In 2014, long before big stages and viral TikToks, Big Boss Vette, born Diamond Alexxis Smith from St. Louis, Missouri, was a teenager recording freestyles on her phone and uploading them to Facebook and Instagram. With raw confidence and unfiltered lyrics, she quickly became a social media sensation. Still, behind the viral moments was a young girl trying to figure out the music industry.
When her music started taking off during the COVID-19 pandemic, that internet buzz evolved into something much bigger: a bidding war between 13 labels, a record deal, and hit records like “Snatched” and “Pretty Girls Walk” that would take over the timeline. “When [those songs] started going viral, we literally ran with that song for almost a year,” she told EBONY. “I really wasn’t putting out any more music after that because that was still running.”
From the outside, it looked like a classic come-up story: a rising rap star finally getting her moment. Still, while it seemed as though she was on top of the world, something started to shift. The 28-year-old felt her body was sounding an alarm she couldn’t ignore. What doctors repeatedly dismissed as a stubborn sinus infection soon escalated into something far more serious—numbness in her face, an inability to taste or smell, and headaches that pain medicine could no longer touch.
Trusting her intuition, she pushed for a second opinion. An MRI would shortly reveal the truth: a large, fast-growing tumor that had spread from her sinuses into her eye and brain.
“Within an hour, my doctor called me and was like, ‘Hey, I got your results, you have a brain tumor,” she told EBONY. Eventually, she’d learn it was a rare, aggressive, stage 4B sinus cancer. Through her determination to fight, she battled through chemotherapy, radiation and constant visits with doctors to get to where she is now: remission.
Now, as she steps into a new era of vlogging, storytelling and creativity, Big Boss Vette isn’t just sharing a survival story. She’s offering a blueprint for taking your health seriously, listening to your body and choosing yourself. In this exclusive conversation for The Black Wellness Edit, Big Boss Vette opens up about how she navigated the emotional whiplash of going from viral artist to cancer patient.
EBONY: When you got your diagnosis, what went through your mind? How were you mentally preparing for the changes your professional and personal life was about to endure?
Big Boss Vette: When they told me that it was cancer, I did some research, cut out processed sugars, liquor, hookah, and I started eating better. I was praying every day, honestly, and I was so angry because I didn’t know whether I was gonna make it. Then I had just moved to my [new] house, and everything was still packed up.
So, I’m like, should I even unpack my stuff, like I just did not know what’s what to expect. After being angry and crying to the point where I could not cry anymore. I just told God, I don’t understand it, but I guess we’re about to beat cancer together.
With you being so young, how has this shifted your perspective on health and wellness overall?
It was a lot of times before I got sick, I was just like, ‘oh I’m well, I’m young and I’m healthy, I can do a lot of things right now,’ and that actually shifts my perspective a lot because it’s like, yeah, I’m young and I’m healthy, but cancer has no age on it, no name on it and no race on it. Cancer can touch anybody at any given time, and I just wish that I did take my health a little bit more serious before all of this, but going through this now, I don’t play about what I put inside of my temple. I barely eat sugar, and I used to be a soda addict, but now I don’t remember the last time that I picked up a soda, so I’m very intentional about what I put inside of my body.
For many of us who are in our 20s, we’ve viewed screenings and appointments as a “I’ll handle it when I get older scenario,” but from your experience, what do you want your supporters to know about the importance of these visits?
No matter what always go get seen, because it’s easier to hear that “we caught on time” instead of, “I wish that you came in sooner.” Also, watch what you put inside your body right now because yeah, we are young, healthy and some of our bodies can take more than others, but all that might catch up to you. You don’t want to be not not able to move around, to see, to to breathe and to think for yourself by the time that you’re 40, because you’re not taking care of your body, and no matter how scared you are of what they might say when they do your scans, still just go.
I want to talk to you about support, specifically medically. How was your healthcare experience, and how was the relationship that you had with your doctor, and how did that push this journey forward for you?
The first doctor who actually told me that I had cancer in stage 4B, he was very nonchalant. I don’t feel any empathy behind that, but I just wrote it off as maybe he’d been doing it for so long and didn’t know how to show empathy. But I got really close to my medical techs and radiation team. They were more so open — welcoming, and the ones that I was seeing every day, took care of me.
I grew a family within them and still to this day would call them, text them, and check on them.
Talk about your village being a vital part of this journey. How did their support help you feel comfortable to kick off this vlog series that you’re about to do. How did they provide you just like a safe space day to day throughout this entire journey?
To be honest, I didn’t even want to tell them that I was having thoughts of am I gonna make it? Whenever I be going through treatment for a long period of time, and I’ll just start getting down and out, I would come home to my village, throwing me a party. It was also certain things that I needed so they would buy me, medicine, vitamins, protein, and shampoos that did not have toxins in it. They were going so hard for me and gave me the strength to just fight. Because at one point in time, I wanted to give up. I never went to an appointment by myself, not one, and that really helps me more than they will ever know.
With this vlog series and new era that you’re kicking off, how did you mentally prepare to just relive this journey?
To be honest, vlogging was like my whole experience going through it, and it was just something that I was doing because I just knew I was going to beat it. Did I know that I was going to go through everything that I was going through while recording? No. I think this vlog series gives me a platform to tell my truth, what I experienced while I was fighting cancer, and how the industry will treat you while you’re going through things.
I just knew that I was going to beat this, and I just knew that I had to tell my story, because I don’t know who I could be helping out here, who chose to stay silent throughout their battle because I had people treating me like I wasn’t gonna gonna beat the battle.
What do you think is different now and what have you learned about yourself and the industry within this new era that you’re in?
I learned that the industry is just full of smoke and mirrors. I realized that when it comes to any type of label you are just a dollar sign, and if you’re not generating money, you’re nothing, and they might treat you as such. You can have someone saying that they’re rooting for you on one side and on the other, they’re actually gossiping about you.
It was so much gossip going on within the business about my health, and I did not like that, because I feel like the ones that was supposed to be trusted with this secret, because I was hiding it, the ones that were supposed to be trusted with this secret went out and told my business. No matter how much someone tells you that they want to see you make it, always pay attention to their actions, because they can say one thing and do the total opposite.
Before I was battling with cancer, I paid attention to words over the actions, and now I pay attention to how somebody actually treats me physically and how they show up rather than what they’re telling me.
With those lessons that you’ve learned. What can we expect from this new era? I know you have the vlog series, but do you see yourself getting back into music as well? Where are you creatively?
Creatively I’m in the middle when it when it comes to music, because of everything that I went through during my battle I’m kind of scarred a little bit , but with the vlog series I’m excited about to start regularly vlogging and streaming and leaning more into brand deals, modeling and acting, because I enjoyed those spaces while I was doing it. Was it tiresome? Yeah, I was very tired, but I did it. If it’s in God’s will for me to start back dropping music, then I’ll do it.
This conversation was edited for clarity and brevity.