Famous artist Timbaland says he still has a bullet lodged in his neck that has been there for nearly four decades.
The Grammy award winner spoke of the incident that led to the wound during a Nov. 9 appearance on Andy Coulson’s “Crisis What Crisis?” podcast. Timbaland recalled the moment a co-worker allegedly shot him when he was employed at Red Lobster as a young man.
“This guy was going to fight one of my friends, and he brought a gun … he pulls it out and … shows me. … It went off, and it shot me, grazed my neck. … It went [in] from an angle and I flinched,” Timbaland said.
WATCH starting at 6:19
Timbaland, whose real name is Timothy Mosley, recalled the experience.
“I couldn’t feel my arm,” he said. “My arm went dead. … It hit the nerve, just boom, just dead, you know?”
“Thinking back now it’s like, wow, you know, death is like ‘boom,’ it was just like that.”
Timbaland has gone on to create a successful career in the music industry despite his injury, and has been carrying on with life while the bullet remains in his body.
“The bullet’s still in me. I’m just like, it’s a part of me, you know?” he said.
“So I can never disconnect. Having that bullet in me … keeps reminding me why I’m blessed to be here, and what’s my purpose, that I have to serve going forward,” he said on the podcast.
View this post on Instagram
He put his situation in perspective, and described how he has learned to grow from the experience rather than suffer from it. (RELATED: Keanu Reeves Stuns With Gun Skills, Proving He’s The Real John Wick)
“Some scars are meant to be there, just for a reminder. People try to remove that baggage, sometimes baggage is meant to be there to help you go forward,” Timbaland said. The star has also spoken about the shooting when he released his memoir in 2015.
“I still made a way to figure out things, you know? That’s the thing when you have a lot of drive; you want to try to figure out a way to face the problem.”