Today, T.I. officially starts his starts his 366 day jail sentence. As many have probably heard, he may end up only doing about 10 months and spend the rest in home confinement, but either way, the point is that he won't be around for a while. I want to know how people feel about this. Personally, I feel it is a very unfortunate situation. Now, he obviously broke the law and was caught red-handed. This type of thing should not go unpunished, so with that I completely agree. I just hate to see it happen to an artist like T.I. (I don't want to see it happen to anybody, but yall get what I'm saying). While he's not necessarily on my all time great list, I think that when he really pushes himself, T.I. can be just as good as anybody on the mic. With the last album, Paper Trail, he went back to actually writing his rhymes and it really paid off. I thought most of the songs were excellent and the lyrics were great. Even on most of his features, he would outshine many of those he was on the track with.

At the height of his career, it is sad to see somebody have to go through a situation such as this. My only hope is that he, and others, can learn from this. We have heard T.I. say before that he has learned from his previous actions and run-ins with the law, but I'm hoping this time is the last time. On Trap Muzik, he had a number of songs speaking on the topic of regret, forgiveness, learning lessons, etc. That seemed to stick with him for a while, but he just couldn't seem to fight off that little voice that always told him to revert back to his old ways. This is when we begin to see the T.I. vs. T.I.P. phase. This also actually started on Trap Muzik with their seeming to be a mutual agreement, but we saw T.I.P. start showing up more and more as time has passed.

Now that everything has been on the line and so much attention has been brought to his situation, I think that T.I. really is ready to change. I think he always wanted to, but I think that it has finally hit home. Obviously, only time will tell, but with so much at risk, it is hard not to learn the lesson. After all the interviews, the tv shows, the community service, I believe that he has finally learned and that we won't have to worry about T.I.P. very much anymore.

So what do the people think? Is T.I. really going to change? Did he get off to easy? How is this going to affect his career? Let me hear it. Either comment or emal at straightouttahiphop@gmail.com.


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