S. Samuel
Grammy-winning rapper T.I. recently revealed that Eminem helped support him as he served time in prison last year on a felony weapons charge.
According to T.I., Em provided words of wisdom and motivation while behind bars.
“I reached out to Em,” Tip explained to MTV News. “My management reached out to his management, just in hopes of getting him on a record. Em personally reached out to me, and we been speaking ever since, especially since I went through my situation [with having to go to prison]. [He would] just kinda remind me that ‘I’ve been through dark period in my life too. You’re gonna make it. You’re one of the ones we need, so you’re gonna make it. Stand tall and walk the walk.’ He just made it a point to always reassure me of the spot that I hold in this thing that we got called hip-hop. It was incredibly helpful. It was incredibly noble of him, in my eyes, to even take the time out to reach out to me.” (MTV)
Last year, Em talked about T.I. and Lil Wayne helping re-motivate him into rap.
“But with this new T.I. [Paper Trail] album, with this new Lil Wayne album of recent, it seems like things are looking a lot better now. You can appreciate Lil Wayne using different words to rhyme and actually rhyming words that you know. Or T.I., where you hear sh*t and you’re like Whoa, ah, I wish I would have thought of that! You know what I mean? Or you hear all the compound-syllable rhyming and all that. It just seems like now the craft is getting cared about more.” (XXL Magazine)
In early May, T.I. appeared on “Larry King Live” and discussed his publicized 2007 arrest.
He felt the need for the high-powered weapons after his best friend and personal assistant, Philant Johnson, was killed in a shootout in Cincinnati following a performance. “The guns that were used that night are some of the same guns I was attempting to purchase,” he told King. “At the time, I never took into consideration the legalities, I only took into consideration the safety of my life and my family’s life.” The Grammy-awardwinning rapper said drugs and guns are a part of his past life. “This is the most severe encounter with the law I have ever experienced,” he said. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)
T.I. is currently putting together his new album, King Uncaged.
T.I. is setting the bar high for his post-prison album, King Uncaged, comparing it to Tupac‘s 1996 classic All Eyez on Me, which was released months after ‘Pac got out of prison. “This is the most significant return from incarceration that the game has had since then,” T.I. says. “Just given the enormous success of that project, everyone’s expecting the same results. I just want to meet the expectations, if not surpass them.” (Rolling Stone)
Check out a portion of T.I.’s recent “Larry King Live” interview down below:
