Ludacris welcomed his audience with popcorn and jokes on Thursday night in New York's Tribeca neighborhood, as he gave them a preview of his new LP, Theater of the Mind, and debuted the video for "Undisputed." The clip shows 'Cris in a gym going through lyrical workouts, with flamboyant boxing champ Floyd "Money" Mayweather acting as his corner man.

"A lot of people heard my mutha----in' pool house just burned the f--- down today," he said, after a member of the crowd asked about the fire in Luda's Atlanta home on Wednesday. "I can honestly sit back and laugh at it, because it wasn't my actual house and nobody got hurt.

"Materialistic things can be replaced and you can't replace people," he continued. "But if you could've seen the expensive tiles that was inside that mutha----in' crib — that sh-- upset the hell out of me. For real. It's gonna take a minute to rebuild that mutha----a, too." ('Cris recently boasted about his property in his freestyle "Big Ass House" on his Gangsta Grillz: The Preview mixtape, and according to reports, the pool house alone was larger than most regular homes.)

On Theater of the Mind, 'Cris goes for the jugular, clearly fired up about not getting the recognition he has earned as the most versatile MC to come down the pike since his debut in 2001.

"This album is set out to get the credit I deserve as an MC," Luda told Sway at the event. Along with Swizz Beatz, the record also features the likes of Chris Brown and Sean Garrett, both of whom appear on the first single, "What Girls Like." On "Wish You Would," Luda shares the mic with fellow ATL resident T.I., and Tip returned the favor by inviting Luda to appear on the King of the South's Paper Trail.

"We've been talking under the radar for a really long time, which nobody would know," Luda said of the affiliation with his onetime lyrical nemesis. "We were trying to figure out when would be the right opportunity to surprise people. Atlanta is small as hell, compared to New York City. It's a lot of people in New York; artists don't see each other. [Me and T.I.] got the same circle of friends. We'd see each other. You can never go anywhere without seeing their people, them seeing our people.

"It was never what you would consider 'beef,' " 'Cris explained. "Beef to me is when you talking about somebody's family and they wanna punch the sh-- out of your ass. Between me and him, it's the original root of hip-hop. Little lines on wax. He and my manager had a disagreement that led to some stuff, but that was between two grown men, of course. Even that, that sh-- lasted all of 30 seconds. It wasn't what people made it out to be. ... We would see each other all the time in Atlanta. It was really our lives, your entertainment."

The album is tentatively scheduled for a November 11 release.