Rapper Flee Lord says doctors cleared a blocked artery with a stent

Rapper Flee Lord says he survived a heart attack and avoided the open-heart surgery he had feared since he was a teenager, after doctors cleared a blocked artery with a stent inserted through his wrist, AllHipHop reported on August 5. He revealed the health scare in an Instagram post, telling fans he is now prioritizing his health.

Flee Lord wrote that he was supposed to have heart surgery at 16 but never got it: "My moms passed when I was 11 and pops wasn't really on it, so yea I never got the surgery." He said what he thought was an asthma attack on a Sunday turned out to be his heart "failing me for years."

He described the treatment in more detail: doctors ran a series of tests and had him scheduled to have three teeth removed before an eventual open-heart surgery to replace a valve, but the stent procedure resolved the blockage without that surgery becoming necessary. An echocardiogram afterward showed no permanent damage to his heart, and he has begun standard physical therapy.

The scare arrived during a difficult stretch for the New York rapper, who has also been mourning the deaths of his father and two close friends in a short span of time. He has kept making music through it, releasing the full-length album Everything I Never Said, featuring "Coinless" and "Floor Seats," and the collaborative project Mask & Glove with Tiona Deniece.

Outside of recording, Flee Lord continues building LordMobb, the independent label and company he has grown into a platform for both established and emerging underground hip-hop artists, and which has become a fixture of New York's independent rap scene. For now, he says, the win is simply making it through the scare and avoiding the more invasive surgery altogether.