Charlamagne Tha God took to Instagram on Monday to let it be known that his New York Times TimesTalk with Kanye West has been canceled. The radio host was previously set to chat with the rapper on Oct. 17 about the stigma of mental health within the black community.
“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.
He added, “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.”
Following Charlamagne’s Instagram post, the Times sent out a memo on Monday afternoon confirming the cancellation of his talk with West.
Back in May, Charlamagne spoke to the “Heartless” singer for a nearly two-hour interview on his iHeartRadio show. The two discussed a range of topics, including mental health, West’s wife Kim Kardashian and the rapper’s relationships with Jay-Z and former POTUS Barack Obama.
Charlamagne’s post comes days after West made headlines for meeting with Donald Trump inside the Oval Office, where the president praised the hip-hop star following a bizarre rant.
During the pre-lunch meeting, West referred to himself as a “motherfucker” and went on a long rant that ended with him coming around Trump’s desk and hugging him. In response to the rant, the president said: “I tell you what, that was pretty impressive. … That was quite something.”
While Charlamagne didn’t make it explicitly clear that he decided to cancel his talk with West for his staunch support of Trump, the rapper has been widely criticized by the black community — including prominent figures in hip-hop — for publicly aligning with Trump’s politics.
Earlier this month, West abandoned all of his social media platforms after he was criticized for a rant he gave to the Saturday Night Live audience, off camera, when he was the musical guest for the most recent season premiere. He claimed he was “bullied” by his team backstage for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on stage. The NBC sketch series has taken aim at West in the two weeks since his appearance.
West returned to Twitter on Saturday to give another rant in a 10-minute video. “I just want to talk about mind control,” he said in part. “You know, when people try to influence you through social media and try to tell you what to do, or if you post something that’s, like, positive on Instagram, it gets taken down if it’s not a part of a bigger agenda. That’s, like, mind control. That’s the echo chamber. That’s trying to control you based off of incentivizing you and based off of you getting enough likes. That’s the poison that’s happening with social media.”
