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With the recent passing of Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the discussion around mental health has been at an all-time high. Too many people know the pain of losing a love one in such a traumatic way, including Wake Flocka Flame. While talking with Shannon Sharpe on his series Club Shay Shay, Flocka discusses the loss of his brother and how he feels about people who end their own lives.
Waka Flocka Flame opened up about a number of topics during his interview, including his struggles with addiction from his mid-teens till his late ’20s. Waka talked about building his mind and creating the power within himself to build up his mental. Waka says that as a man, he feels weak depending on anything other than his own willpower. While he has been able to create a strong mental wall to darkness, unfortunately, his younger brother Kayo Redd was not.
Born Coades Scott, Redd was a promising rapper like his brother. He was being managed by mother, Debra Antney as well and had just dropped a mixtape titled Redd Kisses hours before taking his own life. Both Waka and Deb took to social media to confirm their loss and discuss their shock at the boy harming himself. It is a loss Waka has spoken about over the years and admits to having a great deal of guilt around. He lost a brother before Redd as well, when he was 13. “I just lost another son,” Antey tweeted while eulogizing Redd.
Shannon Sharpe asked Waka Flocka Flame about the phone call he missed from Redd shortly before his brother ended things. “It [messed] me up,” he said with a somber expression while rubbing his hands together. He says he had no idea what his brother was going through and it made him realize he was too into himself and his life. Looking back, he says he missed the warning signs. “He was going blind. But again, I couldn’t see him [ending] himself. It was a selfish act. I still ain’t forgive him for it. It’s probably why it doesn’t hurt me a lot.”
Waka says the incident “crushed” him and that he still has not dealt with it. To make matters worst, he’s had several other friends end their lives in a similar fashion, the most recent being last year. “It’s what it is.” He then describes seeing the crime scene from his first brother’s passing and how he’s never coped from that either. Waka cautions against the dangers of attaching yourself to different words like cope, explaining, “it’s nothing to deal with. It happened. What you gone do about it. He gone.”
Waka Flocka Flame says that watching his father die from cancer made him realize how unfair life is. He recalled his father being a big healthy man and being the size of his pinky by the time he closed his eyes. Waka acquaints his father’s passing to the type of man he was and says it inspired him to get out of the streets, so karma did not get him.
Waka Flocka’s mindset echoes that of many, who called tWitch selfish after his passing. Others argue that mental illness is like physical illness, and that suicide just means that people lost their battle, not that they gave up.
