Bed rest can ruin the arena: Ray J gave it his all on stage Friday night, it seems, with videos from fans showing his eyes appearing to bleed while working the crowd.
The singer also removed the top of his orange jumpsuit to reveal some sort of port or medical device inserted into the upper left part of his chest.
The “Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood” star, brother of singer and actor Brandy, was performing in Shreveport, Louisiana.
In the first clip, a red liquid, which many assumed was blood, ran down one of the R&B singer's cheeks like tears as he handed out long-stemmed red roses to people in the audience. Another clip showed him singing into a microphone as he walked off stage after removing the top of his jumpsuit.
“Hey everyone, we're perfectly fine. There's no one sick. Look at me, I'm fine,” he says in a later clip, which takes place offstage. The 45-year-old seems upset and says people laugh at him because he is sick.
“He loves the camera. He loves the attention,” Tommy Nard II of Nard Multimedia Group, who was behind the scenes that night, separately told Shreveport news station KTAL. “It's all theatrical… I literally saw him put on fake blood and walk out.”
One concertgoer told KTAL that it was “very disturbing to see blood, what appeared to be blood, coming out of his eyes.”
Ray J told TMZ in late January that he had doctor's orders to remain on bed rest and avoid drugs and alcohol. He said he was taking eight medications related to his heart, which he said had been damaged due to his excessive drug and alcohol use.
“I thought I could handle all the alcohol, I could handle all the Adderall,” he said in a live video in late January.
Doctors told Ray J, whose real name is William Ray Norwood Jr., that he should prepare for the possibility that he may soon need a pacemaker or defibrillator, the singer told the celebrity site. I was hoping to get an update when I returned in two weeks for a checkup.
Two weeks passed over the weekend.
Ray J told his followers in a video posted on January 25 that he wanted to “thank everyone for praying for me.”
“I was in the hospital,” he said. “My heart only beats at 25%, but as long as I stay focused and on the right path, everything will be fine.” In one video, he said the right side of his heart was “like black. It's like done.”
Ray J said elsewhere that his heart was beating at 60%. The number probably refers to your heart's ejection fraction, which measures the volume of blood leaving the left ventricle of the heart or entering the right ventricle when the heart beats. According to WebMD, right heart failure is much less common.
A representative for Ray J did not immediately respond Tuesday to the Times' request for comment.
However, in an Instagram Story posted on Monday, Ray J posted this quote: “'If you want to know who your real friends and family are, you lose your job, get sick, or go through hard times. You'll see it clearly.”
