Enlightenment Issue MADE Magazine | Page 13

G D MADE BY ASHLEY WHITE H aving dubbed himself “The Prime Minister of Pissing People Off”, “The Architect of Aggravation” and “The Ruler of Rubbing People the Wrong Way,” Charlamagne Tha God keeps it real in this exclusive interview with MADE Magazine. The Moncks Corner, South Carolina native talks his New York Times best-selling book, Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes To Those Who Create It , his journey to becoming one of the hottest radio personalities and empowering the masses to pursue their passion. MADE: First, I have to say this—We love your book. It’s so good! CTG: Do you mean that? Be honest with me. MADE: We could relate to every principle in your book. Also, we truly believe that opportunities come to those who create them because we’ve seen it happen in our own lives. We’ll write down our goals or say them out loud, pray about them, put in the work and watch them manifest. CTG: I don’t think people realize how powerful the tongue is. That’s something my grandma instilled in me a long time ago. The power of the tongue, the power of the spoken word. I’m going to be honest with you. I feel like a lot of times, we as people, especially we as Black people, talk about what can’t be done so much, that that’s exactly what happens. We tell each other that things can’t change, we talk about the things we’re not able to do and all the obstacles that are in front of us. All of that is absolutely true, but you can’t buy into it or believe in it so much that it hinders your life. It probably looked impossible at one point to Harriet Tubman. I’m sure Harriet Tubman had plenty of conversations with other slaves about the Underground Railroad and they were like, “Hell naw. She can’t do that, that don’t even sound right.” Harriet said, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” I think that sometimes we’re slaves to made-magazine.com | 13