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Dee-1 has shared a story about meeting 2Pac‘s mother, the late Afeni Shakur.
In an interview with The Breakfast Club on Friday (March 1), the New Orleans rapper shared how he did a talent show at LSU when the Makaveli rapper’s mother was in the audience. According to Dee-1, receiving a compliment from Afeni — in which he shared that his passion onstage reminded her of her famous son — sent him over the moon.
“When she told me that, I was like, ‘oh, I got something special!’” he said.
Unfortunately, he didn’t place in the competition — but the compliment inspired Dee-1 to continue to pursue his dream of becoming a rapper.
Elsewhere in the same interview, Dee-1 revealed that he experienced thoughts of suicide following his 2014 BET Hip Hop Awards Cypher.
“Right after that BET Cypher I started going to therapy, bro,” he shared. “I was signed to RCA at the time. You on the BET Cypher and you think your life is about to change after this night…Nothing changed after that night. After that, I felt like I blew my shot.
“It started messing with me mentally to where I was like, ‘Damn, I kinda don’t even wanna be here no more. Not in the industry, but on this Earth…When I started realizing I was having suicidal thoughts behind feeling like I’m professionally a failure, I realized I couldn’t separate David from Dee-1 at that point. And that was unhealthy.”
He continued: “And for the first time in my life, I went to therapy. Because I was like, talking to my friends, that ain’t getting it at this point. Talking to my grandma, rest in peace, that ain’t cutting it at this point. So therapy really did help me, but ultimately even more than therapy was understanding my God-given purpose.
“I know who my creator is, I know why I was put here, and I was put here to glorify him. So who am I to think that my whole life is a failure because one moment didn’t elevate me professionally?”
The rapper (real name David Augustine) went on to explain that there was a previous low point in his life — his freshman year of college, during which he lost a close friend, got kicked off of the basketball team, and found out his girlfriend had cheated on him more than once.
But that difficult year had a slightly different impact on him.
“During that time, I coulda found the streets, I coulda found a lot of stuff,” Dee-1 says. “I found God in a real way. And I started rapping. Rapping was my therapy at that time. And when I started rapping, I had a lot to talk about.
“And I was like, ‘Why would I glorify murder when my best friend just got murdered? Why would I glorify smashing your girl, when a couple football players just smashed my girl? Why would I glorify a whole bunch of money that I know I ain’t got when that ain’t how I’m living?’ So from day 1, rap was just an outlet for me to be able to spit reality, but you gotta make that reality charismatic and entertaining.”
