did to my mom and how he ruined our family with his infidelity. That’s one of the reasons I stopped cheating and apologized to my wife. My wife is the secret to me wanting to be a better man because she’s a great woman. Not wanting to lose her. My keys to my success now are God, Black women and me going to therapy 6 years ago.”
Show runner and Executive Producer, Rachel Edwards notes “our vision of the show is to be fun, fresh but also impactful. So while you’ll laugh at things like our cracka counter, you’ll always walk away with something that you learn with real substance behind what he is saying.”
Catch the woke, hilarious “Tha God’s Honest Truth” Fridays at 10pm on Comedy Central.
For more from Lenard aka Charlamagne Tha God watch the full video above.
Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And subscribe to her YouTube channel. Video editing by www.patrickhousefilms.com
