T.I. takes front and center on the other side of the double-sided cover for Rap-Up (Christina Milian is the other cover star).
The 28-year-old rapper reflects on the biggest year of his career, his impending jail sentence, the effect it will have on his family, and how the King always gets his way.
On how his children are going to deal with his time in prison: “My oldest is 12—she understands. She’s strong and smart. The three weeks I was in, before I got to come home, she said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll hold things down ’til you get back.’ I’m more worried about how my boys are going to deal.”
On how the recession has affected him: “I think I’d be selling more houses had the economy been in better shape. I think I’d be selling more records had the economy been in better shape. I’d be selling more clothes, too.”
On what it would take for him to be conceited like Kanye West: “Selling a billion. At about a billion, I think I’d be pretty hard to deal with.”
On winning awards: “No disrespect to Kanye, but that kinda stuff just don’t mean nothing to me. Whether or not I win an award, I mean that’s nice, but at the end of the day I understand that I’m a man. What being a man means to me is not defined by an award or an amount of records sold.”
