You wouldn't believe it with his seamless singing voice and confidence on stage, but Ed Sheeran once had a debilitating stutter.
When honored at the American Institute for Stuttering's Free Voices Changing Lives Benefit Gala Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed that it was a certain rapper's music that helped him learn to overcome his speech impediment.
"My Uncle Jim told my dad that Eminem was the next Bob Dylan—it's pretty similar, it's all just storytelling—my dad bought me The Marshall Mathers LP when I was 9 years old, not knowing what was on it. I learned every word, back to front, by the time I was 10. He raps very fast and melodically and percussively, and it helped me get rid of my stutter," the Brit singer revealed.
But the singer-songwriter and Taylor Swift's BFF insists he's not ashamed of his little idiosyncrasies.
He told the audience, "Embrace your quirks. Being weird is a wonderful thing."
Sheeran offered some reassurance for those maybe not fitting in at school, "Stuttering is not a thing you have to be worried about at all. Even if you have quirks and weirdness, you shouldn't be worried about that. The people I went to school with that were the most normal and were the coolest when we grew up—I was telling Emily [Blunt] earlier that one of the cool kids from school now does my plumbing! That's a fact!"
He added, "There's no one in the world that can be a better you than you."