HHP defends his use of dagga

Hip Hop Pantsula (HHP), real name Jabulani Tsambo, tried to commit suicide three times in 2015, he revealed in an interview with Gareth Cliff on Cliff Central.

HHP, also known as Jabba, said the first two suicide attempts came as he was struggling to get gigs and radio stations were not playing his music .

“I thought to myself, radio is starting to play trap music only, and I cannot do trap music.” As a result, he said he felt like a loser.

On the first attempt, Jabba said he waited for his children to go to school, went into his garage and tried committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, which did not work after an hour of inhaling the gas. He then asked his friend for his car to attempt the suicide again, which did not work.

The third and last time he tried suicide was after he had a “silly” fight with his girlfriend. He waited for her to leave the house and tried helium poisoning, which also failed.

On Monday he had an interview with DJ Sabby on YFM, recounting his experience in rehab and also talking about the friends he made there. Just more than a week after his return, Jabba said he was fine and people should stop focusing on his suicide attempts.

“That’s not the point. The point is that I’m alive. And I’m not just alive, Jesus is amazing. I feel like for the first time … I mean‚ I’ve always been an attention-seeker kid … like, growing up I’ve always wanted to kill myself for some reason or another, because when I was 11 years old, I remember, like, my folks took me to a mental institution because I was having weird dreams. So I was always a weird kid growing up, you know. At 23, the same thing happened again.”

But he said his parents had been worried about him lately, suggesting it was his dagga-smoking habit causing his problems.

Speaking in Setswana, he said: “I told them my grandfather has been smoking dagga for a while and he’s fine, so you people must leave me alone.”

He said he started smoking dagga in 1999, but now people saw him smoking in public and said he was losing his mind. He said people should stop claiming to know him, because they did not.