Hip Hop pioneer MC Lyte joined us amid the release of brand new music after a lengthy break and shared with us what she has found helpful in managing her mental health both personally and professionally.

“It's so interesting that now we have -- and have had before but never used it to the fullest as we do now -- the term ‘mental health,’" she explains. “Before it was just ‘OK, something's not right,’ or ‘I feel overwhelmed,’ or ‘I feel consumed…’ We use these other words, not really understanding that it all fit under the realm of mental health and what does it mean to feel at ease?”

Which, in essence, is really what we all truly want, MC Lyte continues, “To feel like everything is in a flow -- and life doesn't work that way. There's ebbs and flows, there's bumps in the roads, things of that nature. So for me, what I do first off is, I have a higher source, you know. God is who I look to in times that are good and bad.”

“It's great to have this career,” she says. “I'm showing the highlight moments that this is great, but there are also other points where it's like, ‘OK, I'm unclear.’ The certainty that I'd love to have isn't there, and then I just got to lean on Him. Like, ‘God, you know what? I've done all that I can do to get it up to this point. You showed me the vision, now you make the provision because this is the only way that I know how.”

“For me, it's about taking that time to breathe, to relax, to do something that's not work-related, whether it's reading or just going out in nature," she adds. "I think it’s really important -- self-care -- for what it is, not only that I do as an occupation, but I'm sure all of us -- it can get stressful.”

Host DJ Scratch from 94.7 The Block in NYC agrees adding, “I never used the words ‘mental health’ until the pandemic started and that was the first time I actually recognized it. Just me as being a Black man in America, we're taught to just deal with it quietly, don't shed a tear, just man up, deal with it. And during the pandemic… we never seen anything like that before. Our humanity was on trial and you just seen so many different things going on… like people needed Clorox, and Clorox was going for $75 a bottle. It was crazy. Everything that was going on with the presidency at the time… the police, everything that was going on at the time, that's when I really recognized what mental health really was and what I was dealing with.”

Keeping open conversations around mental health “should be one of the priorities within our communities. We gather up for town halls about other things, I think this is just as important,” Lyte says. “Along with that, also being able to have younger people get together for an open, candid conversation between young men and young women because sometimes we're all speaking different languages, so to speak. I think even that could help us as a community.”

Scratch, still in touch with many of the same friends from childhood says what they used to do when they were young was hold bi-annual “therapy” sessions having honest and open conversations about what they didn’t like about each other. “Nobody had an issue,” he says. “Sometimes people did, and we fix it. We were basically doing our own therapy sessions back then as kids… but what I did notice that growing up as an adult, everybody doesn't do that. Everybody holds stuff in, so I would seem like I'm aggressive when if I see somebody have a problem, but I'm like, ‘No, this is just how we used to do.’ You have to approach people differently when there's an issue with stuff like that.”

“Most people are taught to hold what it is they feel,” Lyte agrees. “One, it doesn't matter… that's what people believe, like what they have to offer doesn't matter and then therefore they begin to believe what others have to offer doesn't matter. But I think anything can be had with love -- if you're delivering a message that you may not like, whatever that thing is if it's done in a careful way -- with care, and not just to break someone down, which a lot of people do.”

Listen to DJ Scratch’s full conversation with MC Lyte above, and stay tuned for more mental health conversations on Audacy’s I’m Listening.

Words by Joe Cingrana Interview by DJ Scratch