On last week’s episode of “Love & Hip Hop,” Joe Budden shocked everyone (especially his ex Tahiry) by passing a drug test. Joe has battled drug addiction in the past and despite being clean for 14 years, he reveals that he recently relapsed. The No Love Lost rapper isn’t the first to have his serious drug skeletons made public.
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Eminem
From publicly fighting with his ex-wife to grappling with fame, Eminem has had his share of issues. In 2009, the notoriously reclusive rapper opened up to Vibe about how an addiction to pills including methadone nearly cost him his life. “It’s no secret I had a drug problem,” he said. “If I was to give you a number of Vicodin I would actually take in a day? Anywhere between 10 to 20. Valium, Ambien, the numbers got so high I don’t even know what I was taking.” The demons forced him to come to grips with not only his addiction, but his family’s too. “It never once hit me that drug addiction runs in my family,” he said. “Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.” -
Lil Wayne
Listen to Lil Wayne’s “Me and My Drank” and it’s clear that his drug of choice is sizzurp. “You don’t know how to treat her/You don’t know that I need her,” he raps, in love with the purple, syrupy high. Wayne eventually put down the Styrofoam cup in 2009 and claims he’s living a sober life, sharing with GQ: “I stopped syrup May 9 of 2009. But nobody knew. Because I still rapped about it. Because I respect the culture of where it came from. I still rep that s—.” -
Pimp C
“I got the red promethazine, thick orange and yellow ‘Tuss,” Pimp C rapped on the track “Sippin’ On Some Syrup” about his penchant for sizzurp. Sadly, this addiction, coupled with a sleeping disorder, lead to his accidental overdose and death in 2008. The UGK rapper was only 33 years old. The tragedy continues to cast a shadow on sizzurp in hip-hop today. RIP Pimp C. -
DMX
DMX has battled drug problems his whole life including crack. In 2010, the embattled rapper was busted for cocaine and Oxycontin, which violated his earlier parole. X claimed that he had kicked (part of) the habit in 2012, when he said he was “too old” for hard drugs, but he still does “drink and smoke.” -
Kid Cudi
Kid Cudi burst onto the scene as the “lonely stoner” in “Day ‘N’ Nite,” but many were shocked when he was arrested in 2010 for possession of so-called “liquid cocaine.” Cudder opened up about how white lines got him through the pressures of the music industry, especially doing interviews. “Doing bumps [of cocaine], I was able to get through the day, but then I would smoke weed to calm me down — it was the only way I could get through the day without people noticing I was doing it.”