Charlamagne Tha God Will Never Pull Punches With Democrats: “They’re Gluttons for Punishment, Like I Am”
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Lenard McKelvey, better known as Charlamagne tha God, is often referred to as a shock jock — a title well earned over his two-decade career of revelatory interviews with rappers, a few guest walkouts and audience response ranging from adulation to ire. But he’d rather be known as a media mogul — and not without justification. The 43-year-old firebrand host has made Power 105.1 FM’s The Breakfast Club New York’s most culturally relevant morning radio show for more than a decade, while adding TV projects (Comedy Central’s Tha God’s Honest Truth), podcasts (The Brilliant Idiots), multiple best-selling books, a comics imprint, scripted development and even a video series for The Hollywood Reporter (Emerging Hollywood) to his snowballing workload. “Audio is my world,” he says over a Zoom in early May. “But I want to have my hand in a little bit of everything.”
Still, the Southern-raised, New Jersey-dwelling, married father of four girls, who proudly labels himself a “homebody,” has a knack for delivering viral longform interviews — with everyone from hip-hop stars to presidential candidates. His secret? Not doing it live. A student of Oprah Winfrey, Howard Stern, Larry King and Barbara Walters, McKelvey always pretapes an uninterrupted hour or two with his subject.
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What’s your strategy for pulling an interview subject out of their shell if they’re being cagey?
A lot of people come in with a preconceived notion about me. Some people think I’m going to ask them the hard questions or whatever. That’s why I always want to start the conversation with a simple, “How are you? What’s your energy?” Especially after the pandemic. It forced so many of us to sit down and actually see ourselves for the first time. I think a lot of times you’d be surprised how much that disarms people. I just want people to feel relaxed.
What did you learn about yourself over the past two years?
I learned that if I didn’t make the decision to go to therapy prior to COVID, I probably wouldn’t have survived the pandemic. I started going to therapy four or five years prior and was already doing a lot of the unpacking. When it came time for me to have to sit still, I had already looked in the mirror and saw things I didn’t like about myself — things that I wanted to correct. It reinforced to me that you have to constantly do the work. Now I have so many artists, entertainers, comedians, influences, rappers, athletes hitting me up saying, “Yo man, I’m ready to finally talk to somebody.”
Do you feel that it’s been helpful for your audience that you are so open about therapy?
In order to eradicate the stigma around mental health, we’ve got to each tell our story. I see people in the street, they come up to me and say, “I started going to therapy because of you.” For me, that’s everything. The same way hip-hop and pop culture have influenced people to do a lot of the wrong things, we can influence people to do a lot of the right things, too.
What’s the biggest adjustment as you’ve shifted to more TV?
I want people to know that TV’s an extension of me, and it isn’t new for me. I’ve been doing television since 2012 on MTV2. And the people who are used to having you in one medium, be it radio or podcasts, they see TV as selling out or watering things down. But I’m no different! I literally talk on TV the same way I talk on the radio. So just getting people to take me seriously as a TV host has probably been the biggest thing.
Tell me about your relationship with Stephen Colbert, who’s an executive producer on Tha God’s Honest Truth.
Stephen is such a good person for me to talk to because he had to shed his Colbert Report character when he went to The Late Show. I am continuing to shed the character of Charlamagne tha God and giving you Lenard McKelvey. He knows what that’s like.
What are his notes like?
The best note-givers are the people who don’t bullshit you. He doesn’t bullshit you at all — especially when it comes to field pieces, because that’s his world. I didn’t realize it takes a couple of months sometimes to put together a good field piece. I thought you could turn this shit around in a week. How difficult could it be? Send somebody out in the street and do X, Y and Z. I’d watch, thinking this shit is great. Stephen’s like, “Nope, that shit sucks.” I can’t do nothing but respect that.
You’re a go-to press stop for Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren — but you do not let them off easy. Why do they keep coming back?
They’re probably gluttons for punishment, like I am. And they know I’m not lying. I’m telling them how some people feel. Like right now, I’m not lying when I tell them, “I think y’all are going to get slaughtered in the midterms.” I used to say that Democrats have a messaging problem. They’ve got a policy problem because they haven’t kept any of their campaign promises. Nobody’s being prosecuted, it seems, from the attempted coup on this country on January 6. And now you tell me that I have to vote like democracy depends on it? You haven’t governed like democracy depends on it. So what am I supposed to do? That’s not a dis.
I’m not going to make you pick a favorite interview subject over the years, but who stands out?
What pops up for me is a lot of the people that we’ve sat down with who are no longer with us — Larry King, Nipsey Hussle, Mac Miller, Dick Gregory. And, of course, all the political ones. Joe Biden, who’s now the president, and that whole “You ain’t Black” comment [about Black Americans voting for Trump]? That’s going to live forever.
A clip of Ziwe pushing you about your harsh treatment of Black women on The Breakfast Club recently went viral. What did you think of the interview — and the accusation?
I love Ziwe. I knew what I was getting into. The thing I like about her show is what she did to me. That’s why I can sit there in the interview and be like, “Don’t freeze this and put ‘I hate Black women’ as the lower third.” And then that’s exactly what she did. It’s comedy. It’s satire. I enjoyed it. I was high on Saturday night, watching it on Paramount+, and I was laughing. So when the clips come out, and people are hitting me mad, I’m not really too concerned about narratives. Narratives are just narratives. I think Ziwe is going to end up hosting The Late Late Show when James Corden leaves. It’s such a fit.
How do you feel about the frequency with which people are taken to task for past comments?
We haven’t had a discussion about the Overton window happening in our culture. Some things that were acceptable 10, 15, 20 years ago, they’re not now. It’s like the speed limit decreased over time because there were too many accidents on the road, but they’re sending you speeding tickets for going 80 [miles per hour] 20 years ago, when you’re driving 55 today. But that’s the era we live in.
You used to work with Wendy Williams. What’s your take on her show ending so unceremoniously?
For me, it’s just sad. Wendy Williams is a legend and an icon in our business. There’s nobody that did what she did on the radio. To make the transition to television and be a successful daytime talk show host? We all know how hard that is. There’s still a part of me that’s hoping, whatever issues she’s dealing with, she gets it together so she can bow out the way that she wants to bow out.
Who’s your great white whale in terms of interviews?
Judy Blume. She played such a pivotal role in my childhood. My mother, who was an English teacher, told me to read things that don’t pertain to me. Nothing was the opposite of me more than those books about those little white girls. When I read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which I bought because of the title, I just loved it. I started reading all of Judy Blume’s stuff. Shout-out to the Book It program, too. Every four books you read, you got a free pizza.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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