Kanye West’s erratic behavior is beginning to cost him airtime – if the cancellation of his anticipated talk on mental health is of any indication.
The Washington Post reports that host of the upcoming Times Talk, Charlamagne Tha God, kicked the week off by announcing via social media that a decision was made to nix the event because it would more likely distract from the topic of mental illness than it would serve to support the vital discourse.
The Kanye edition of the New York Times-sponsored series was scheduled to take place in New York City’s Town Hall this Wednesday, October 17. But Ye will be fine staying put to enjoy a couple of extra days in Africa, where he has been working on his forthcoming Yandhi album and mixing it up with the President of Uganda and his officials. Should he fly back into the United States for a Big Apple landing, it won’t be to the welcoming of Times Talk organizers, or attendees who are currently being refunded the price they paid for tickets to the discussion.
“Normalizing being mentally healthy is a conversation that I really wanted to have with Kanye because he’s been so vocal about his own mental health struggles,” Charlamagne wrote in the caption of a post that he shared with his 2.8 million followers on Instagram. “Unfortunately I think to have that conversation with him right now would not be productive and a total distraction from the point of the convo which is to eradicate the stigma of mental health especially in the black community,” he said.
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“Normalizing being mentally healthy is a conversation that I really wanted to have with Kanye because he’s been so vocal about his own mental health struggles. Unfortunately I think to have that conversation with him right now would not be productive and a total distraction from the point of the convo which is to eradicate the stigma of mental health especially in the black community.”- ME.
A post shared by Charlamagne Thagod (@cthagod) on
The nullified chat would have made for the second one-on-one exclusive that Charlamagne got to facilitate with Kanye this year.
Fans will recall how the Power 105.1 co-host of The Breakfast Club flew out for a one-hour and forty-five-minute interview that took place on the massive Wyoming ranch that the prolific hip-hop producer used for the recording of his Ye album back in May. According to Vulture‘s chronicling of the interview, it was during that exchange that Kanye revealed he had been taking medication – although he had up until that point continued to refuse professional therapy to deal with the series of breakdowns that led to his hospitalization in late 2016.
The cancellation is not one that Charlamagne is signing off on without regrets. He himself has spent a great deal of time lecturing about mental health, particularly in the black community, following the release of his second Times bestseller, Shook Ones: Anxiety Playing Tricks on me.
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