The private moment that ‘fucked up’ Busta Rhymes: “I’m butt-ass naked”
Busta Rhymes lost his father in 2014 and didn’t properly deal with the loss. He threw himself into his work while drinking alcohol, smoking and eating junk food. At the time, the New York rapper was suffering from polyps on his vocal cords, causing a blocked throat and breathing difficulties. However, one moment caused him to turn his life around.
The ‘Touch It’ rapper was about to have sex with his partner one night, but soon realised he couldn’t breathe as they were touching each other. At that moment, Busta left the room to gain some composure and focus on his breathing so as not to cause any worry to his partner.
“I was getting ready to have an intimate moment with my ex,” he told Men’s Health. “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. I was trying to inhale, and it felt like it wasn’t working. I felt like I was having like an asthma attack—but I don’t have asthma.
“So I walked out of the bedroom and went into the living room, and I was forcing myself to inhale, to relax. That was scaring me so much that it was a mindfuck, because I had to stay calm and make sure she didn’t hear me panic or hear me struggle to breathe. I’m butt-ass naked in the living room, trying to calm myself down.”
Despite thinking he handled the situation without his partner knowing, Busta experienced a moment of clarity after she told him how much weight he’d gained since they got together. “When I came back in the room once I got right, I laid back down next to her and she said something to me that really fucked me up. She was like, ‘Yo, this is not who I fell in love with,'” he recalled.
“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 shit right. I need you to get back to who I fell in love with.’”
This, combined with an incident with his son, made Busta make the changes he needed to be healthy. He lost over 100 pounds thanks to working out and improving what he was putting into his body. “A day or two later, I came out of the bedroom. I put my hand out to give my son a pound, and this n*gga slapped me on the stomach,” he said.
“I was like, ‘Man, don’t touch my body. If I reach you to give you a handshake, don’t touch my body or touch my side or my stomach.’ He was just being funny, but these things never happened when I had a six-pack. Those are two moments that really made me say, ‘Right, I gotta fix all of this.'”