Krayzie Bone, a member of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, one of the most influential rap groups in history, has been fighting for his life for several days, he said Monday in a social media post that included a photo of him in a hospital .
The reason for the hospitalization is unknown. The 50-year-old rapper, whose real name is Anthony Henderson, has been battling sarcoidosis, a rare autoimmune disease that can cause breathing problems if it gets into the lungs, for several years. As a result, he had to postpone part of a 2016 tour. Hip-hop news site All Hiphop reported that he checked himself into a Los Angeles-area hospital on September 22 after coughing up blood.
Krayzie Bone said on Instagram on Monday that he had just been fighting to stay alive for “nine days straight.” “Never take life for granted, enjoy it while you have it!” he wrote.
Known for their harmonies and lively hooks, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is one of the pioneering groups of melodic rap that dominates the genre today. Mr. Henderson is one of five members of the group, which formed in Cleveland in the early 1990s. They received support from Eazy-E, a founding member of the rap group NWA, who signed the group to his Ruthless Records label in 1993. “Creepin on ah Come Up,” their debut album on the label, sold millions of copies, making them the first hip-hop group from Cleveland to break into the mainstream.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were nominated for three Grammys and won one in 1997 for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. (Their Grammy-winning hit “Tha Crossroads” was partly a tribute to Eazy-E, who died of AIDS in 1995.) Members of the group have collaborated with some of the biggest names in pop music history, including Tupac Shakur and Mariah Carey.
“When our management got a call that Mariah Carey wanted to do a record with us, we didn’t even really know how big Mariah Carey was at the time,” Henderson told the New York Times in an interview published in August as part of a project on Celebrating five decades of hip-hop. Krayzie Bone appeared on Carey’s track “Breakdown” from her 1997 album.
“We knew about her, but we were so caught up in our newfound fame that we were just living in our own little world. So we almost didn’t go at all.”
In 2011, Mr. Henderson left the group but eventually reunited with his former bandmates. The city of Cleveland renamed a street after the group this summer.
“The Bone Thugs style basically developed from us making ciphers together,” Henderson told The Times. “We smoked weed either in my mom’s basement or at the house we were at and just started rhyming and working on our harmonies and stuff. We knew each other and knew we could rhyme, but when the other four said the adlibs it sounded like we were harmonizing. It’s not something we did on purpose – we just started doing it and one day that was our style.”
Mr. Henderson was born on June 17, 1973. In addition to his work with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Mr. Henderson has released solo albums since 1999, including “QuickFix: Level 3: Level Up,” which came out earlier this year. He also founded the nonprofit Spread the Love Foundation, a Cleveland-based music education initiative.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are in the middle of a national tour and returned to Cleveland in August with Krayzie Bone.