Crave Online: How did your music reflect what you've experienced in the past?
T.I.: My music has always been a reflection of my experiences both past and present. I don't think that I can help but to reflect the things that I've learned from my experiences in all of my music whether it's a song like "Whatever you Like," whether it's a song like "Live Your Life," "Dead and Gone," or one of my past songs like "24's." It's all a reflection of my experiences.
Crave Online: Why were you buying machine guns and silencers in the first place?
T.I.: Well, you know, that's a very lengthy explanation. It's been publicized so many times in the past year and a half or so long, and the series actually goes into extreme detail as to why. To put it in a few words, I made terrible choices due to a sense of paranoia and it was really just lack of thought. I wasn't thinking as much as I ought to have been.
Crave Online: Terrible choices because it was stupid and you got caught or terrible choices because it was morally wrong to begin with?
T.I.: Terrible choices because I chose to do the wrong thing rather than to do the right thing. I think that the best thing that probably could have ever happened to me was to get caught because had I gotten away with it, I don't know what other terrible choices I would have made afterwards. So I think to have been able to face my terrible choices earlier on as possible was the best thing that could have happened for me.
Crave Online: As an executive producer of the show, does that mean that you have control over or veto power over any of the content of the show and say what you like goes in it and what you like not goes in it?
T.I.: Well, honestly, the show is all about intervening in kids' lives and delivering a positive message. I mean, even to supersede what goes onto the show, I am federally monitored 24 hours. So everything that you see on the show was monitored by someone. So, you know, even if it didn't go on the show, it's in the federal government's reports. I've seen them. I don't really slip up on the tongue too much. I pretty much say what I mean all the time, and whatever platform is there to capture that moment is there.
Crave Online: Do you think you're getting a better break than someone who isn't famous would get for the same crime?
T.I.: No.
Crave Online: Or someone who didn't have the means to influence so many others?
T.I.: You see, I think that was two things you just asked. You said because of my status, and then you said because of my influence. Now, my status as a celebrity, I don't think, got me this blessing, as I described it. I believe it's my influence. If I was a celebrity with no influence to young people, who could not lead them in a positive direction, I would not have gotten this agreement. So I don't think it's my status as a celebrity. I think it's my influence as a person. I think it's the credibility of my life that I've lived, the things I have been able to get through, the things that I have witnessed, the things that I have learned from my mistakes, and also the previous community service that I had been doing even before. Even before 2007, I had been working diligently with the Boys and Girls Clubs, "It's Cool To Be Smart." I have my own foundation, the King Foundation. We do tons of things for the inner city across America for Christmas, back-to-school, Mother's Day. I have a list of things that I was doing even prior to this agreement and arrangement that I think put me in high regard to be considered for an arrangement like this. And, also, I approach matters that most adults or most older adults would consider kind of uncomfortable speaking about with young kids, and I approach it from a perspective that teenagers probably haven't thought of before. I think that comes from me being in their shoes at one time and remembering how I felt, what I was thinking. This show is not a part of my thousand hours of community service that I must complete before March. I have 864 hours to date that I have done outside of this show. This show is in addition to. This isn't a part of the community service hours to satisfy my agreement with the government. This is something that I wanted to do to reach teens on a mass, as many as possible. If I walk into a school and speak to an auditorium filled with three or four hundred kids, then that's one thing. I speak to three or four hundred kids at a time, whereas if I have a one-on-one conversation, spend a day with one teen and approach a lot of issues that teens across America are going through, I can reach four or five million, and that's just in one week. So I think this was an approach that I was blessed to be able to take advantage of through the resources that I have with MTV. I think that even more than T.I.'s story, even more than what T.I. was going through at the time, I think what's most important is how it affects these teens. If we can save one, two, three, four, five of them from going down a similar path that T.I. was going down, then whether or not T.I. got a good break or whatever, that's beyond the point.
Crave Online: And not all celebrities in your situation show remorse. What was it about you that was different?
T.I.: I've always been a person who was honest with himself. In order to be honest with anyone else, you've got to be honest with yourself first and foremost. In being honest with myself, I have to acknowledge my mistakes. And nobody is perfect. I said, "Why is it that the poor decisions overshadow your great decisions? The things that you do great are totally overshadowed and swept away by the one thing that you do terrible." Acknowledging that, man, I just had to accept responsibility for the part that I played in putting myself in that position. From there, I started making the necessary adjustments within myself to make sure that I'd never be in that position again.
Crave Online: Would you like to see more shows following your lead with celebrities helping kids?
T.I.: Only if the show is effective and the artist is sincere. That's not something that you can force or contrive. They have to want to do it and it has to speak to a demographic that needs to be spoken to. I know what needs to be done with the demographic of teenagers who come from the life that I came from. That's why that's my focus. It always has been. When you say more shows like this, only if they are effective because, if they are ineffective, then it makes it more difficult for the shows that could have been effective to get through.
Crave Online: After some other issues with the law in the past, what made this one the turning point?
T.I.: Although I have had oher run-ins with the law, this was the most significant of them all, and this was an end of a very tumultuous time for me from the time when my best friend was killed with me. That was a lot of baggage and pain and grief and just a lot of confusion that I had within myself that I had never dealt with. And this situation was closure to all of that. I dealt with this situation and all of the previous situations that I have had to deal with in the past two and a half years that I had been tucking away and focusing on working and kind of just sweeping it under the rug so to speak. This brought me to a point where I was forced to deal with it. Now, you can't run no more. You ain't got nowhere to go. You are not busy. You are not doing nothing. All you have got to do is sit here and think about all of this and when you get it together, then maybe you will have another shot at it.
Crave Online: What was your first reaction when you heard that you had to complete a thousand hours
T.I.: Well, it seemed ambitious, of course, as everything else that I've ever attempted to accomplish in my life and in my career. But just like anything else, man, we set a goal and we worked diligently to accomplish it. I've never set a goal for myself that I felt I couldn't accomplish.
Crave Online: What's one story of a young person on the show that you impacted?
T.I.: One was a gang member who was in a gang, but I don't think in his heart of hearts that he really wanted to be in a gang. I think he felt like he had to follow in his father's and his older brother's footsteps, and this was in Newnan, Georgia. Basically, we kind of went and picked him up, and I spent the day with him, as I spent the day with all of them, and took them to speak to someone who I held in very high regards as a child, my uncle, who actually spent ten years in prison. Me and my uncle had a similar relationship as Trey and his father, because his father's in prison. His brother's in prison. They're both trying to raise him over the phone, which was the relationship that my uncle and I had. So I sat him down with my uncle, and we kind of spoke to him. We went over the difficulties and the challenges of being in that situation. But we also made him knowledgeable of the fact that the burden is on him. He is the one who has to overcome these obstacles. I think at the end of the day, once Trey went home and as we've checked back up with him, he's doing better ever since. Not to spend too much time on just one particular story, because all of them are very special cases, and they're all brilliant kids in their own way. They're kids that want to do the right thing, but they just need to know how. They need to know something other than what they've been taught all of their life. As I speak to their moms and the people who are around them every day, I deliver this message very plainly and simply. I can strike the match. Somebody else has to fan the flame. After I leave, you've all got to keep the fire burning. It seems to be understood. Now, whether or not it's lost in translation as time goes forward, I don't know. I am the living example of what can happen. Like, you can go from absolutely nothing in life to beyond your wildest dreams if you're willing to work hard, believe in yourself and make the necessary sacrifices and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. I think that example is enough to inspire a lot of these kids.
