Dr. Dre Had 3 Strokes After His Brain Aneurysm

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Rapper Dr. Dre said he suffered three strokes while he was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm in January 2021.

“It’s just something that you can’t control that just happens, and during those two weeks, I had three strokes,” he said on SiriusXM’s “This Life of Mine with James Corden,” according to CBS News. “I got up, and I went on about my day, and I thought that I could just lay down and take a nap.”

At the time, he was with a friend’s son, who insisted they go to the hospital.

“So they took me to urgent care,” Dr. Dre said, adding that he was told his condition was serious. “Next thing you know, I’m blacking out. I’m in and out of consciousness, and I ended up in the ICU. I was there for two weeks. I’m hearing the doctors coming in and saying, ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’”

Dr. Dre, 59, recalled asking doctors what could have prevented the aneurysm but no one had an answer for him.

“I had no idea that I had high blood pressure or anything like that. I’m lifting weights, I’m running, I’m doing everything I can to keep myself healthy,” he said, chalking it up to “high blood pressure in Black men.”

“They call it the silent killer,” he said. “You just have no idea.”

The experience, he said, “definitely makes you appreciate being alive, that’s for sure. … It’s crazy, so now knowing that I had no control over that. It’s just something that could happen out of the blue.”

Dr. Dre, born Andre Romell Young, was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in January 2021. He later said doctors were not confident that he would survive and had called his family in to say their goodbyes.

“I didn’t know it was that serious, you know? I am seeing my mom, my sister, and everybody come into the room,” he said in 2022 during an appearance on the “Workout the Doubt” podcast, according to People. “Nobody told me. I had no idea. That was crazy.”