Busta Rhymes Shares Near-Death Experiences That Transformed His Life

etonline.com:

Busta Rhymes is opening up about the health struggles and terrifying incidents that motivated him to «transform» his body.The 51-year-old rapper recently spoke with for the outlet's ongoing «Hip Hop Health» content series, which examines how the evolution of the health of Black and brown men can be traced through the genre in honor of hip-hop's 50th anniversary.

Busta divulges how grief led to his weight gain, and how experiences with his ex and one of his sons led to him losing 100 pounds and changing his life.Busta — real name Trevor Smith Jr. — explains that he never properly dealt with the death of his father in early 2014, and his grief led to him «drinking, smoking, eating bad — the whole nasty — and recording a bunch of songs just to escape the pain.»The rapper's coping methods had him weighing up to 340 pounds and struggling with a bevy of medical ailments, including polyps that developed on his vocal cords, blocking 90 percent of his air passages and causing severe sleep apnea.

Despite knowing that surgery could fix his ailment, Busta admits that he was fearful because of the risk it posed to his unique baritone, sharing that his surgeon had warned that it could change the octave of his voice, «closer to a chipmunk kind of n***a.»«One night, I was getting ready to have an intimate moment with my ex [and] I had a breathing issue after the intimate interaction.

I was having a really difficult time breathing, so I got up, and I walked out of the bedroom so she wouldn't panic seeing me trying to keep myself calm,» Busta recalls. «I was trying to inhale, and it felt like it wasn't working.