And rightly so.
The event was supposed to focus on mental illness in the Black community, but in light of Kanye’s mindboggling display last week in the Oval office, Charlamagne pulled the plug on the get-together, saying a conversation with West at this moment “would not be productive.”
Mr. West was smeared by political commentators as a mentally ill “token Negro” performing a “minstrel show” for the president after he sat down in the Oval Office to discuss a range of issues, including criminal justice reform. The pro-Trump rapper, who has spoken publicly about his mental health issues, said during the meeting that he was severely sleep-deprived when he was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Mr. West’s talk with Charlamagne was supposed to tackle the issue of anxiety and how to overcome it “to reach the next level of success.”
“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, author of “Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me,” wrote in an Instagram post announcing the cancellation. “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.”
