27 year old rapper T.I. says that fear for his and his family’s safety led to his arrest on gun charges last year. Not an obsession with high powered, illegal weapons, not a lil boy fantasy of bang bang killem up hood style dreams, just a fear for his cheeren. Yeah right. He told BET’s “Access Granted,” in a program that aired Wednesday night, “You can’t assume everyone out there likes you,(that don’t mean they want to kill you dummy) so it’s easy to get caught up in paranoia.” T.I., real name Lil Cliff Harris was busted in Atlanta on Oct. 13, right before he was to perform at the BET Hip Hop Awards. After he realized that saying he was innocent wasn’t going to work, Lil Cliff took a plea deal in March and was sentenced to a year in prison and at least 1,000 hours of community service – talking to kids about guns, gangs and drugs. “I must be a man and stand up and accept responsibility,” he told “Access Granted”. T.I. also said that, while his latest run-in with the law won’t affect his music, “I can’t talk about guns and drugs as elaborately because they’re not part of my life anymore.” Translation it’s a violation of my court agreement and my ass could be sitting in jail for way more than a year if I did.
To his fans, he said, “If you think guns, drugs and violence are cool, I think you are definitely missing the point…. There’s nothing cool about going to jail.” Well said Lil Cliff, well said!
