T.I. appeared to admit to once “snitching” on his dead cousin to avoid jail time, Media Take Out has learned. And that revelation has sparked a heated debate on social media – with folks debating whether TI did anything wrong.
In a resurfaced clip from an August 2020 episode of the rapper’s extremely popular expediTIously podcast, the Atlanta rapper-turned-comedian recalled pinning a gun case on his late relative, Toot, in the early 2000s, before his music career took off.
As T.I. explained, he and Toot were running a hustle in their native Atlanta involving stolen upscale clothes when they were pulled over by cops, who discovered a gun in Tip’s possession.
Toot — who introduced T.I. to DJ Toomp, the producer behind hits like “What You Know,” “24’s” and “U Don’t Know Me” — was murdered during the court case. At the urging of his lawyer — and with Toot’s posthumous blessing — Tip avoided incarceration by claiming the gun belonged to his cousin.
“We at Lennox Mall parking lot, we unload the truck [of stolen clothes], I’m talking to the man while I’m making the play,” he remembered. “This n-gga looking at everything like, ‘Man, y’all got, y’all got?!’ ‘Muthafucka, we done said what you want! Get this shit and go!’
“And right then, mall security [pull up] … We get in the car and we pull off, and then of course, they followed behind us and called the real police. So before we actually get on the expressway, the real police pull us over. I have a gun.”
“We caught those gun cases, Toot died. My lawyer said, ‘Well, you know, I could make everything go away if it was Toot’s, it was Tremel’s,’” he said. “After he had passed, I had a talk with him. Toot said, ‘I’ll take all the charges you got! If you can walk away free and put it on me, goddamn right! ‘Cause I’ll be damned if they gon’ come and muthafucking extradite me from here!’”
Ti then added: “Hell nah. Don’t nobody know about that, I just volunteered this information. That’s the only time I done ever said or gave information, because that’s my big cousin. He was dead and he told me that it was OK.”
