Rapper, T.I., has announced that he is ready to release his self-proclaimed “King Of The South” title by releasing his 12th and final album. In a recent TMZ interview, T.I. unveiled that he named his next project Kill The King, which is “a representation of killing the ego.” He went on to explain how he decided to leave his famous nickname behind, and how one Southern Hip Hop legend advised him to do so.
T.I. stated, “I feel like the King of the South moniker is very egotistical, self-gratuitous and it’s a persona that kinda enters the room before I do physically, And Big Boi, actually, he cautioned me of this back when I was just coming onto the scene.”
Big Boi told T.I., “Big was like, ‘That sh-t sound cool, I like it’, But just understand: if you’re the king, you gon’ put a big bullseye on your back. You can’t be lookin’ for no favors. Life is a game of chess, and the name of the game in chess is to kill the king.’ T.I. then added, “Standing here 20 years later, looking back on my career and the experiences that I’ve endured, I kinda can see what he meant now.”
T.I. first called himself “King of the South” on “2 Glock 9’s” which was featured on the soundtrack to Samuel L. Jackson’s reboot of Shaft in 2000. he went on to say about the nickname, “When people heard it, the visceral reaction that they had, that’s what made it more personal for me, When people started telling me ‘You can’t call yourself that.’ I said, ‘Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can’t call MYSELF.’ And that’s when I began to feel more ownership; I felt like, ‘Well now, I got to stand on this.’”
T.I. concluded in saying that he wasn’t the first Southern Artist to bring street life into his lyrics, but he was the first to band the sub-genre.
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