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.
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.
"She was like, 'Yo, this is not who I fell in love with.' She didn't know what had happened outside, but she was looking at my body and the weight. She was like, 'You gotta lose this weight. This breathing is scaring me. When I met you, you wasn't like a musclehead, but you, you was slim, you was cut, you had your s**t right.