Inside hip-hop's complex relationship with health

[Animous]

 

When Freeway was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2015, members of his team warned him not to go public with the news.

“They was like, ‘Yo, you shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t say this. We just have to deal with this amongst ourselves,’” the 42-year-old rapper recalled in an interview with NBC News. 

“They said to keep it to myself so I wouldn’t look weak; hide it from people because I’m a celebrity. A lot of people felt like I shouldn’t be so open and letting people know what’s going on,” Freeway said.

He didn’t listen. A scroll through Freeway’s Instagram account will show the ups and downs of his life with kidney failure: his time in dialysis — four hours a day, three days a week — various doctor appointments, his kidney transplant in 2019 and his recovery since (with updates from his hospital bed).

Freeway isn’t the only rapper to speak publicly about his medical conditions. Rick Ross has consistently been open in interviews about his commitment to health after experiencing several seizures over the years; he has since reportedly invested $1 million in a Florida-based telehealth startup called Jetdoc. Such consistent public recognition of a rapper’s personal medical struggles hasn’t always been the norm in hip-hop culture.

“A majority of rappers are Black men, especially in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and Black men want it to seem like nothing can affect them, like they’re invincible,” Freeway said. “Nobody wanted to show any weakness.”

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