50 Cent, Method Man, Wiz Khalifa, Busta Rhymes, Common, and Ludacris were tapped to grace the cover of Men’s Health to celebrate Hip-Hop 50.
On Tuesday (Aug. 1), Fif, Meth and Luda opened up about their fitness journeys and paying more attention to their health as they age. 50 detailed that his journey was kickstarted after seeing D’Angelo’s “How Does It Feel? (Untitled)” music video soon after he was shot nine times in 2000.
“When you slim down, you see everything,” he said. “I’m also working out to get myself stronger, ’cause who’s to say you’re not gonna get hit again?”
“They were talking about a Brad Pitt line!” 50 Cent later recalled, referring to Pitt’s v-shaped pelvis-area in Fight Club. “I’m like, ‘Wait, what’s that?! Oh, nah, that’s important!’”
Method Man’s introduction into healthy living began when he struggled to battle anxiety and depression at the height of his career. The TICAL rapper also spoke about how dealing with insomnia led to the emcee using the gym as a remedy.
“It went from this childhood joy to this euphoric feeling of celebrity to feeling inadequate and not good enough,” he recalled. “That’s where the depression and stuff came in. I didn’t even know I had been depressed since I was a youngster before I started doing music and moved to Staten Island. A lot of PTSD I had never dealt with before started resurfacing, but I didn’t know what it was then.”
“My insomnia was pretty bad. I’m talking a year and a half, maybe, not having great sleeping habits. Trying to find stuff to do in the middle of the night is crazy, especially when you have all this stuff within your reach. PlayStations, books, and all that stuff, and none of that is satisfying anymore. You just find yourself up with all this energy. I didn’t know what to do with myself. So after the eighth game of Call of Duty, I said, ‘Let me see if the gym is open. I need to find something. I need to break this cycle, break this pattern.’”
As the conversation continued, Ludacris offered up his reason for staying in shape, citing getting older and wanting to perform at age 60 or 70 as the reason.
“Someone would get in their 40s or 50s and that was a stigma—like, ‘Okay, you’re too old to be doing music now,’” the Atlanta emcee said. “But nobody’s taking into account that Hip-Hop is only 50 years old. We’re still in the midst of seeing how [Hip-Hop] is growing to a degree, and so there’s no more ‘You’re too old.’ Listen, I love to age, because I feel like aging is a privilege. The reason I’m so happy where I’m at is because I don’t have any resentments or any regrets. I have lived my life to the fullest. So when anyone remotely calls me OG, or anyone wants to throw around the word ‘old’ in the future, I’m not going to get upset.
“Every human being has to go through these stages…I think people are going to be able to do it well into their 60s and 70s; if their content is speaking towards what’s going on in their life and the music is good, there will always be an audience for it.”
Be sure to read the whole profile here.
More from VIBE.com
