Time behind bars ‘life lesson’ for rapper

Though he bills himself as the “King of the South,” T.I. was just beginning to earn his royal coat of arms when a prison sentence threatened to knock him all the way down to serfdom last year.

Just as his popularity was surging off of “Rubber Band Man,” the second infectious hit from his breakout album “Trap Muzik,” he was locked in a jail in his native Atlanta for violating probation on a drug conviction and sentenced to three years behind bars.

“It was just a little setback, a steppingstone, a life lesson. … I wasn’t discouraged,” he says today. “I was frustrated, aggravated, inconvenienced, upset perhaps, but I never thought like ‘Oh, man, I blew it.’ I knew the records were still going to sell, I was going to have people behind me.

“You think about whatever you’re going to do when you get out – in my case, I was writing music and just thinking of different ways to maximize on my opportunities … strategizing your takeover.”

The strategy succeeded. T.I. eluded prison when his sentence was converted to a work-release program. And his latest album, “Urban Legend,” has become a hit, with production work from hip-hop’s top producers.

His appeal has been boosted thanks to superhot cameos (including one on Destiny’s Child’s smash “Soldier”) and his endorsement of Jay-Z’s Reebok sneaker, the S. Carter.

“The thing in hip-hop is that we’re looking for the next generation,” says Elliott Wilson, the editor of the rap magazine XXL, which is making T.I. its May cover boy. (Vibe gave him the honor earlier this year.)

“His brashness, his confidence, I think, at first turned off people, but now, I think he’s shown he’s worthy of praise,” Wilson says. “Today’s fans view him like a Jay-Z, a 50 Cent.”

He certainly has a similar background that has become part of the gangsta folklore – or, in T.I.’s case, urban legend.

The 24-year-old father of four, born Clifford Harris, grew up on the impoverished streets of Atlanta among a family he describes as hustlers. Though some were involved in criminal activity, T.I. says they just struggled to survive.

By the time T.I. was a teenager, he hustled by selling crack. But he was also serious about starting a rap career, recording demos, traveling back and forth to New York in hopes of landing a record deal.

His 2001 major label debut on LaFace Records, “I’m Serious,” sold poorly. But “Trap Muzik,” his 2003 follow-up on Atlantic Records, made the impact that he so desperately sought, thanks to street-savvy tracks like “24’s” and “Rubber Band Man.”

Much of that momentum threatened to be eroded when warrants were issued for his arrest in 2004 on probation violations, and he landed in Fulton County Jail.

But while that may have slowed him down, it certainly didn’t stop him.

Jay-Z courted him to endorse the sneaker; he had friends on the outside selling “Free T.I.” shirts to make a few extra dollars; he even boldly made a video at the jail, which enraged many in law enforcement. (Inexplicably, he had gotten permission for the shoot.)

“It just so happens an escape took place while we were doing what we were doing. That’s why it was such a big deal,” T.I. says nonchalantly.

He believes the time he did behind bars probably garnered him even more fans among his core audience – those “in the ghetto.”

“They want to see you go through the same (stuff) that they go through so they can say he’s one of us,” says T.I. “To be one of us, you’ve got to go through that, and that’s why I’m one of us.”

Now he’s trying to rebuild the community where he grew up – partnering with his uncle, also an ex-inmate, in a construction company that builds low-cost homes in the neighborhood.

“I bought the same house that I used to sell crack out of. I bought it from the junkie,” T.I. says. “He used to let me come in, sell crack out of his house. I bought his house from him, renovated it and put a family in it. It’s the least I can do.”