"IF I DIDN'T HAVE THAT HAPPEN TO ME, NOBODY WOULD KNOW WHAT FAT JOE WAS TRYING TO EXPLAIN"

[With rap heavyweights like Lil Wayne and Rick Ross making headlines last year for seizures, renowned rapper/producer Erick Sermon reflects on previously getting hospitalized for heart-related complications.]

My hospitaliziation was a blessing because as you can tell, people who know me know I like to speak and have something to say when I am being spoken to or when I'm speaking. So I'm able to be alive to tell people about heart disease, about how big it is, about how for black men the leading cause of death is not cancer, it's not HIV but it's heart disease.

Heart disease comes from having high blood pressure and diabetes. If I didn't have that incident happen to me, I don't think nobody in the hip-hop community would know what Fat Joe was trying to explain because Fat Joe didn't explain it this way. He explained it that his boys were dropping off like flies but didn't know why and so he started losing weight.

He said he had diabetes for so many years and he lost weight. But he didn't get the statistics the way I'm giving them, the way they will scare a person that's walking on the street that doesn't know he or she might have high blood pressure.

So I'm telling them that gunfire, cancer and HIV is not killing you faster than your heart is.

I really can't explain the recovery because people will think I'm crazy. What was supposed to happen to me happened. It was quick and it was fast and I was back into the mix of things. I got out of the hospital on the six day, went to my bed and that night I went downstairs at 12 o'clock in the morning and I made that Jimi Hendrix ["A Way Out"] record.

My studio is in my basement, so I was able to sit down and make it in my home. I didn't have to drive anywhere. I had stayed in the hospital for an extra two days just to make sure I could go home. I wasn't weak at all.

So think about it. I went to the hospital, on the six day got out and went to make that "A Way Out" Jimi Hendrix record. That's how fast it was. It was something that was supposed to be made and my mixtape didn't feel like it was going to be able to come out unless I had that record to go with it.

That was the last song that I did for the [Breath of Fresh Air] mixtape.

Erick Sermon, also known as Erick Onassis, (born November 25, 1968 in Bay Shore, New York) is an American rapper, musician, and producer. Sermon is best known as half of late-1980s/1990s hip hop group EPMD and for production work. He currently resides in Hauppauge, New York.