Hip-hop icon, Trevor Smith Jr. better known as Busta Rhymes has recounted his battle with weight gain and Throat Polyps.
While speaking in an interview with Men’s Health magazine, the rapper stated that losing his father and longtime manager/friend, Chris Lighty led to his enormous weight gain.
Busta who is known for his muscular physique, explained that the only way he could get closure was through poor eating habits, he also stopped working out.
“I felt cheated. The two people I wanted to see me win were no longer here to see it,” he said.
After losing almost 100 pounds within a year, the rapper almost died from a throat infection.
It all started in 2019, when he was found struggling to breathe in his car by one of his sons. The rapper said that it took his son and his security team 20 minutes to wake him and get him inside.
He added that he was later diagnosed with throat polyps which restricted 90 percent of his breathing and he had to have emergency surgery.
“That’s when I knew s–t was serious,” he revealed. The doctor told me that if I caught a cold or slept wrong that I could die….It felt like this was on me now, and I had to steer things in a different direction. I was too young to be on all of these blood-pressure medications and acid-reflux medications.”
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The rapper also appeared on Tamron Hall on Monday to discuss his weight loss journey. He shared that he knew his weight gain had gotten out of control when they had to duct tape his stomach during a video shoot.
“… There’s a scene of me wearing all white with a head wrap,” he revealed. “When I initially put that all white on, it showed how badly out of shape that I was on camera, so we went in the dressing room and they duct taped my stomach down.
“It was difficult. Probably one of the most difficult reality checks in my life…by the way, I never shared this duct taping my stomach down part with anyone on this planet.”
He went further to reveal that he got his healthy body back after his throat surgery, when a bodybuilder named, Dexter Jackson tagged him in a workout video while playing his signature song, Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See, online.
“I hit him in the DM, I told him I needed his help, and I gave him my number, and he hit me back right away,” Busta Rhymes said.
“I can honestly say for the first time in a long time I am feeling like I’m floating on a whole ‘nother plane of energy and I’ve been noticing that I’ve been comfortably saying that and actually feeling like I ain’t lying to nobody this time. You know us being in this entertainment industry, we gotta come out here, we getting in front of these cameras, it doesn’t matter how horrible the day was, we gotta put a good show on for these people and be these great liars sometimes.”