Background
T.I. was born Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. on September 25, 1980, in Riverdale, Atlanta, Georgia, the son of the late Clifford "Buddy" Harris Sr. and Violeta Morgan. He was raised by his grandparents in Bankhead, Atlanta, Georgia. He lived in a family that existed in a constant struggle to survive. In an article for the America's Intelligence Wire, he described them as hustlers: "When I say hustle, I don't mean necessarily broke the law and sold drugs but, I mean that they didn't know where their next check was coming from. They had to get theirs day by day, and they got it, some more than others." His father lived in New York and he would often go up there to visit him. His father suffered from Alzheimer's and later died from the disease. T.I. was interested in rap music at the young age of seven, and found that he could entertain his relatives and feel included. T.I. began rapping at age nine. He was making demos of his music by age ten or eleven. But street life interfered, and by age 14 he was dealing drugs and had been arrested numerous times. He attended Douglass High School, but later dropped out. As a teenager, he was a drug dealer. He was once known as Rubber Band Man, a reference to the custom of wearing rubber bands around the wrist to denote wealth in terms of drugs or money because they would be used for stacking thousands of dollars in a single rubber band. By age 14, he had been arrested several times. He was nicknamed "Tip" after his paternal great-grandfather. Despite the troublesome upbringing, T.I. was still drawn to music. He got a manager and was heard in an audition by Kawan "KP" Prather, a record executive, better known in the music business as K.P., who was working on a spin-off of Arista Records called Ghet-O-Vision Entertainment discovered T.I.. After the audition, T.I. was quickly signed when he was a teenager. Upon signing with Arista Records a subsidiary of LaFace Records in 2001, he shortened his name to T.I. out of respect for label mate Q-Tip.
Read more about this topic: I'm Serious
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)