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Part I
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Beefs, beefs and more beefs ...
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Part II
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T.I. chases "beepers, sneakers and car speakers" ...
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Part III
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T.I. tries to stop the kids from falling into the trap ...
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That ain't T.I. No way, no how, who cares what you say. What would he be doing here? That cannot be him. That's the argument of one little girl sitting on a rubber mat in a gymnasium as she looks up and tries to squelch her dreamy-eyed friend seated by her on a steel folding chair. Both are looking at the Rubber Band Man as he stands in the doorway leading into the gym.
"That is T.I., see I told you," the second girl, looking down with an I-told-you-so grin, tells her pessimistic friend as the rapper walks in to talk to the disagreeing duo and 28 of their peers. The children, from ages five to 17, are all from Atlanta or nearby counties, and sadly, all have had problems at home, in school or with the law. They're close to falling victim to the trap — the same trap that serves as the inspiration for T.I.'s current album, Trap Muzik.
This afternoon the self-proclaimed king of the South is trying to make some of these hard-luck hardheads use their thinking caps. He's in Fulton County at a youth center, which is part of the Inner Harbor Day Services Programs, where he'll try to inspire the kids to set long-term goals for themselves and work toward them in the interim.
For 40 minutes he talks, asking the kids about their dreams — which vary from being police officers to rappers to athletes — and how they plan to attain them.
One shorty does catch T.I. off guard, but he quickly recovers.
"What's the Taliban?" she asks, referring to the chorus of "Rubber Band Man," where he refers to himself as being "wild as the Taliban."
"Those are bad people," he responds with a smile.
After he talks to the kids, he spends another 20 minutes getting hugs, signing autographs and taking pictures before heading off to the studio.
"I love them back," T.I. would say later about speaking to his at-risk fans. "That's like one of the pleasures of being a public figure. I can, in some way, influence the youth in a positive way. They might not listen to their teachers or they mamas even, but if I come and say, 'Hey man, it's cool to go to school and it's cool to be smart and it's all right to not be out here selling dope and trying to tote guns, it's cool to just be you,' I feel like it will affect they lives. I hope it will."
T.I. has been giving back to the community in a variety of different ways for a few years now. Some of the same streets he terrorized as a teen he now helps rebuild, with his very own construction company, New Finish, founded in 1999.
"We buy run-down properties and vacant lots," says T.I., who's been known to walk through the 'hood and literally give people the shirt off his back and sneakers off his feet. "We build lower-income and middle-income living facilities. Duplexes, triplexes, single-family homes. You ain't got to feel like you in the 'hood. They don't got to live in run-down communities. It ain't got to be like that. If you treat them like that, then that's how they gonna act. If you make them accustomed to better things, then they act better. That's how I feel."
Just like the kids, T.I. also had aspirations beyond selling dope. He started rapping when he was around 8 years old. He performed in his first set of talent shows when he was 11 and then started recording demos and shopping deals when he hit puberty. But his gritty style had record companies backpedaling like a quarterback in the pocket.
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"Nobody really wanted to hear the realities of an urban youth." |
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"Nobody really wanted to hear the realities of an urban youth," T.I. says. "Nobody really wanted to hear a 12, 13, 14-year-old cat bring it like I was bringing it at that time. They wanted to hear happy stories and that ain't where I was. Even if you did grow into something better, they didn't wanna know that. But that's how I felt so that's what I spoke on."
Instead of rapping about jumping up and down or missing the school bus like other kids from ATL did before him, Tip was discussing not having a father in his house and why he missed the school bus on purpose. At the time he didn't see the importance of going to school.
"True enough, some of my views may have been a bit jaded," he admits. "I was young, I had a bit more growing to do. But at the same time, art is an expression, and those were my expressions."
Just as he was planting one of his Air Force Ones into manhood, somebody recognized and appreciated his way with words. Label executive KP Prather brought T.I. to L.A. Reid and the Rubber Band Man was signed to LaFace.
With T.I. in the media for his run-ins with the law and his beefs with rappers as much as he is for his stirring tales of life in the trap, he plans to capitalize on his fame and infamy with a new LP, Urban Legend, later this year. He's in talks for collaborations with everyone from Jay-Z to Timbaland to the Neptunes, and has already completed songs with Scarface, Daz and Juvenile.
"For me every album is pivotal," he says. "I wanna be at the peak of my game every album I release. I want Urban Legend to be better than Trap Muzik. I want the album after that to be better than Urban Legend. I'd much rather be noticed for my talents and for my accomplishments and for the positive things I try to do than for the negative things I've done in the past. But at the same time, I've been told more than once that in this business, [bad] publicity is better than no publicity. So I can't be mad at it. It's a small price to pay."
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Photo: MTV News
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