“I’m no superstar man, I’m not socially awkward enough, I’m too normal.” – T.I.

T.I. visited The Breakfast Club to talk about his hit VH1 show T.I. and Tiny: The Family Hustle, contradictions in the rap game, diversity in his music and opening up his personal life for the world to see.

“I personally believe that the experiences, all the things that I have endured and experienced in my time in this game, that makes me old, that makes me look old ‘Man he been through this, he been thought that, he been through this, he been through that.’ That is what makes a person seem old. I’m younger than some rappers right now that ain’t even dropped their first album yet.”

“I just think it was time for people to see who I was as a man. For people to see who I was as a man and not taking advantage of the opportunity to pull from small moments in my life and have that be a blanket to judge me off of. I wanted them to say, ‘Ok well these are just isolated incidents. As a whole, this is who he is as a man.’ And I needed to offer them that opportunity.”

“It was at one time, this music was about speaking to the people who felt like you feel. Now, the people I’m speaking too, they don’t necessarily feel like I feel. In my day, if you was saying something, if you were rapping about something that you really weren’t living, that was a strike against you and you were held accountable. Nowadays, nobody even expects you to live up to the things you rap about. This goes against what I represent, what I stand for.”

“I got a plethora of all these different types of records. I can satisfy all these genres, I just can’t drop one record that everybody digs the same way at the same time. So right now I’m dropping this record for this crowd, this record for this crowd and I’ll be dropping another record very soon for another crowd.”