Kevin Gates, a rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, recently visited “Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson,” where he and the former heavyweight champion revealed comparable childhood events that forever affected their lives and helped shape them into the persons they are now.
When asked what made him decide to become a rapper during the podcast interview, the “2 Phones” hitmaker made a shocking admission.
Gates remarked, “It was an escape for me.” “And I never stated anything like this in any interview, podcast, or anything else like that. I grew up being quite violent and aggressive. I was molested as a child, not because I wanted to be, but because I was. As a result, I was afraid of being exposed. I tried every type of martial art there was. I even did some boxing. I was in charge of everything.
“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 said.
Mike Tyson then told Gates that he could connect to what he said since he, too, had been sexually abused as a child.
“I know that route, too. Why do you think I became the meanest mother—— on the planet? Somebody did something to me, and I didn’t want it to happen again, so I became this guy,” said Iron Mike.
During an interview with ESPN’s “E:60” in 2017, Tyson revealed that he was sexually assaulted at the age of 7.
“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. It made me have to be tough for the world I lived in. It was no one’s business to know, people just don’t talk about it because to some people they believe it’s demasculating [sic] them,” Tyson stated at the time.
