Credit: Album Cover

Ab-Soul nearly lost his life leading up to the release of his Herbert album. The TDE rapper attempted to commit suicide by jumping onto a motorway in his hometown of Carson, California. Fortunately, there was a car below him to break his fall, keeping him alive and surviving with minimal injuries considering the distance.

Soulo has dealt with various issues throughout his life. When he was 10 years old, he was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which resulted in him being declared legally blind. Then, in 2012, his longtime girlfriend and collaborator, Alori Joh, died at the age of 25 by suicide, jumping to her death from a radio tower.

During an interview with Charlamagne Tha God, Ab-Soul opened up about attempting to end his own life in a similar way to his ex-girlfriend. He explained that he felt “lost” and revealed the incident had a significant effect on his life, prompting him to quit a serious vape addiction.

“I pretty much finished the album before I did what I did,” he began. “How I’m choosing to take it is — and I’m not giving it credit — but it brought me down to a place where I needed to be as vulnerable as possible, and as soon as I said everything I needed to say, I jumped.

“I took a leap of faith, if you will. And that was the only way I was going to be able to put that vape down, bro. Ain’t nobody going to rehab for a damn vape pen — shit expensive as hell! But that was the only way I was gonna be able to put that shit down, bro. I know that for a fact… I feel as though God sat my bitch-ass down.”

Soul was almost left disabled as a result of the jump, suffering from missing teeth and major damage to his foot. If it wasn’t for the car he fell onto, he believes the 50-foot jump would have killed him or, at the very least, left him with more serious injuries, crediting God for saving his life.

“I lost my teeth,” he said. “This is a flipper, I ain’t even got my implants yet. My jaw’s fucked up, I got a lot of work to do still. My foot is completely reconstructed, all the way to my pelvis. Everything but my knee. It doesn’t even make sense that my knee wasn’t affected. My femur, everything was affected except my knee.

“If my knee would have been affected, I might not be walking. I did not get any brain damage. I jumped off a freeway overpass, man, it was about 50 feet. I think a car broke my fall. No brain damage. It’s God. That was, ‘Alright, bro, now sit down and shut up. Take it all in. Relax. You blessed, man.’”

Before jumping, Ab-Soul pictured the reaction to his death. He felt it was fitting that he would die in his hometown as a famous figure. Instead, he survived the fall and felt foolish for what he did, rather than the cinematic image he had in his head.

“I woke up on the ground. ‘Oh yeah, he still here,’” he recalled. “My first thought was, ‘Fucking idiot”‘ I woke up on the floor, bro. Yanked me up, I passed back out and woke up in the hospital. I literally walked from my mom’s house. It was kinda cinematic, too. [I was] on Del Amo Boulevard, my street. The subconscious me was trying to make this cinematic. ‘Oh, he died in Del Amo! He was the king of Carson, oh my God!’ It was cinematic, you know what I’m saying?”