'Bald So Hard:' Cancer patient raises awareness with Jay Z parody

Tom Gillin was diagnosed with the paediatric cancer acute myeloid leukaemia in April.

The 19-year-old university student decided to make the most of his long stays at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) by making a lighthearted rap video about his experience.

"Some of the other videos I’ve seen about cancer patients are somewhat depressing," Gillin told TODAY. “We wanted to flip the switch and do something that was the opposite of that.”

"We’re not just withering in the hospital, we’re fighting every day to get better," he told CBS Philadelphia.

Gillin teamed up with hospital staff to create “Bald So Hard,” a rap video referencing the lyrics “ball so hard” in the Jay Z and Kanye West single “Niggas in Paris.”

He cowrote the lyrics with CHOP music therapist Mike Mahoney.

"Bald so hard my head got shiny, bright glare behind me. What’s a brush, what’s a comb, what’s a bad hair day, can you please remind me?” Gillin raps in the video.

Gillin also parodies Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” in a rap about life at the hospital.

"At CHOP, concrete jungle, West side of Philly. People, can you feel me?" the chorus goes. “Now you’re at CHOP. These treatments make you feel brand new, these docs will inspire you. Let’s hear it for CHOP, CHOP, CHOP.”

Because chemotherapy often left Gillin too weak to shoot the video, the three-minute song took two months to complete.

He hopes the video, promoted online with the hashtag #BaldSoHard, will raise awareness of paediatric cancer — and might even inspire a certain A-list rapper to visit him at the hospital.

"I made this video to explain the everyday life of a cancer patient in a unique way," Tom says at the video’s end. “So share this with your friends and, Jay Z, next time you’re in town, hopefully you can stop by and hang out.”

Gillin is very clear about the thing he’s looking forward to most.

“Get out of here one day and the opening of the doors and cutting off the bracelet,” he told CBS Philadelphia.

Gillin will complete his final round of chemotherapy in a few weeks. He’ll then return to his studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he’s a civil engineering student.