July 23, 2007 @ 2:19 pm

T.I.: Me, Myself & I

T.I., from the August 2007 issue.

The old and the new, the personal and the private, the smile and the scowl - T.I. has had to navigate these splits in his personality for years. After a trying year filled with personal tragedy, he finally slows down to talk to BENJAMIN MEADOWS-INGRAM about all of it, and about getting to know himself just a bit better. Once you've navigated the pitfalls of youth - the sex, the drugs, the too many late nights with too many wrong people - one of the trickiest things about growing older is waking up on the other side 25 and trying to pull it all together. I was a badass, you think. I was a baller. How the hell did I become an accountant? But of course, navigating that transition and cobbling those pieces into an adult whole is exactly what life is about. Just ask T.I. His new, fifth album, T.I. vs. T.I.P. (Grand Hustle/Atlantic), is, ostensibly, about the fractured self. It's not a novel idea, this whole I'm-my-own-worst-enemy thing, but for Clifford "Tip" Harris, Jr., 26, it's very real. Born and raised in western Atlanta's Bankhead neighborhood, T.I. came of age in what's become known as "the trap." Tip (the nickname is after his paternal great-grandfather) spent most of his early years below and above the law, living to see another day by being smarter and, at times, more ruthless than the competition. But in the last six years, he's been asked, and asked himself, to be something different. And so "T.I." has emerged - the former dope dealer with the poster boy looks whose way with words allowed him to flee the trap for the trappings of fame. He cut a few uneven albums - I'm Serious (Arista, 2001) and Urban Legend (Grand Hustle/Atlantic, 2004). His front-to-back banger, last year's King (Grand Hustle/Atlantic), was one of the best-selling rap releases of 2006, second only to Jay-Z's Kingdom Come (Roc-A-Fella). And there's his certified classic, Trap Muzik (Grand Hustle/Atlantic, 2003). He popped up on-screen in last year's ATL (Warner Bros.), and this November he'll appear alongside Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's American Gangster (Universal). T.I. snagged a 2006 Grammy for "What You Know," stole a monster pop record from Justin Timberlake (last year's "My Love"), and has generally grown into a full-fledged superstar. Along the way, he's also proven himself to be a savvy music executive, bolstering the roster of his Grand Hustle imprint by signing DJ Drama and Young Dro and executive-producing projects ranging from 2005's Hustle & Flow soundtrack (Grand Hustle/Atlantic), which featured the Oscar-winning Three 6 Mafia song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," to B.G.'s upcoming Too Hood for Hollywood (Grand Hustle/Atlantic). His other business ventures - Grand Hustle Films has two films in development with New Line; New Finish Construction is currently in the process of building an Atlanta shopping mall, complete with Starbucks - continue to thrive as well. And yet T.I. still struggles to muzzle the hotheaded pitbull Tip once was, and says that harnessing Tip is the biggest obstacle to his continued rise. And things haven't been going T.I.'s way over the past year or so. In May 2006, one of his childhood friends, Philant "Big Phil" Johnson, 26, was killed when a van carrying several members of the Grand Hustle team was riddled with bullets following an altercation at a Cincinnati nightclub. Then, in March, Tameka "Tiny" Cottle - a former member of R&B group Xscape who is T.I.'s girlfriend of six years and mother of his youngest son, King - gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Still, on a postcard-perfect early May afternoon at the chic Shore Club hotel in Miami Beach, T.I. appeared less on edge than he has in the past, less concerned with living up to some abstract idea of himself, and more content to simply just be - Tip, T.I., both, neither, whoever. VIBE: With so many other things going on in your professional life - acting, the movie production company, the construction company, running the label, the clothing line, etc. - are you still into rapping?
T.I.: Absolutely. Without question. But it's easy to me. It's only but so much more I can do. You really feel that way?
Yeah. Everybody knows when they're at their best. I can do better - but how much better can I do? Once you've been the best you can be, it's time to move on and start the growth again. Get in another field, another arena, and acquire the skills and broaden your spectrum. I'm eager to do that, [but] that don't mean I like rapping any less. It's more of the business shit that I don't like. Making the music is the best part about it. Are you at all interested in being the best rapper alive?
No. I care about making the best albums. Rapping? That's like asking a football player, does he care about running? A basketball player, does he care about dunking? It's something that you do in the process of. You have to know how to rap very, very good to be able to make a great song, which will enable you to make a great album, which will enable you to become prolific. When I was rapping a whole lot, it didn't equate to numbers. When I didn't rap so much, it did equate to numbers. So I figure I split the difference and take the best of the two and combine them together. If I knew that there was more of a demand for songs like these, then that's what I would do. I'm only gonna make songs that the market supports. To read more, pick up VIBE's August 2007 issue, now on stands. To read unpublished excerpts from this interview, click here - only on VIBE.com.

Article tags: T.I, Me, Myself 

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