Rapper Davion Blessing, 23, has recently had his big break – bursting into the scene and earning fans from across the world.
But his fans and doctors have been expressing concerns about the health of the performer, stage name Dave Blunt, who is estimated to weigh around 500 pounds.
He’s said that he’s drank lean regularly for the past seven years – an illegal concoction of cough syrup, soda and candy that has a sedative effect.
On top of drugs, he said he ‘eats everything’, and has shared attempts to diet online that include only eating fruit for one month. After eating, he said he often lays down to rest.
That compounds with the fact that he isn’t active, and shared that he is currently getting more exercise walking around while travelling than he has at any other point in his life.
Blessing was recently hospitalized before a concert in Chicago for unexplained reasons, leading him to bring an oxygen tank onstage for his performance.
He’s shared that he struggles to walk up stair cases, and has been hospitalized frequently, usually with conditions related to asthma, which he’s had his whole life.
Dr Stuart Fischer, an internal medicine doctor in New York City, told DailyMail.com that at his size, Blessing could be headed toward premature death.
Dr Fischer said: ‘When someone his age needs oxygen we know something is wrong. This cannot go on forever.’
A photo of 500lbs rapper Dave Blunts and his girlfriend has gone viral after the star, 23, sparked health fears by performing onstage with an oxygen tank
Blunts was among the performers in Chicago for the 4th Annual JUICE WRLD DAY in memory of the late rapper- but focus quickly turned to his health as he performed seated with the tank and joined by partner Isabella
He said that Blessing’s weight is likely making it hard to breathe, both because of the excess pounds compressing his sternum, and because abdominal fat can secrete chemicals which cause the lungs to become inflamed, making asthma worse.
Obesity, Dr Fischer said, is a condition that is linked to roughly 60 different medical conditions. This includes heart disease, diabetes, cancer and breathing problems.
Dr Fischer said he suspected that due to Blessing’s weight, his insulin levels could be altered. Insulin is a hormone that controls how the body processes and uses sugar, and can affect energy. He told this website: ‘This is automatic diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol because this scenario is one that is strongly tied to insulin resistance.’
Blessing isn’t alone – roughly 22million American adults have severe obesity, and the condition causes roughly 500,000 deaths per year, according to research from Harvard.
Amid widespread concerns for his health, the Iowa rapper has shared that he’s trying to take steps to lose weight.
He said though he’s always been ‘bigger’, his diet and exercise habits have added together to contribute to his current weight. He said: ‘it’s definitely me doing it to myself’.
‘It’s something that I struggle with yeah, but I’m working on it you know what I’m saying.
‘Hopefully after this album drops you know I can sign a deal and then I’ll have the money to get a personal trainer you know what I’m saying, all that s***.
This has lead to a series of diets. In late September, he shared that he was going to try to eat nothing but fruit for a month – with apples and watermelons being among his favorite.
There isn’t one food that Blessing prefers over others, and in a recent interview he said: ‘I just be eating everything.’
Dr Fischer said that the type of food someone eats to gain a large amount of weight matters less than the amount that they eat: ‘To weigh that amount of weight you have to eat a tremendous amount of calories each day, the type of food really doesn’t make a difference.’
Blessing with one of his branded cups, which he sells online for $5
In addition to his diet, Blessing almost never appears without a plastic cup in hand that’s the labelled with his own personal brand, ‘Dave Blunts Purple Stuff’.
The design of the cup mimics two stacked Styrofoam cups, in a nod to a popular drug concoction called lean.
Lean refers to a combination of cough syrup, soda and hard candy, that is traditionally served in a stack of Styrofoam cups. It was popularized in the early 2000’s by rappers like little Lil Wayne.
The cough syrup contains Codeine and Promethazine, two drugs that work together to make a person feel sedated.
It’s also known as ‘purple drank’, ‘drank’, ‘sizzurp’ and ‘mud’.
Blessing has told interviewers before that he has been sipping it since he was sixteen, semi-regularly.
It’s unclear what Blessing puts in his concoction, but if it’s sprite, which is a popular option, he’s consuming about 130 calories and 38 grams of added sugar with each 10 oz can.
It appears that Blessing’s cup holds about 20 oz – so he could be consuming double that with each serving.
On top of that, if Blessing were to add in six hard candies like Jolly ranchers to the mixture, that would net another 35 calories and 6.5 grams of sugar.
Cough syrup itself is also often sweetened – and on average contains about 20 calories and 3 grams of sugar per teaspoon. People don’t often measure their syrup before making lean, which means there could be a lot of calories, and drugs, in each serving.
The rapper said said on the podcast No Jumper that he also has used other drugs like Percocet, ecstasy and Xanax.
More than his diet, Blessing said on the podcast No Jumper that his weight has to do with his activity levels: ‘It’s more just like, like laziness. Like I’ll just eat and then then like chill or like sleep or some s** like that.’
Blessing shared that he has been trying to walk more, but must stop to take frequent breaks because of his asthma and pain in his feet
Blessing shared that he’s been trying to exercise more, but finds it difficult, saying: ‘Since I’ve like been blowing up, you know this is the most like exercise I’ve gotten in my f***ing life, walking around these f***ing airports man.’
When Blessing does exercise or walk around, he’s shared that he’s often uncomfortable, and has to stop and use his inhaler or sit down.
Dr Fischer said this difficulty is likely multifactorial. To start, the rapper has asthma, which can be exasperated by hormones that fat cells within the abdomen secrete, causing asthma.
He said: ‘The fat secretes inflammatory chemicals can worsen or even initiate an asthma attack – the weight itself causes people to have trouble breathing and other illnesses like obstructive sleep apnea’.
This is why illnesses like Covid, which can cause inflammation in the lungs, are so dangerous for people who are overweight, because their lungs may already be weakened.
Second, it can be taxing carrying around a lot of fat. Dr Fischer said the sensation would be like carrying around 80 pound dumbbells all day – and could cause your ankles, wrists and spine to hurt.
This becomes a viscous cycle, where an overweight person doesn’t want to move because its painful, but the less they move, the harder it is for them to lose weight.
In order to get his health back on track, Dr Fischer said Blessing would need to make serious changes to his diet and exercise routine, and would likely need to get on medications to control blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
