Dr. Dre, 57, opened up about one of the scariest moments of his life, in a new interview. The rapper revealed that his family was “called up to say their last goodbyes” when doctors thought he was dying after suffering from a brain aneurysm in Jan. 2021. He was treated at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, CA, in the midst of high COVID cases, and admitted he didn’t realize how “serious” his condition was.
“I’m at Cedars Sinai hospital and they weren’t allowing anybody to come up, meaning visitors or family or anything like that, because of COVID, but they allowed my family to come in,” he said on the Workout the Doubt podcast with Dolvett Quince. “I found out later, they called them up so they could say their last goodbyes because they thought I was outta here. I didn’t know it was that serious, you know? Seeing my mom and my sister and everybody coming in the room.”
“Nobody told me, I had no idea. That was crazy,” he continued. “So I’m in the ICU for two weeks. Because of what was going on in my brain, they had to wake me up every hour on the hour for two weeks to do these tests. Basically looking like sobriety tests, like touch your nose, rub your heel on your calf and all that sh*t. So every hour for two weeks, I had to wake up and do that. [I was] tired. As soon as they’d leave I would try to go to sleep because I knew they’d be coming back in the next hour.”
Despite the scariness of it all, Dre said he “never felt” like he “was in trouble” during his hospital stay. “I felt like, OK, I’m just going through procedure. I’m ready to go home,” he said.
Support poured out from Dre’s family, friends, and fans when he was getting treatment and he was able to finally return home after around two weeks. In June 2021, he spoke of his health and how he never accepted to suffer from the issues he had. “It’s a really weird thing, I’ve never had high blood pressure,” he told Los Angeles Times. “And I’ve always been a person that has always taken care of my health. But there’s something that happens for some reason with Black men and high blood pressure, and I never saw that coming. But I’m taking care of myself. And I think every Black man should just check that out and make sure things are okay with the blood pressure. And I’m going to move on and hopefully live a long and healthy life. I’m feeling fantastic.”