On an episode of Mike Tyson’s podcast Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, rapper Kevin Gates opened up about being sexually abused as a child. 

“And I never said this in no interview or no podcast or anything like that. I grew up real, real violent and real aggressive. Not because I wanted to be, but I was molested as a child. So, I had this fear of being vulnerable. I took every kind of martial arts you could take. I even boxed; I did everything,” he told the former boxing champion. 

“I wanted to be the toughest person on Earth. But writing and making music was always an escape for me. I never had the nuts to come out and say that. This is my first time saying this today,” he continued.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APXFdgvEXLQ 

Tyson responded to the rapper, sharing that he, too, had been taken advantage of as a child. 

“Yeah, but I know that route, too. Why you think I became the meanest motherf**ker on the planet? Somebody did something to me. And I didn’t want it to happen again, so I became this guy,” he said, pointing to himself.

According to The Advocate, Gates, born Kevin Jerome Gilyard, was arrested for felon in possession of a firearm in 2017. He previously had a tumultuous relationship with the legal system, spending 31 months in prison between 2008 and 2011. 

Gates eventually permeated into the music industry in 2013 following his critically acclaimed album The Luca Brasi Story which highlighted his abusive and violent childhood. 

“That’s my story, but it was really everything that I did, even when people say like, ‘Kevin Gates, he’s this killer,’ I’m not. I’m not,” the 35-year-old said.

“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 s**t you went through, keep doing what you doing,’ Gates said. “So, I guess I’m on the right path.”

In a 2017 interview with ESPN’s Jeremy Schapp, Tyson revealed that he was molested as a child. 

“Well I don’t like to talk about that, I like to keep that where it was in the past, but I was molested as a child,” Tyson said, New York Daily News reported. “It made me have to be tough for the world I lived in.”

Rapper Common also shared that he was molested as a child in his memoir Let Love Have The Last Word which was released in 2019. 

“I talked about being molested because, as a Black man, many men have hidden that. Many people have hidden that. And you carry that weight with you. But at some point, you’ve got to let it go,” he wrote in a tweet. 

“I hope being open about my childhood trauma can give others the strength to do the same and help them on their healing journeys. We all have experienced pain and suffering. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he added.