Lil Wayne attempted suicide at the age of 12.
Lil Wayne
The 38-year-old rapper revealed that he has suffered with mental health issues since childhood and he opened up about the devastating day he used his mother's gun to try to end his life, after she found out he had been skipping school.
Speaking on 'Uncomfortable Conversations with Emmanuel Acho', Lil Wayne said: "My thoughts were everywhere. Main thought was 'I'm gonna show you'.
"I picked up the phone, I called the police. Yes, I knew where she put 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 admitted he hesitated and "got a little too scared" but added: "Then I said ‘F*** it'. Biggie was on. I’m looking in the mirror, so you could 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 Biggie was already gone or something. So I was looking, I was like, ‘You know what?’ Start thinking I had to get myself mad and noticed that I didn’t have to. That’s what scared me. How I knew I had a mental health problem was when I pulled the trigger.
"I pulled the trigger. [I shot] in my chest. I aimed for my heart, didn't feel a thing though. So I wasn't going through any pain, it was the shock.
"I woke up to the police knocking, that's what woke me up. It took too long to die. We had wooden floors and the blood was pouring out of my chest, it made it easy for me to slide with my shirt across the floor. I kicked the door so they could hear me."
Wayne explained that a number of officers stepped over him to get into the house to look for drugs or weapons but one policeman, who he calls "Uncle Bob", said "Do you not see the baby on the ground with this hole in his chest?"
He added: "He picked me up and kept saying 'you're not gonna die on me'. And so he brought me to the hospital. I met him years later and he said to me, 'I'm just happy to see I saved a life that mattered'."
When asked "what do you think kept you alive in that moment?", Wayne replied: "God. Plain and simple."
Wayne also explained that he took such extreme measures because he didn't feel he could open up to his strict mother or his friends about his feelings, although his mother changed completely following the incident.
He said: "The mom I knew before [the suicide attempt]. I have never seen that lady again. So I didn't die that day but somebody was gone. She's never been that way since. Obviously that was an eye opener for her. And what she decided to do was, 'I'll let my flower grow'. That incident changed life for her, I and our whole family."
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