Doug E. Fresh is out to break a stigma that every man around the world can relate to.
The iconic rap artist recently participated in an all-star panel discussion held by Men’s Health in New York City. Fresh opened up about how he handles his mental health alongside Nick Cannon, Dreamville rapper Lute, Dr. Olajide Williams, MD, MS and Men’s Health Senior Editor Keith Nelson, Jr. as part of “Mind Over Music,” which is the latest installment of the outlet’s Hip-Hop Health series. During their discussion, Fresh revealed he tries to cry daily and blasted the stigma that men shouldn’t shed tears
I think that we have been taught as Black men that you should not cry: ‘Man up.’ That line of saying ‘man up’ has been misinterpreted, overused and abused in a way that a man is looked as as he is not supposed to cry, and that is the most craziest bit of bulls**t in the world. A man if he has to cry, should cry, because it’s a release for him to let go of some of the tension that he may take and do something else with. Because the energy that you’re carrying is gonna make you take it to another level. And sometimes you can be so mad that you cry. You can cry because you’re happy. So I’ve learned how to use all of these things, and it doesn’t make me less of a man… My honesty is my vulnerability to let you know that it’s ok to cry my brothers, and don’t you let nobody make you feel that you’re a sucker or your soft or whatever because trust me because I could never be any of those things. You are a real man and you can cry and the way you do it is to your own choice. But you should allow yourself that place to free that energy.”
Fresh gave another tear-jerking reason why he has no shame in crying. The Hip Hop Public Health co-founder noted that the event, which went down last Friday, April 7, happened on the same day his mother died. That’s when he told the story of how he cried at the 2014 BET Hip-Hop Awards with Snoop Dogg not too far away.
“I cried when I got an award [after] my mother passed,” Fresh explained. “Sometimes if you lost a parent, you can feel them around you sometimes. You can feel them. You can’t see them, but you can feel them. So I felt my mother was there. I know my mother was there. I felt it, it made me cry. I felt better about it. Snoop [Dogg] was in the back, and he said, ‘Man when you started crying, made me think about my grandmother and I went in the corner and started crying too.’”
Men’s Health’s Hip Hop Health series aims to highlight the evolution of Black men’s health through Hip-Hop in honor of the genre’s 50th anniversary and the outlet’s 35th anniversary, both of which occur later this year.
