Los Angeles, California – Donald Glover, AKA rap star Childish Gambino, has revealed he suffered a stroke while performing last year, leading to multiple heart surgeries.
According to the BBC, the 42-year-old didn’t even recognize the stroke as such at first.
“I had a really bad pain in my head in Louisiana and I did the show anyway,” Glover said during a performance in Los Angeles on Saturday.
“I couldn’t really see well, so when we went to Houston, I went to the hospital and the doctor was like, ‘You had a stroke.'”
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Under his stage name Childish Gambino, the rapper had originally planned to go on tour in August 2024.
Due to the alarming diagnosis, he ultimately had to cancel the planned concerts.
Shortly afterwards, Glover received further bad news.
Exams had led doctors to discover two holes in his heart, which meant that he had to undergo two operations that, thankfully, went according to plan.
In addition to his successful music career, Glover has also made a name for himself as an actor.
He lent his voice to Simba in the live-action version of Disney’s The Lion King in 2019 and its 2024 sequel, Mufasa: The Lion King. He also took on the iconic role of Lando Calrissian in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.
As Childish Gambino, he’s topped the charts with hits like This is America, which has over 600 million streams on Spotify.
