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Lil Jon has spent decades making people shout “Yeah!” and “Turn Down for What?” But there’s a painful reason the rapper is rarely seen without his signature sunglasses.
The Grammy-winning artist, whose real name is Jonathan Smith, is opening up about a childhood accident that permanently affected his eye and helped shape the larger-than-life persona fans know today.
In his upcoming memoir, I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me, the 54-year-old recounts how a childhood curiosity turned into a traumatic injury when he was just 6 years old.
Growing up in Atlanta, Jon watched his mother, Carrie, who has diabetes, administer insulin injections. One day, he picked up one of her syringes because he wanted to see what air would feel like on his eye.
Unfortunately, the experiment went horribly wrong.
Lil Jon accidentally stabbed himself in the eyeball with the needle, resulting in a traumatic cataract. The injury led to multiple surgeries, including a corneal transplant, and forced him to wear a metal eye patch to school.
And, as anyone who remembers being a kid knows, standing out for the wrong reasons can make school miserable.
“I definitely was teased in school,” Jon recently told People. “At that age, if somebody’s different, they’re going to pick on you.”
The experience made the future hip-hop superstar shy, but it also planted a seed of determination that would follow him throughout his career.
“I became shy,” he recalled. “But somehow I turned it into, ‘I want to always prove people wrong.’”
Jon had already started learning to play the drums shortly before the accident. Rather than allowing the injury and the bullying to define him, he continued pursuing his passion for music.
The childhood trauma eventually left him with a lazy eye as an adult. Although he underwent another operation to correct the condition, sunglasses became a lasting part of his public image.
They also became something of a trademark for the artist, who built a career on his unmistakable appearance and high-energy performances.
But the shades aren’t the only thing that helped Lil Jon develop his larger-than-life reputation. His relentless work ethic played a major role, too.
In his memoir, the rapper describes personally taking his records to nightclubs around the country to get his music heard. Rather than waiting for the industry to embrace him, he went out and created opportunities for himself.
“I got to figure out how to pave my way no matter what. I got to prove people wrong,” he explained.
“Whenever people have put me down,” he added, “I used that as fuel in my fire to excel.”
I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me, is scheduled to arrive on October 20. The book promises ti explore recent tragedies in Lil Jon’s life and offer a deeper look at the man behind the booming voice, revealing how childhood struggles helped fuel his rise to hip-hop stardom.
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