Philly rapper Freeway receives a kidney transplant

Philadelphia rapper Freeway, real name Leslie Edward Pridgen, is undergoing a kidney transplant several years after initially being diagnosed with kidney failure.

As Freeway posted on Instagram on Monday, he recently found a kidney donor and scheduled a transplant surgery at a hospital in Baltimore. This morning, the rapper posted an update from his hospital bed, noting that he was about to head into the operating room.

"I’m going under now! Thanks for all the Love & support! Pray for me!!" he wrote in the post’s caption.

The rapper also chronicled his trip to the hospital on his Instagram story, and went live on the social network after being admitted to answers fans’ questions as nurses helped him get settled in before his surgery.

Previously, Freeway updated fans on his condition last month with another Instagram post that showed him meeting with a doctor who agreed to perform the rapper’s kidney transplant. As Freeway wrote at the time, he was “1 step closer to receiving a new kidney.”

The surgery itself comes a few months following the release of Think Free, Freeway’s latest album. A followup to 2016’s Free Will, the album features appearances from rappers like Fat Joe, Lil Wayne, and Philadelphia’s own Lil Uzi Vert.

Now 40, Freeway lived with high blood pressure and diabetes for years, but never took care of himself, as he told the Inquirer last year. “I was traveling on tour. My diet was crazy. I would eat cheeseburgers at 2:30 a.m. in the morning in the studio — just ripping and running.”

“It changed me. It just matured me a lot,” Freeway told WHYY of his health issues back in 2016. “It really made me appreciate life and the blessing that God has given me. And the opportunity to keep being here, and to keep pushing.”