Lil Wayne has spoken candidly on his battles with mental health and the moment in his life that made him realize this was an issue he was combating within himself.
During an appearance on former NFL star and current Fox Sports analyst Emmanuel Acho's Uncomfortable Conversations series, which premiered on YouTube on Sunday (Aug. 15), Wayne opened up about attempting suicide when he was 12 years old.
Weezy explained that he had mental health issues from a very young age, around 10 years old, once he was told "he couldn't have what he wanted" or what he "dreamed of," which was to rap—a talent Wayne had from his youth that he said he was willing to die for.
"When I was 12 years old, the school year was kind of ending," Tunechi told Emmanuel Acho. "So what the school was doing was they was giving us half days on Thursday and a Friday. It may have been a Wednesday as well, but what I would do was just telling moms that I only had a half a day on one of those days."
He continued: "So therefore I stayed out the rest of the whole day, just like it was a full day. She found out. And so when I got home, on I think it was that Friday, whatever, got home, got a phone call from my aunt was like, 'She found out. Boy, you're about to get your ass kicked. And all that rapping and all that, she about to take that rap folder, she about to throw that shit away. She about to…' And I was like, 'Wow.' So all that had built up to me. So that was a buildup."
Wayne went on to say that he listened to his aunt and mother, and confirmed that he understood what his punishment was going to be.
"So she actually said she's taking off," Weezy shared, referring to his mother. "Hung up the phone, thoughts everywhere. Main thought was, I'm gonna show you."
When asked what he planned to show his mother, Lil Wayne offered the details of the attempted suicide.
"So, I picked up the phone, I called the police," he expressed. "Yes, I knew where she kept her gun. And it was in her bedroom. And so I went in her bedroom, grabbed the gun. I already made the phone call. Looked in the mirror."
Wayne pointed to the side of his temple and said, "Did like that," then revealed why he opted against shooting that area of his body.
"Of course it was like, 'Oh no.' ’Cause I got a little too scared, that was my head. Like, 'Nah, nah.' But then I said, 'Fuck it.' Biggie was on. I'm looking in the mirror, so you can look through the mirror and the television was behind me. So I was watching the video through the mirror. 'One More Chance' was on and [I] think Biggie was already gone or something. So I was just looking, I was like, 'You know what?' Start thinking I had to get myself mad and noticed I didn't have to. That's what scared me."
He added, "How I knew I had mental health problems was I pulled the trigger."
Lil Wayne said he shot himself in his chest and he was aiming for his heart, but his body didn't feel any pain.
"It was the shock," he conveyed. "I woke up to a boom, boom, boom to the police knocking. And that's what woke me up."
Weezy F. Baby then went into the story of how he met Uncle Bob, who saved his life that day. The rapper, who was lying on the ground at the time, bleeding profusely, was able to slide to the front door and alert police that he was home. Officers, who were already banging on the front door, broke the door of his home off the hinges, but stepped over Wayne to search the house instead of offering him aid or transporting him to a nearby hospital.
It was Uncle Bob, a police officer, that demanded Lil Wayne be taken to the hospital.
The Young Money Entertainment head also noted that from that incident, his mother had changed, presumably due to the fact that she had almost lost her child. The rapper said the person his mother was before he shot himself, he had never seen that woman again.
Lil Wayne has spoken on his attempted suicide in his music, particularly on Tha Carter V's final track, "Let It All Work Out," where he raps: "I found my momma's pistol where she always hide it/I cry, put it to my head and thought about it/Nobody was home to stop me, so I called my auntie/Hung up, then put the gun up to my heart and pondered/Too much was on my conscience to be smart about it/Too torn apart about it, I aim where my heart was pounding/I shot it, and I woke up with blood all around me/It's mine, I didn't die, but as I was dying/God came to my side and we talked about it/He sold me another life and he made a prophet."
Also on R&B singer Solange Knowles' "Mad." Wayne rhymes on that song: "And when I attempted suicide, I didn't die."
Back in 2018, Weezy did an interview with ESPN's Josina Anderson alongside NFL baller Odell Beckham, a fellow New Orleanian, where he spoke on the suicide attempt as well.
See Lil Wayne speak candidly on his battle with mental health below. The conversation on the subject with Emmanuel Acho begins around the 2:16-mark.
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