January 16, 2009

T.I. Counts Down To Prison Sentence In MTV Series

By Shaheem Reid (MTV.com)

It's hard to believe that in less than two months, T.I. will be going to jail. With his incredibly busy schedule, Tip himself doesn't have time to dwell on it. He has work to do first. In addition to all the appearances he's been making to promote Paper Trail, he's been shooting movies, overseeing his artists' upcoming albums, being a family man and completing 1,000 hours of community service for felony weapons charges.

"No amount of jail time is gonna teach me the lesson I learned at that moment," Tip says of the night he got arrested in November 2007 in his upcoming MTV series T.I.'s Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go. (The title will actually change as the countdown to his prison sentencing nears.) He could have faced up to 30 years in jail for purchasing illegal firearms, but because of a plea deal, the community work he's completed by March will likely reduce his sentence significantly.

As the cops apprehended him, Tip says he thought to himself, "Oh sh--, you done f---ed up."

In T.I.'s Road to Redemption, Tip gives viewers an intimate look at his family life at home. He shows the extremes he has go through to maintain his accustomed level of fan love and media exposure while giving talks to kids as part of his community service.

In the show, the rapper also tries to motivate seven at-risk teens across the country to change their lives.

"We're gonna shake his world up, and then we're gonna help him whether he wants our help or not," T.I. says of one of the adolescents, who's apparently on a destructive path.

Tip takes another kid to a mortuary and makes him look at a young peer lying dead in a casket.