A little less than a week ago, Southern icon Slim Thug took to his Instagram to post a photo of himself in a hospital gown, getting ready for surgery. It turned out that Thug was getting ready to get a vasectomy, a procedure that would bar him from impregnating any new women he sleeps with. To celebrate the occasion, he flipped DJ Khaled's motto and tweeted, "#NoNewKids." While thug's surgery was the most major one for a rapper in recent history, rappers undergoing serious surgeries after major health risks is nothing new. So, here we've compiled a short list of rappers—from Kanye West to The D.O.C.—undergoing major surgeries.

Kanye West Gets Facial Reconstructive Surgery, October 2002

Amidst his rise to fame, Kanye West suffered a harsh fate in October of 2002 when he fell asleep behind the wheel of his car and got into a near-fatal car crash, leaving him with a shattered jaw. The result of the injury forced him to get facial reconstructive surgery to fully realign his jaw. Despite the awful injury, West was inspired by it, and went on to release his breakout single "Through The Wire"—shouting out his wired-shut mouth—just months later and rapped, "Thank God I ain't too cool for the safe belt." It has been argued that the surgery led to a new and more interesting inflection in West's voice, so maybe it wasn't such a harsh fate after all.

Paul Wall
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Paul Wall Undergoes Weight Loss Surgery, December 2010  

Paul Wall, the Southern hit-maker behind songs like "Sittin' Sidewayz" and "Still Tippin'" went through a bit of a reevaluation when doctors told him in 2010 that he was "morbidly obese." To fight his weight problem, Paul got a gastric sleeve weight-loss surgery. He went on to tell Ozone Magazine about the surgery, explaining, "The surgery I got is called gastric sleeve. There’s three kinds: gastric bypass, lap band and the gastric sleeve. Gastric bypass is the one where you lose the most weight the quickest; it’s for people who are 400-500 pounds and have health problems that they need to fix right away." He continued, "[My weight] has been up and down my whole life, so I wanted to do something to permanently fix the problem." The result of his gastric sleeve surgery left Wall 100 pounds lighter, and he went on to say, "I feel like I got my life back."

2. The D.O.C.
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The D.O.C. Has Vocal Chord Surgery, September 2011 

Before Kanye West, famed '90s hip-hop act and longtime affiliate of Dr. Dre, The D.O.C., was also involved in a near-fatal car crash in November of 1989, in which he was ejected from the vehicle and smashed his face into a tree, in the process severely damaging his vocal chords. After the crash, D.O.C. spent weeks in the hospital and underwent hours of plastic surgery in order to reconstruct his vocal chords, but he was left with an almost-unrecognizable voice. After years of struggling with his vocals on tracks, in 2011 The D.O.C. decided to try another surgery to help him get back to the way he once was. He told DubCNN, "I feel pretty good, trying not to get too emotional about it one way or the other. But you know, if I go and see what these people can do and if they can give me just a little more power and control of my sound, then the world changes. I can’t even explain to you how the whole rap thing changes like overnight...I am really excited." He went on to hopefully admit, "I am putting it into God’s hands and I got faith that he didn’t bring me all this way for nothing." Despite the surgery, the D.O.C. has yet to release new material.

50 Cent Fears Mysterious Stomach Surgery, May 2012

In a subtle tweet to his loyal supporters, 50 Cent sent out a picture of himself in a hospital bed, surrounded by stuffed animals. While Fif didn't initially say what exactly he was doing in the hospital, he went on to tweet, "I don't want to go into surgery." He also took a moment to reassure fans that he would still be releasing new music soon, tweeting, "I'm in the hospital but my gangsta grillz LOST TAPE is done so it will be out in time." Later on in the day, 50 announced that he'd been in the hospital because of stomach pains, and that he nearly had to have surgery to "remove blockage in his small intestine." Luckily, the G-Unit general quickly recovered.

Slim Thug Gets Vasectomy, July 2013 

Earlier this month, Southern legend Slim Thug took to his Twitter to announce that he was "cutting himself off" and getting a vasectomy, coolly tweeting, "#NoNewKids #NoNewBabymamas #NoMoChildSupport." While it may have seemed insensitive at the time, the H-Town rapper has fathered three children with three different women, so we're sure he had a lot of stress that he didn't mind knocking out with a quick snip.

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