Uncle Luke is sharing the story of his experience with COVID-19 as a cautionary tale for others to take the virus more seriously. The legendary rapper wrote an essay for the Miami New Times earlier this week saying that he felt pressured into going to a birthday party at a local strip club that ended in him catching the virus.

“Recently, I joined the ranks of the more than 1 million Floridians who’ve caught the coronavirus. Throughout the pandemic, I had been strictly adhering to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, especially wearing a mask whenever I stepped out of my house. Then I gave in to the peer pressure of going out to a party,” he wrote. “Last month, a friend celebrating his birthday at a local strip club would not stop blowing up my phone. He kept begging me to come. I told myself I would go in for 15 minutes and duck out.”

While he was following the CDC guidelines up to that point, he quickly realized everyone at the party was not adhering to the proper protocols of wearing masks and maintaining their six feet of distance. “As soon as I walked through the doors, it was like stepping into a coronavirus-spreading chamber. Everybody was wildin’ out and getting drunk. Almost no one was wearing masks. My buddies were all up in my face. Patrons and strippers were walking up to me and asking to take selfies,” he shared. “Of course, I obliged when they asked me to take my mask off. Even though I felt like everyone in the club was an asymptomatic carrier, I stayed late.”

After experiencing a dry cough, losing his appetite and his sense of smell and taste, he reached out to a home testing service and got tested for the coronavirus, but the rapid test produced a false positive so he carried on as usual. “Soon, I had a fever and my temperature spiked to 102 degrees. I went to the hospital, where I had a second PCR test that came back positive,” he wrote. “Because I wasn’t having trouble breathing, they sent me home and told me to quarantine for two weeks.”

He was able to isolate from family and didn’t experience any other major symptoms except a fever and night sweats, saying that he worried his temperature would spike to the point that he “would go into shock” or “have a stroke.” The record executive says he thinks the “COVID deniers” make people feel as if they are not “tough enough” for wearing masks and doing the right thing.

He now wants others to learn from him and to follow proper guidelines when they do decide to go out and bear the personal responsibility of taking care of themselves so that they don’t infect others—especially people who are around elders who have less of a chance of surviving the deadly virus. “If the establishment has too many people not following the protocols, don’t be afraid to go home and call it a night,” Uncle Luke wrote.