Busta Rhymes Reveals ‘Wake Up Calls’ That Inspired Him To Lose Weight

Busta Rhymes has opened up about what has inspired him to change his lifestyle after being overweight. The “Touch It” rapper, who weighed over 300 pounds during the pandemic after the death of his father in 2014, detailed several “wake up calls” that have motivated him.

“One night I was getting ready to have, make, you know…I was getting ready to have an intimate moment with my ex. I had a breathing issue after the intimate interaction,” the 51-year-old said when sitting down with Men’s Health. “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,” the emcee continued. “That was scaring me so much that it was a mindf**k, because I had to stay calm and make sure she didn’t hear me panic or hear me struggle to breathe. I’m butt-a** naked in the living room, trying to calm myself down.”

Busta went on to note that when he returned to the bedroom, his ex said “something to me that really f**ked me up.” He recounted, “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. I need you to get back to who I fell in love with.’ “

Another wake up call was the moment when Busta’s son “slapped” him on the stomach when he went to fist bump him. “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,’ ” he shared, before adding, “The third moment was when security and my son took about 45 minutes to get me up in a crib [when he passed out in the car in 2019].”

“I was also scared about surgery for the polyps on my vocal cords because my voice is how I feed my family — the voice is the dragon. I ran from the surgery as long as I could, but after that weekend I saw the doctor and he looked at my throat and he said I could die in my sleep,” the rhymer pointed out. “That’s when I got surgery and started to get back in shape.”