Days before he reported back to prison, T.I. sat down with VIBE’s Erik
Parker and gave his most candid interview to date. Here is an excerpt
from the explosive cover story.
I’ve heard you mention how the good that you’ve done is easily forgotten. Do you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly?
If I place my value in the way humans treat me, then maybe. But they’re
human, man―they can’t help themselves. They do that to people they know
personally. So how can I expect them to treat me, only knowing me
through television? They did that to Jesus. They did that to Martin
Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali. They did it to every great person
you could possibly think of. When it was all good, they was with them.
When things got bad, then they was against them.
But in this case things didn’t “get bad.†It’s something you did.
Let me just say this: [he sits up on the couch] If you look at a guy who
came up, no pops in the house, moms on welfare, food stamps; started
selling dope when he was 12, 13 years old, came up handling guns, being
in shoot-outs; started going to jail when he was 15. In all of this
chaos and this mischief and lawlessness, the person who was just in jail
for machine guns and silencers turns his life around. And now you want
to crucify him ―for what? Three pills. I mean, of course it’s wrong and
unacceptable and inexcusable. No problem. But in the grand scheme of
things, it’s rather petty. It’s rather petty to hold someone’s feet to
the fire for something so small when they have overcame things that were
so big. All that could have been going wrong―if I was riding with more
guns, or if I had gotten into a shoot-out and killed somebody, then I
could see that. But just think about it. I’ve gotten it down to this
much.
How did you get a drug habit?
I had a lot of work done to my teeth. Oral surgery, extractions, six,
seven, eight root canals. Between January to February. As soon as I got
out, I had a lot of stuff done. In the joint, you eat s*** that is
unhealthy for you. I had fillings that fell out and stuff that had to
get dealt with. Of course for the pain they gave me o******** and
hydrocodone. And, mind you, on October 13, 2007, I had cut off
everything―weed, alcohol. Then I get these pills and I start taking them
for the pain at first. And then I’m like, Wait―this s*** makes me feel
good. And it’s legal. After the pain went away, I kept taking it. I had
like five, six prescriptions. So I had, like 80 pills. Everybody else
might have a drink or smoke a blunt, I took a pain pill. Times when I
had 18-, 20-hour days, I’d take a pain pill. And eventually I
developed―I guess―the beginning stages of dependence.
Have you talked to Eminem about addiction?
Sure. We got a record together, and we talked a lot. I asked him how he
knew he was an addict. Basically if you put yourself in harm’s way… if
you risk that, you’ve got to assume that there is something
fundamentally wrong with your thought process.
READ THE FUL INTERVIEW IN THE DEC/JAN ISSUE OF VIBE ON SALE NOVEMBER 30
