At the BET Awards, Lil Wayne Gives an Emotional Tribute to the Man Who Saved His Life After His Suicide Attempt

Onstage at Wednesday’s BET awards to accept the 2018 I Am Hip Hop Award, a sedate Lil Wayne took the opportunity to thank not only his fans, his family (his daughter Reginae Carter and mother Ms. Jacida Carter were both at his side), and his steadfast supporters (“the people who refuse" to stop supporting him, even after his years of drug issues, and his lack of new material over the past near-decade), but also the man who once saved his life: a former New Orleans homicide detective he called Uncle Bob.

“He came into an apartment one day, he bust in the door,” Wayne said, and found a 12 year old Dwayne Carter after a gunshot wound to the chest, an injury that had formerly been referred to as an accident—and which he only recently revealed in the track "Let It All Work Out" from Tha Carter V to have actually been a suicide attempt with his mother's gun. (He told Essence that he had recorded the track several years before its release, and that his decision to publish it in 2018 was unrelated to the recent rash of celebrity suicides.) “Guns drawn—he saw nobody," Wayne said from the stage, "He saw legs on the floor. It was my legs. He saw blood everywhere. A bunch of police hopped over me. He refused to do so.”

The musician recounted that Uncle Bob had personally rushed the 12-year-old Wayne to the hospital after emergency medical services had tried and failed twice to resuscitate him and had refused to leave until he was certain that Wayne would survive. “He was off on detail,” Wayne said. “He just heard the call and came.”

To this day, Wayne added, he sees Uncle Bob regularly, though the latter never lets him treat him to dinner, or even tip their servers, or otherwise "take care of" anything. "This man has two amputated legs," Wayne continued, "He refused to stop. He's not in a wheelchair, he's walking. But you know what he asked for? A job." Holding his award, Wayne again thanked his friends, his family, and Uncle Bob, as he pledged his own refusal to give up. "To my fans, to my family, to my supporters, to Uncle Bob, to BET, I refuse to stop. Thank you."