Dr. Dre is opening up about suffering three strokes and nearly dying in 2021. The strokes were caused by an unknown brain aneurysm. In a recent interview with James Corden on SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine, the Beats by Dr. Dre founder revealed he suffered from three strokes within two weeks and was forced to seek medical attention by his wife and children, despite him initially trying to sleep it off.
“It definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure. It’s something you can’t control, it just happens. During those two weeks, I had three strokes,” he told Corden. “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.”
Dre says he had no idea what happened once he came to consciousness. “I was there for two weeks. I’m hearing doctors come in [and saying] ‘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,” he recalled.
It’s not the first time he opened up about his health issues. He spoke about the ordeal in an episode of the Workout the Doubt podcast in 2022. At the time, the COVID-19 pandemic was at its height, ad visitors weren’t allowed in. however, due to the severity of the situation, doctors invited his family to say what they thought were their goodbyes to him.
“They weren’t allowing anybody to come up—meaning visitors or family because of COVID,” he said at the time. “But they allowed my family to come in. 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. Nobody told me. I had no idea. That was crazy.”