Lil Wayne talks about mental health, suicide attempt, and more in a new interview.
Lil Wayne recently sat down with Emmanuel Acho on his interview series “Uncomfortable Conversations“, where the 5 time Grammy award winner discussed his lifelong mental health struggles. On the show, Lil Wayne opened about suicide attempt as a child, loneliness while a megastar, message to the world on mental health, and more.
“Figuring I Can help, hoping I can help,” Wayne says on why he appeared on the show. “Anyone else out there, who’s dealing with any mental health problems. About being vulnerable. But to me, I look at it by being brave and stepping up.”
Then he shared when did he realized he had mental health problems which led to a suicide attempt. “I realized that at a very young age. As a kid around 10. When I was told that I couldn’t have what I wanted, what I dreamed of and what I desired and that was to rap. I was willing to die for it.”
Wayne explained that he aimed the rifle at his temple at first, but was startled when he did so. Instead, he shot himself in the chest, but owing to shock, he “didn’t feel a thing,” passing out and waking up to the sound of cops knocking on his mother’s door. He credits a sheriff he calls Uncle Bob for saving his life, recalling Bob hanging over him and saying again, “You’re not going to die on me.”
Lil Wayne continues, “Once my thoughts got radical and got to where you got to stop yourself and stop and pause and say, ‘What did you just think again?’ Even If you’ve cried yourself to sleep with that thought on your mind and wake up the next day and be like, ‘I Cannot believe I was thinking that.’ Thoughts like killing yourself. When I was 12 years old. The School was kinda ending. So the school was doing was they was giving us half days on a Thursday and a Friday. But what I would do was just telling mom that I only had a half a day on one of those day. So therefore I stayed out the rest of the whole day. She found out and so when I got home, got a phone call from my aunt, she was like, ‘she found out’, boy you’re about to get your ass kicked. And that rapping and all that, she about to take that rap folder, she about to throw that shit away. So all that had built up to me. I just listened to my aunt. Hung up the phone, thoughts everywhere. I knew where she kept her gun. It was in her bedroom, so i went there, grabbed the gun. Biggie was on. How I know I had mental health problems, I pulled the trigger. I shoot myself in the chest. I knocked out from the shock as it wasn’t loaded.”
Lil Wayne also talked about the lowest point of his rap career. “When I was going through with this situation with my record label and they wouldn’t allow me to put an album out or any music out,” he says. “So If you compare that to whatever my mental health problem was back then, It was because I wasn’t being allowed to do. Just to do this, to be productive and be creative and to feel that I would love to do so. My reaction and my actions was that I wanted to quit music, I wanted to retire.”
In 2016, Lil Wayne mentioned the suicide incident on Solange’s track “Mad.” “When I attempted suicide, I didn’t die,” he said.
Watch the full interview below.
