Kevin Gates is opening up about a traumatic experience in his youth that would inspire his rap career.
During a recent episode of “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson” (via Revolt), the Baton Rouge MC revealed that he was a victim of molestation when he was a kid.
“It was an escape for me,” he said of his decision to start rapping. “I’ma say something, I never said this in no interview, no podcast or anything like that. I grew up real, real violent and real aggressive. Not because I wanted to be but because I was molested when I was a child.”
He turned to music, as well as martial arts and boxing, to help cope with the anger and pain. “I wanted to be the toughest person on earth, but writing and making music was always an escape for me,” he added. “Like, I never had the nuts to come out and say that. This my first time saying this today.”
Gates first made the revelation about his molestation earlier this year on “Fairytale” off his mixtape Only the Generals Part II. “I was molested inside of my mother’s home, she ain’t believe me when I was young / That’s when I stole my grandmother’s gun / I walked in that bitch and I put him up,” he raps.
The 35-year-old rapper also explained why he decided to publicly speak out about his sexual assault. “I speak about it now is because I just released a mixtape like maybe a few months ago, and guys walk up to me in the gym…Bodybuilders hugged me and crying like, ‘I went through the same shit you went through,’” Gates shared. “So, I guess I’m on the right path…But at the end of the day, I started, we started killing and things of that nature because we had a fear of being vulnerable.”
