There has been increased awareness regarding mental health and many rappers are lending their voices to the cause. Discussions were already being had about taking care of one’s emotional and mental health, but after enduring a global pandemic and subsequent yearlong quarantine, people are becoming much more vocal. Joey Badass recently sat down with journalist Kim Taylor Bennett for the Best Advice Podcast, and the rapper spoke about the “taboo” topic and how he’s approaching taking care of himself.
“Well Emotional Intelligence 2.0 like it changed me, right,” Joey said of the acclaimed book by Jean Greaves and Travis Bradberry. “I feel like every day, even just with the topic of mental health, is such a taboo topic, it’s such an invisible thing.”
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“It’s such a hard thing to just grasp, and pinpoint,” he added. “Like, there’s people that we talk to every day that we would never even know are going through extreme mental pitfalls with the Emotional Intelligence book I feel like it really brought in my awareness on just picking up on, on nonverbal cues and stuff like that from the people that are in my life every day. Even understanding my own emotions and, and you know, how to deal with that.”
“And you know, just the ties to it as being a young Black man in America and how like… We grew up feeling like we had to throw off our emotions or ignore them. It gave me just a new perspective on embracing those feelings and embracing and those thoughts and understanding like, why I was feeling certain ways that I feel or why other people who feel the certain way they feel or why they might even say things and it be like, really covering up things that are way under the surface, that they really are trying to get out.”
Check out the episode below and listen to what else Joey Badass had to say about balancing fatherhood and his career, ditching an Obama movie gig to perform at Coachella, and much more.