Black Privilege is an amusing biography to read. I won’t go into detail about the many anecdotes, you have to read them in context to really enjoy them. But I’ll share some of the little lessons I got out of this book.
Don’t be afraid to tell the truth
With fifteen years Charlamagne took a heavy beating as a result of “talking shit” about a guy to his friend Imani. Soon after this scenario presented itself.
A few days later, after smoking weed I decided to go visit my neighbor Charles, who lived at the top of our dirt road. Charles wasn’t home but as I was walking out of his yard, Darnell and his cousin came driving by. They spotted me and quickly pulled over, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust and pebbles.
“Yo, Larry, what’s good?” Darnell yelled menacingly as he hopped out of the car. Lenard is my government name, but people in Moncks Corner call me Larry, after my father.
I had zero idea what Darnell was yelling about. Number one, I was high. Number two, I talked SHIT about everyone in those days. I must have had a quizzical look on my face, because Darnell quickly filled me in.
“You was talking that shit to Imani,” he announced. “So we gotta fight!”
I’d said what I’d said, so there was no need to cop a plea.
“Yeah, what about it?” I answered back defiantly.
But Darnell was already done talking. He unleashed a wild roundhouse that would have knocked my head off but thankfully missed. I managed to land a quick jab in retaliation. It seemed like he barely felt it. Despite being basically the same size as me, in one quick move Darnell scooped me up, lifted me over his head, and viciously pile-drived me into a ditch.
This beating was a crucial moment in which Charlamagne cemented his conviction to always stick with the truth, whatever problems that might bring him.
I was happy because I sensed that I’d entered a new stage in my relationship with the truth. Most people would have walked away from a beating like that thinking, “I really got to start watching what I say.” I had the opposite reaction. If I’d just survived that, there was no way I was censoring myself at all. One of my favorite songs at the time was Notorious B.I.G.’s “Unbelievable,” where he rapped, “If I said it, I meant it / bite my tongue for no one.” Sitting there in the trailer, I could hear Biggie’s lyrics over and over again in my head. In his words, I’d found my own voice too.
Principles to live by
Charlamagne is a great listener despite having a big mouth (in his words). That’s balance is very important in my opinion and it allowed him to learn from other people. Here are some of the principles he has either learned or developed himself.
• Success isn’t determined by the size of the town you’re from, or what sort of home you grew up in. When I first started doing radio in NYC, people tried to make me ashamed of coming from a place where you pull over when you see roadkill. (Pro tip: If it’s cold, you leave it there. If it’s warm, it’s dinner.) But even if Moncks Corner was a small town, it had a magic in the air. Magic that I was able to harness and motivate myself with. There’s something special wherever you come from too: find it and use it to help it propel you toward your pursuit of greatness.
• In order to change your life for the better, first you must change your lifestyle. Which can’t happen unless you change the people around you. My family didn’t have much, but I still got off to a good start in life: wearing glasses and a fanny pack, reading Judy Blume books, and hanging out with nerdy white kids. Then I made the mistake of ditching all that for my “cool” cousins who were thugging.III I had one foot under that tree my father always told me about, one foot in jail, and let’s call it my dick (aka my third leg) in the grave. Thankfully I woke up and realized I had to cut all the losers loose, even the blood relatives, if I was ever going to reach my potential. I hope this section will help you see that no one is a victim of circumstance in life. No matter how or where you were raised, you can make the choice to live a different way.
• Often the most valuable advice you can give someone is “fuck your dreams.” Sounds like pretty depressing advice, but it comes with a qualifier: fuck your dreams when they aren’t actually yours. For young African-Americans, relatable images of success are often limited to sports and entertainment. Too many times the dreams you think are yours are actually someone else’s; you’re only chasing them because you’ve seen them working for others. I should know: I wanted to be a rapper because that’s what I saw young black men who were successful do. Thankfully, someone who could see I didn’t have the skill set to be an MC had the courage to tell me, “Fuck your dreams of being a rapper.” It turned out to be the single best piece of career advice I ever received. This is why I often say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say to anyone, say it anyway.”
• As someone who has been fired countless times, I can promise you there are no “losses” in life, only lessons. From getting let go from Taco Bell (by my own sister no less) to getting canned from Wendy Williams’s show to every single time I’ve been fired, a short time later I’ve always landed in a better position. As long as you don’t compromise who you are, no matter how many pink slips you get, there’s always going to be something better out there for you. Learn how to trust what I call “divine misdirection.”
• When you’re starting off in your chosen field, just focus on “putting the weed in the bag.” If you don’t know classic hip-hop cinema, I’ll explain that quote in greater detail later. For now, just know it speaks to the importance of embracing the process, instead of what may seem to be the results. Too many people, especially millennials, lack the vision to recognize opportunity when there’s not a paycheck attached to it.
• Always live your truth. When you live your truth, can’t nobody try to use that truth against you. For instance, do I look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? Of course I do. By embracing my egg-shaped dome, I’ve taken all the ammunition away from people who call me “the fifth Ninja Turtle,” or “a burnt Ninja Turtle.” By laughing at those comments instead of getting uptight, I’ve replaced a perceived weakness with power. You might not look like a Ninja Turtle (unless your name is Ne-Yo) yourself but chances are there’s something you’re uptight or embarrassed about that you could actually turn into a positive by just embracing the truth about yourself.
• Give people the credit they deserve for being stupid—starting with yourself. I walk through life assuming that I’ve got a lot to learn, and I happily soak up any knowledge that comes my way. Too many people take the opposite approach and decide they’ve got it all figured out by the time they’re twenty-five. That’s a mind-set that is guaranteed to block your blessings. You must stay open to new ideas. To new kinds of people to work with. To new mentors who can coach you. Otherwise, you are always going to be stuck in place.
• Finally, embrace the concept that you are privileged. I believe in the power and privilege of God. And God created me exactly how he wanted me to be and who he wanted me to be. I believe I’m just as privileged—if not more—as any white person out there. I have to believe that. Otherwise, I’d never have transcended the circumstances I was born into. No matter what your circumstance in life, you must adopt the same attitude. You must believe—strongly—that you’ve got Latino Privilege, Asian Privilege, Tall-Guy Privilege, Smart-Girl Privilege, whatever your particular situation may be. And then you’ve got to have complete faith in your privilege. This book is only for those who believe that they can create their own opportunity.
Because if you don’t believe in your ability to create breaks for yourself, then this book can’t do anything for you. In fact, just put it down now. Then find your receipt and return it before you accidently get some Polynesian sauce from your Number One at Chick-fil-A on one of the pages and can’t get your money back.
It doesn’t matter where you come from
I have had doubt in the past about my possibilities coming from a tiny city called Filadelfia out of Paraguay. But now I see it as as one of my advantages. For instance, I’d never have had as much time to dedicate to stuff I love doing like reading, if I’d grown up in a big-ass city. If you feel limited by where you come from, this message will resonate with you.
Geographical location doesn’t determine what kind of success you will have, but your psychological position always will. How are you going to make waves in a bigger pond when you haven’t even learned how to cause a ripple in the pond you’re in? When you stop complaining about where you are physically and start focusing on where you are mentally, that’s when you will start to transcend your circumstances.
That feeling of hopelessness, of opportunity always being outside of your grasp, can be depressing. I saw it take its toll on a lot of people, including many of my cousins and friends. When my father warned me not to fall into the trap of spending “the rest of your life sitting drunk under a tree,” he wasn’t using it as a metaphor. I would literally see my cousins—guys who as teenagers dressed fly, had game with the ladies, and excelled in sports—wasting away their days sitting under a tree for shade, sipping on cheap liquor and talking about the good ol’ days. Except they weren’t even out of their twenties yet, and their dreams were already dead. A guy drinking under a tree in Moncks Corner could just as easily be someone smoking a blunt on a park bench in the Bronx or drinking their lunch in a bar in Houston. A person I describe as “under a tree” represents anyone who has decided it’ll never “happen” for them, so why even bother trying?
Personally, I never, ever in my life thought that my journey was going to end in Moncks Corner. I might have been raised in a small pond, but I was convinced that my hustle and determination were going to make me a fish that was going to swim on to wider waters. Even when I was really fucking up, I always believed that there was something greater out there for me. And how did I know that? How was I sure of it?
Because all the incredible books I was reading and inspirational music I was listening to told me so!!!
…
That’s the confidence I always got from hip-hop. When Rakim said he was “born to be the sole controller of the universe / Besides the part of the map I hit first” that power came through the speakers and went directly into my soul. Yes, the map might say I was stuck in Moncks Corner for now, but my home was about to be the cosmos.
It’s Not the Size of the Pond but the Hustle in the Fish
Inspiration
Instead of being envious about successful people, you should really train yourself to learn from them.
Another mistake people with small pond mind-sets make is not being motivated by the success stories taking place right in front of them.
I’ve always had the opposite mentality. Growing up, I looked for every possible connection between myself and someone successful, no matter how tenuous the link might seem. I’ll never forget flipping through the TV one afternoon after school and landing on BET’s Rap City. The host Big Tigger was introducing DJ B-Lord as a guest on the show. “Live from North Carolina, it’s B-Lord,” Tigger said before B quickly corrected him with “No, I’m from South Carolina.”
It was a seemingly insignificant moment, a couple of seconds on a video show. But it hit me like a lightning bolt. “Wow,” I remember thinking. “That DJ on a national TV show just said he was from South Carolina.” Someone from my state was a guest on the same show that Method Man, Raekwon, and Mobb Deep had all been on. The artists I’d been worshipping. With the simple words, “No, I’m from South Carolina,” suddenly a direct path from Moncks Corner to the rest of the world opened up before me. “If B-Lord can make it, I can do something too,” I told myself. And I never lost that faith.
I got the same surge of confidence the first time I heard Wu-Tang’s Inspectah Deck rap, “I smoke on the mic like Smokin’ Joe Frazier.” Why? Because I knew Joe Frazier was from Beaufort, South Carolina. Philly might try to claim him, but Smokin’ Joe was ours. My father kept a picture of him fighting Muhammad Ali in our trailer and always reminded me he was a Carolina boy. So hearing him shouted out in one of my favorite songs was like putting another battery in my back. “Great people are born here,” I figured. “If he made it, I can make it too.”
If one person that looks like you made it, then you can too.
— Gary Vaynerchuk on The Brilliant Idiots
Don’t waste honest feedback
We often don’t want to face the obvious truth. That’s why people tend to sugarcoat things when they talk. But ironically this is harmful to us because in order to make changes, we need to know the truth.
The truth might hurt, but it’s always helpful. Nobody wants to hear they’re fat as fuck and need to lose weight, or they’re not as talented at something as they think they are. But just because they’re lying to themselves doesn’t mean that you have to lie too. It doesn’t benefit you or the person you’re talking to when you sugarcoat your words. You have to tell people what they need to hear, as opposed to what they want to hear. And if you are the person getting that harsh dose of reality, then make sure you accept it.
Another time I was bragging about this girl I was trying to talk to, one of the “Valley girls” from Stratford. Dana, one of my favorite cousins, overheard me and let me have it. “You really think a girl like that is going to want to be with somebody like you?” she asked with a snort, before adding, “’Nard, you’re exactly what TLC be talking about in that song: a scrub! You’re on a fast track to nowhere. Why would she even mess with you?” Dana called me a scrub with complete conviction too. Hearing that from someone in my family, especially a cousin I was close with, was like a smack in the face. One I desperately needed.
Fuck fake-dreams
Society knows how to instill fake-dreams into young people. Especially today with social media it is easy to get brainwashed into fake dreams and ideals.
Charlamagne’s dream since his childhood was to be a rapper. He wasn’t self-aware enough to realize that his talent was in radio. Until someone close to him delivered the honest feedback he needed.
For years I’d been looking for that sense of belonging, and in radio I had finally found it. But even though the rest of the world could see me growing into my gift, I was still focused on getting a deal for my rap groups. I’d become very inspired by how Ludacris came up (for those of you who don’t know, he was a rapper who’d gotten a deal thanks in large part to his success as a radio DJ). I made the mistake of thinking Luda’s path was the same one that I had to follow.
The person who finally helped me clear off my lenses and see my future clearly was Dr. Evans. As soon as I’d gotten on air, he recognized that I’d found my actual calling. He started schooling me on great African-American DJs like Petey Greene in DC and Frankie Crocker in New York City. Guys who didn’t just play records but had made their reputation off their wit and opinions. He told me I possessed some of the same talent he’d heard in them.
I appreciated the compliments, but I believed my future still lay in being a rapper. One day he finally pulled me aside and said, “Listen, Charlamagne, I know your dream is to be a famous rapper, but fuck that dream. You’re just not that good.
“You are, however, great at being a radio jock,” he continued. “Focus on that instead. And if you still want to be involved in hip-hop, learn the behind-the-scenes skills of running a label. Because it’s never going to happen for you as a rapper. You need to dead that dream.”
When Dr. Evans told me that, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. As I’ve said, deep down I never felt comfortable rapping. Every time I went into the studio to spit a verse, I’d get a little tight and anxious. I’d overthink instead of just being natural. I’d try to be hard instead of just being myself. The exact opposite of how I felt talking on the radio.
That’s why I didn’t put up a fight with Dr. Evans when he dashed my dream. I didn’t get offended and say, “Are you crazy? That last Dizzy Van Winkle verse was fire!” Rather, I calmly replied, “You’re right. I’m done.”
Simple as that.
I was through with rapping and ready to dedicate my talents to the radio.
Jay himself said, “Remind yourself / Nobody built like you / You designed yourself!” That should be our collective mentality. Design yourself. Construct your own dream. We have to stop thinking that just because we see something working spectacularly for someone else, that’s the only path available to us!
Very important though, spotting the difference between someone who is telling you fuck your dreams because that people has a limited mindset.
“Don’t dream too big,” is a very poisonous thought to put into the mind of a young person: if you look at her own kids today, or her nephews and nieces, none of them are doing much with their lives. Probably because they listened to her advice. This is why it’s critical that you be able to tell the difference between someone telling you “Fuck your dreams” in order to get you on the right path or simply telling you “Fuck your dreams” because they’ve already given up on their own.
Focus and work ethic
The more time I spent around Dr. Evans and Bless, I began to suspect that it wasn’t their energy that Infinity didn’t like but their work ethic. They were disciplined in a way that I hadn’t experienced before in a hip-hop setting. The studio cultivated a healthy, professional environment because neither of the Evanses smoked or drank. In fact, I can remember being in the lobby drinking a Ballantine Ale and Dr. Evans walked over and asked, “Yo, can you get that shit out of here for me?” That doesn’t happen too often. In addition to no drinking, Dr. Evans also didn’t allow any weed smoking or chasing girls. Guys like Infinity didn’t appreciate that—they wanted to come to the studio, get high, spit their rhymes, and have a party.
I’d never really met anyone like Dr. Evans before and wanted to learn more about him. I came to find out he was from Queens, he’d been an NYPD cop for over a decade before getting his medical license and then moving down to South Carolina to help his son run Never So Deep.
They might have come down south to make music, but the scene at Never So Deep was about much more than beats and rhymes. Dr. Evans and Bless practiced vee arnis jitsu every day and even had a dojo in the back of the studio. Dr. Evans made us work out and watch what we ate. He was also a heavy reader and put me on to impactful books like The Art of War and taught me about historical figures I’d been sleeping on, like Denmark Vesey.
He preached that in order to reach our full potential, both our bodies and our minds needed to be sharp. Being around his positive, focused energy had me looking at life in a different way. He was becoming an incredible mentor to me. One who was about to give me the most important career advice I’d ever receive.
Divine Misdirection
If you get knocked off path, instead of seeing it as failure, switch your perspective. Sometimes it is just the setback you needed in order to refocus on the right direction.
When I’m moving full steam toward my goals and suddenly I get knocked off my path, I don’t get flustered or despondent. I just have the confidence that I’m going to be redirected to the next opportunity. Which is why I like to call getting fired an act of “divine misdirection.”
Learn to love the process!
This concept of loving the process I learned from GaryVee and it changed my perspective on what’s important fundamentally.
Too often we’re given bad advice on what it takes to get from where we are to where we want to be. We’re taught that the only accurate sign that we’re moving toward success is making money. We get caught up sweating the results instead of embracing the process. Even though embracing the process is the only way you’re ever going to get what you want out of life.
Setting your Intent and Honesty with Yourself
Always live your truth. That way no one can use your truth against you. When you are completely honest about yourself and with yourself, you give zero fucks about anything anyone has to say about you. People can slander you all day, but no judgment or opinion formed against you shall prosper when you Live Your Truth.
I’ve never been comfortable with those who are loose with the truth, or even worse are straight-up liars. When I was a kid, my father would tell me, “When you tell one lie, you’re always going to have to tell another one to keep it up,” over and over again, until it was beat into my head. “Better to tell the truth and deal with the consequences right away.”
Being honest with yourself, how important that is! It’s so easy to bullshit with yourself and I know because I’ve made that mistake. But the BS’ing ourselves only prevents us from taking action where it matters.
But before you can reap the benefits of being honest with other people, you have to learn to be honest with yourself first.
Getting honesty from other People
One key part of being honest is getting honest feedback from others. Elon Musk said one of the most important things are good feedback-loops from other people. But there is one problem, those closest to us tend to hesitate telling us the truth, especially if we actively discourage them from doing it.
When one of your close friends, family members, or crew give you a little constructive criticism, how do you react? Do you get defensive? Are you dismissive? Or even worse, do you lash out at that person? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then your actions are discouraging honesty. And encouraging yes-men. When you dismiss, or lash out at a person who keeps it real with you, what do you think eventually happens? They stop keeping it real. They might not lie to you, but they’ll probably just keep their mouth shut when they see you screwing up. They’ll sit there and watch as you self-destruct. Can you really blame them? They tried to help, but you weren’t receptive.
Medidate on how you are living your life
I just wanted to share this anecdote from Charlamagne to make a point. Many people live their lives with many prejudices and habits that are no good for the world. That way of unconscious living sucks. Realize when you need to make changes to your thinking.
Even though a lot of straight guys spend their lives making uninvited advances toward women, getting hit on by a gay dude is somehow a traumatic experience for them. I remember one day I was walking down the street past a bunch of gay dudes when one of them called out, “Ohhhh, Charlamagne’s got a fat ass!” I didn’t know how to reply, so I just kept walking. That really pissed them off, and one of the dudes started moving toward me while shouting, “Uh-uh, you’re not going to just walk past us like that. Don’t act like you don’t see us!” I can’t lie: I was a little shook. So I stopped, turned around. and said, “OK, thank you. I appreciate the compliment.” After that they left me alone.
As I walked away I had to remind myself, “That’s every day for women. That’s what women have to put up with from men since they were teenagers. So why do we as men get so bent out of shape when the shoe is on the other foot?” I actually feel homophobic men aren’t afraid of gay men, they’re actually afraid of their own karma. They’re worried that a man is going to treat them the way they’ve treated women all these years.