Before Fetty Wap addressed the public directly, viral speculation painted a wildly inaccurate portrait of his youth. Hip-hop mythology often glorifies trauma, and online communities quickly circulated stories claiming the rapper lost his eye in a shootout or street dispute in Paterson. Others invented stories about a tragic firecracker accident.
Fetty put an end to the street gossip during a February 2015 interview with DJ Self on Shade 45. He stated plainly that violence had nothing to do with his appearance:
"When I was little, I had got into an accident and it bumped up the glaucoma, and I had lost [the eye] when I was little," he explained. "I got congenital glaucoma, both eyes, but they saved one. So I got one eye, that's it."
His straightforward explanation punctured the elaborate theories created by internet commentators. He emphasized that he never corrected people in the streets because the gossip worked as free marketing before he became famous. When the spotlight broadened to an international scale, setting the record straight became a matter of basic honesty rather than cultivating street credibility.
