NLE The Great Explains Why He Chose to Prioritize His Mental Health

Kirk Franklin’s Den Of Kings is a YouTube series where the gospel superstar brings Black men of influence together for candid conversations about fatherhood, leadership, faith, and mental health. In the latest episode, Franklin opened up a conversation about mental health and spirituality with KevOnStage, Jonathan Majors, Ray J, Dr. Jay Barnett and NLE The Great  (formerly NLE Choppa). During the discussion, NLE The Great got real about his struggles with depression and how he found faith and prioritizing his mental wellness to be the keys to giving him direction and peace. 

“It came to a space where I had everything I wanted–but nothing I needed,” he shared to the group. “Everything – my wants was reachable: money, cars, clothes, women of course. All the things that’s in the other side of the promise.”

But he acknowledged that finding so much success when he was still very young proved to be harmful to his psyche.

“I was around seventeen,” he explained when Franklin asked how old he was when his emotional and mental struggles began. “This was after I’d blew up.”

NLE The Great (born Bryson Potts) said that as he’s gotten older, he had to disconnect. The Memphis native took an extended hiatus and began to journal. 

“It started to come to a point where I started to veer a little left,” he says. “I always relate to the 'Book of Job.' At the end of the day, everything was a test of faith. The attacks started to increase but my faith never changed on who the ultimate provider was, that’s the Lord, our God.”

NLE The Great broke away for several months, and shared that he turned down lucrative deals but it was worth it to prioritize his mental health. 

“I just sat down for three to four months,” he says. “I took a break. I could’ve made four, five, six, ten million dollars. I left it all on the plate to sit down because something in my spirit wasn’t right. I sat down. I had to go back home and got grounded. Stayed in my hometown, the most dangerous city, that people crucify. I stayed there, planted my feet there.”

After the conversation turned to the role faith can play in helping one cope, he explained that journaling helped him get closer to his spirituality. 

“I went into a 112 day seek,” NLE The Great shared. “Every day I woke up; I went outside with my notebook and I sat my feet in my grass and I stood before a tree and nature and I just listened. I wrote down everything. I jotted it [down]. I got four or five journals stacked over three or four months. It’s like a Bible. The Most High God fed to me every day, every second. When I woke up, he’d wake me out of my sleep. He gave me dreams. People that I needed to get away from me: snakes, rats, whomever. He put everything under a microscope in my life.”