Big Boy Bares All in New Book 'An XL Life'

The radio prankster explains why he pulled scary prank on 'T.I. & Tiny'

Kurt Alexander, known as Big Boy on the airwaves thanks to his top rated syndicated morning show Big Boy's Neighborhood, bared all in his first book. An XL Life: Staying Big at Half the Size, which hit bookshelves last month, details Big Boy’s early life growing up without his father in Los Angeles and his struggles with weight loss and subsequent health scares.

Loop 21 caught up with the radio prankster to talk about his weight-loss surgery that almost took his life, how not having a father affected him as a dad and why he decided to play that frightening prank on T.I. and Tiny’s hit reality show on VH1.

Loop 21: Why did you decide to write a book about your life and subsequent weight loss?

Big Boy: It’s crazy because I never thought that I’d be a person where people would want to know my story. Even with the weight loss and everything I was going through, I never said, ‘Man, I need to write this down. I need to document everything. This would be a great book.’ The more I spoke with people it was either, ‘How did you lose the weight? How do you feel? I’m thinking about getting it.’ I started talking to so many people, I became sort of this ambassador. And just with life in general, ‘How did you get into radio?’ If they see me out in public, they’d hit me up about it. So once I got a real bite on someone saying you should write a book, I said well maybe that’ll be how I can get to everybody at the mall or everybody at the store. This will be my way of getting out many conversations in one it was a little hard going into some things that were personal in my life but if I was going to tell one, I needed to tell all.

Loop21: And one of the personal things you talk about right away is you nearly dying. Tell me about that experience. Is there really a light at the end of the tunnel?