Former YO! MTV Raps host, Doctor Dre, shared his struggles with diabetes during an intimate conversation about the disease to The New York Times. Dre was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes ten years ago and has lost a toe and his eyesight due to the disease.
“My stubbornness put me where I’m at,” he stated in the interview. “Now my energy is going to change that. We got young people, grown people, old all having this. We can prevent this. We can cure this.”
Dre will soon undergo weight loss surgery and is shopping around a reality show to help provide better insight on living with diabetes.
Yo! MTV Raps ran from August 1988 to August 1995. The program was the first hip hop music show on the network, based on the original MTV Europe show. Yo! MTV Raps produced a lively mix of rap videos, interviews with rap stars, live in studio performances and comedy. The show also yielded a Brazilian version called Yo! MTV and broadcast by MTV Brasil from 1990 to 2005.
The U.S. version was originally hosted by Fab 5 Freddy. Later, the show’s main host was Doctor Dré (not to be confused with N.W.A alumnus Dr. Dre) and series creator Ted Demme’s High School friend, Ed Lover, who both hosted together on weekdays. Fab 5 Freddy proceeded to host on weekends.
Dre turned to Bill Adler, a former Def Jam executive, for help in shopping the reality show, what Dre hopes will serve an informative and cautionary tale on the disease.
“These are people I’ve known for 30 years, and they haven’t gotten back to me,” Adler said. “Dré just wants to share his enthusiasm with people. There are plenty of other folks who star in reality shows who are plainly narcissists, who are convinced every absurd thing out of their mouth has to be captured by a television camera. That is not Dré.”
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