S. Samuel
Public Enemy's Flavor Flav has come forward to address his past struggles with addiction and says despite the endured pain, he would not change the way things turned out.
Flav claims he suffered through personal tribulations for nearly 20 years of his life.
“I [was] a drug addict for 18 years; only six years clean. The worst mistake I ever made was experimenting with drugs. I was always more of a follower instead of a leader. Being around the hood, you’re following, you always wanna have a big name for yourself and you don’t wanna be no punk. Whatever my friends were doing I chose to do. It was the worst experiment that I could do in my life, but would I change it to this day? No. The reason why is because I got to learn about addiction. I got to live through all of that, so that way I could be able to teach about it and hopefully people learn how I made my mistakes and they [don’t] make the same mistakes that I made.” (XXL Mag)
Shady Records rapper Cashis recently came clean about his recent struggle with addiction.
“First time I met [Eminem], in the studio in Detroit, I had a vial of like 80 Valiums and I popped em all in like a day and a half. He was like “D*mn, dog you might wanna get some help. Let me know, I can help you out, discretely,’ ” the rapper explained. “I was like ‘Nah man. Where I’m from, what would I look like?’ I got off it my own, and later on, I found out — like the rest of the world — Em was getting off of it. During that time, I just quit talking to everybody dog. I didn’t talk to no friends, family.” (Baller Status)
Last summer, Eminem said his past drug addiction had a damaging effect on music making.
“I had to learn to write and rap again, and I had to do it sober and 100 percent clean. That didn’t feel good at first…I mean it in the literal sense. I actually had to learn how to say my lyrics again — how to phrase them, make them flow, how to use force so they sounded like I meant them. Rapping wasn’t like riding a bike. It was [as much] physical as mental. I was relearning basic motor skills. I couldn’t control my hand shakes. I’d get in the [recording] booth and tried to rap, and none of it was clever, none was witty and I wasn’t saying it right…It was four or five months after I’d been clean when I started to get a glimmer of my writing skills back. I don’t remember what song I was working on specifically, but I do remember getting feeling back in the music. I realized I wanted to do this again.” (New York Post)
In summer 2010, G.O.O.D. Music rapper Kid Cudi revealed he conquered a cocaine craving.
“No more blow. People do drugs to camouflage emotions and run away from their problems. Now I’m going to deal with certain things as they come, prioritize sh*t–man up, so to speak. Just for the record, it bugged me out that people said it was liquid cocaine [that I got arrested for over the summer]. No, I’m just f*cking rich, and my blow comes in a jar. There was no liquid in it–that sh*t makes no sense.” (Complex)
Check out some recent Flavor Flav footage down below:
