Dr. Dre has said he “appreciates being alive” after suffering three strokes in 2021 following a brain aneurysm.
The rap legend was appearing on James Corden’s SiriusXM show This Life of Mine on Friday (March 15) when he opened up about his near-death experience.
“It definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure,” he said. “It’s something you can’t control, it just happens. During those two weeks, I had three strokes.”
He explained that the episode began with the brain aneurysm, describing having heard a loud pop behind his right ear, followed by “the worst pain I ever felt”.
“I got up and went about my day, and I thought I could lay down and take a nap. My son and a female friend were like ‘no, we need to take you to the hospital. Next thing you know, I’m blacking out, I’m in and out of consciousness and I end up in the ICU. I was there for two weeks. I’m hearing doctors come in ‘you don’t know how lucky you are.’ I asked questions about what I could’ve done to prevent this, no one could give me an answer.”
Last month, Dre joined forces with his longtime collaborator Snoop Dogg to launch Gin & Juice, a range of pre-mixed cocktails. The drinks will come in four flavours – citrus, melon, passionfruit and apricot – and are currently in stores around the US.
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The duo are also said to be currently working on plans for a sequel album to 1993’s ‘Doggystyle’, titled ‘Missionary’. While the project never materialised in its tentative release period of November 2022, ‘Missionary’ will reportedly feature Dr. Dre as a producer, and will mark the pair’s first album-length collaboration in almost three decades.
“I’ve been working on a record with Dr. Dre for the past eight months,” Snoop Dogg said of the project earlier in February. “We’re about ready to drop a single in a couple weeks, so that’s what I’ve been cooking up.”
The last time Dre and Snoop worked on music together was on the tracks ‘One Shoot One Kill’ and ‘Satisfaction’, both from the former’s 2015 album ‘Compton’. In a three-and-a-half star review, NME said, “It’s hard to deny ‘Compton’ is brilliantly constructed [and] a masterclass in 21st-century hip-hop.”
Back in 2022, Dr Dre headlined the Super Bowl Halftime Show and brought out Dogg to perform their seminal West Coast rap hit ‘The Next Episode’.