Credit: The Come Up Show

Young Thug has experienced some troubles during his 33 years on earth. Most recently, he served time in prison after he and 27 members of his YSL collective were hit with 63 counts of illegal substance trafficking and firearm possession for violating the Georgia RICO Act. He was held at Fulton County Jail until October 2024, when he accepted a plea deal with 15 years of probation.

While jail might be considered the bottom of the barrel, nothing compares to the time he died for a few moments. In 2021, he revealed that he was hospitalised for over two weeks with kidney and liver failure, nearly resulting in his death.

“I kinda just stayed in the bed and I was like, ‘Yo, call the ambulance. I can’t move my body,’” he said on Offset’s coronavirus benefit live stream. “Then later, when the ambulance came, I couldn’t get out of the bed. They had to get me out of the bed, basically.”

He continued, “I felt like my whole body was numb and I couldn’t move. I went to the hospital and I had found out that I had liver and kidney failure. And I kinda had sorta passed away, like I kinda died. I was in the hospital for like 17 days.”

However, Thug’s mother had doubts about the care he was being given. So, he transferred to another hospital and was finally told the root of his health issues. “I left the hospital, my mum didn’t trust it,” he said. “So I left the hospital, went to another hospital, they was like, ‘Man, you got liver and kidney failure. You supposed to be dead. Basically, you’ve been dead.’ I’ve been killed before.”

The incident inspired his 2017 track, ‘Killed Before’, which appeared on his Super Slimey mixtape with Future. He raps on the song, “Everyone know I’ve been killed before/ I’ve been bent like a centrefold/ I crap with my money, no-oh/ Drop the top, get a breeze, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.”

Thug seemingly blamed drugs, telling the audience, “Drugs aren’t good, don’t do drugs.” While it’s unclear when the near-fatal incident happened, the Atlanta rapper has battled with lean addiction in the past and was hospitalised on occasions in September 2020 and January 2021.

He was most recently admitted to the hospital in May 2023 before a court hearing, but details about his condition were kept quiet. His attorney, Keith Adams, stated that he had experienced issues at Cobb County Adult Detention Center.

“I know he’s had some difficulty of a similar sort at the Cobb County jail a few months ago, and so I’m obviously concerned about his well-being,” he said. “My understanding is when he went to go be seen by a doctor, he was OK, he was alert. I don’t have any reason to believe he is in any serious condition. He just wasn’t feeling well.”

He added, “We did not waive his presence. We could have gone forward if we waived his presence, but we did not do that. It’s never, in my opinion, in his best interest to have anything occur without him being there.”