T.I. said what he said.
It was back in April that the self-proclaimed King of The South made headlines after claiming that he created the subgenre of Trap music. Naturally, it sparked a sea of controversy and some informative debate with many unearthing what they perceived to be the origins of the southern Hip-Hop subgenre.
"A lot of people really don't know that I created trap music," T.I. said in an interview with Angie Martinez, "there was no such thing as trap music prior to [T.I.], it didn't exist."
Despite all the pushback, it seems that the rapper, born Clifford Harris, isn’t rescinding anything he said, and in a new interview with HipHopDX, he declares that “facts are facts.”
In a recently published exchange with the publication, T.I. was questioned on his thoughts on the expansion of trap music, since he did claim to have invented it. After a very brief back-and-forth, TIP attempted to get his interviewer, Dana Scott, to admit he did, in fact, create trap music before even answering the question.
“Wait a minute, I don’t want it to be hearsay like I’m speculating or proclaiming this personally,” he said. “I want you to tell me when did you first hear the words “trap music” put together before Trap Muzik dropped?”
“I’m from Connecticut where boom-bap production was more prevalent back then,” Scott noted. “So I wasn’t familiar with the term.”
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from. Facts are facts,” the Hustle Gang honcho proclaimed. "…We can go back historically and check actual references that before that album dropped, the term didn’t exist."
“Just say it how it is,” he went on to add. “But it has grown from the contributions of others who have taken it far beyond where I left it or where I could have taken it. It has expanded so much, so wide, and so broad that at this point you just have to sit back and watch and just be proud. As long as it’s people who come from that walk of life who could look to the charts and feel like there are hit records out there right now that represent them and their lifestyle, and talk about how they live every day, I feel like trap music is very much alive.”
No matter what your stance on the topic is, it’s undeniable what T.I.’s influence on the sound has been, and there’s certainly no debating his role in popularizing the term, and it looks like TIP still couldn’t agree more...and then some.
