T.I. has been on the ball, making records with Lady Gaga and Swizz Beatz and doing his thing with the mixtape circuit, but jail definitely had its affect.
“Being in that environment and having those daily surroundings, it’s going to affect you,” Tip tells Complex magazine.
“It did make me worse in a sense. … Putting me in prison took me off [a positive] path a little bit, and now I’m working to get back on that path – or at least back on the path to the extent that I was before I went in,” he said in an interview.
T.I. is on the cover of Complex for the August/September issue. He told the magazine that jail took a toll on his creativity.
“I lost a little bit of my positive focus during that period of incarceration. Being in that environment and having those daily surroundings, it’s going to affect you.” He said he steered clear of music so he wouldn’t feel homesick. Instead, he watch a whole lot of TV. “True Blood” is a popular show on the cellblock, but it didn’t faze him.
“The whole prison damn near shut down. Everybody left off the yard, like, “True Blood” coming on!’ They went crazy for it – there’s a bunch of sex in it, so they were tuning in for that.”
“King Uncaged” drops in September
