Jaime "Taboo" Gomez of Black Eyed Peas has opened up about a behind-closed-doors battle with cancer he endured two years ago, and is urging fans to be diligent about their own health.

In a new interview with Forbesthe 41-year-old rapper recalls feeling pain all over his back and the right side of his body in 2014. He said he'd begun to feel like he had the flu when he and his wife finally decided he should seek emergency care. And after a day of tests, a doctor gave him the tough news — he, indeed, had testicular cancer.

“I was in good shape,” he sad. “I ate healthy foods, worked out, and even with all that healthy living, it happened."

Taboo added that he had to have cancer on his right testicle removed, but because it had already spread to his lymph nodes, he also had to undergo chemotherapy, which he called "grueling."

Taboo added in an interview with The Doctors that his diagnosis and treatment should serve as a wakeup call that nobody is immune from severe illness.

“A lot of people have a misconception about artists, that they’re invincible...they’re on a different plateau," he said. "But I’m just a human being. I’m a normal person just like everybody else. I just may have a different job. But I have kids, a wife, I bleed, I went through cancer.”

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