50 cent, Busta Rhymes, Cover Men’s Health For Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary

Who knew that after 50 years rap would be looking so healthy and happy? Men’s Health assembled six very different emcees for their September “Hip-Hop is Life” issue. Busta Rhymes, Method Man, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Common and Wiz Khalifa are all featured on the issue’s cover and individually profiled inside the magazine.

We really loved the articles from this issue and have to thank our friends at Men’s Health for providing some dope excerpts to share with you. The stories these emcees are telling range from funny to dead serious and really do an amazing job of representing hip-hop culture and it’s evolution.

Busta told the story of how an intimate moment gone wrong helped inspire him to get back in shape:

“I was having a really difficult time breathing, so I got up and I walked out of the bedroom so she wouldn’t panic seeing me trying to keep myself calm. I was trying to inhale, and it felt like it wasn’t working. I felt like I was having like an asthma attack—but I don’t have asthma. So I walked out of the bedroom and went into the living room, and I was forcing myself to inhale, to relax. That was scaring me so much that it was a mindf*ck, because I had to stay calm and make sure she didn’t hear me panic or hear me struggle to breathe. I’m butt-ass naked in the living room, trying to calm myself down. When I came back in the room once I got right, I laid back down next to her and she said something to me that really f*cked me up. She was like, ‘Yo, this is not who I fell in love with.’ She didn’t know what had happened outside, but she was looking at my body and the weight. She was like, ‘You gotta lose this weight. This breathing is scaring me. When I met you, you wasn’t like a musclehead, but you, you was slim, you was cut, you had your sh*t right. I need you to get back to who I fell in love with.’”

He also spoke about training for his upcoming tour:

“I’m gonna be on stage with 50 [Cent] and don’t want to be weak link. I’m doing two-a-day workouts, everything: weights, circuits, sauna, cryotherapy. Also, it’s gonna inspire people when they see you in shape when you walking around here moving and shaking. Me, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, a lot of artists now, understand the seriousness and significance of self-preservation: a healthy diet regimen, significant water intake, getting your sleep so your body can repair itself when you beat it up and you tear that muscle from the workouts. The most important thing in life is self preservation.”