T.I. on why Lil Wayne is so underrated: “It depends on the generation”
Georgia emcee T.I. was one of the South’s most significant exports in the 2000s and still regularly speaks for his city of Atlanta. Alongside the likes of Lil Boosie and Lil Jon, T.I. helped popularise the South and make it mainstream, with projects such as King and T.I. vs. T.I.P. managing to top the Billboard 200.
As the self-proclaimed ‘King Of The South,’ T.I. was one of Atlanta’s most well-known acts in the 2000s. Following his success as a solo artist, the emcee has successfully transitioned into acting and the music business as the head of his legendary label, Grand Hustle.
Although T.I. no longer raps for a living, he still has many opinions about contemporary MCs and often speaks about some of hip-hop’s downfalls. That said, he often looks back on the 1990s and 2000s with rose-tinted spectacles and explains the massive impact some of his counterparts had on the culture.
In 2019, while speaking with RapUpTV, T.I. spoke about five of his favourite rappers and how Young Money icon Lil Wayne changed hip-hop and inspired many of the artists that are popular today. When asked to name his top rap MCs, the Atlanta native responded, “Pac, Big, Jay-Z, 3k [Andre 3000].”
He then struggled to pick his final artist as there were too many to choose from. After a mental to-and-fro, the Trap Muzik creator said, “Damn, I’m just thinking about all these other dope MCs that if I choose one, the rest of them get left out…um…Ice Cube — actually Ice Cube slash Lil Wayne!”
Explaining why Lil Wayne doesn’t always make it into people’s top five lists, T.I. told the interviewer, “It depends on what generation you’re speaking to. I think a lot of cats who are older than me may not place Wayne in there because he was so young when they were [on top].”
He continued, “They gonna reach back to Rakim, but anybody who was born from ‘79 on up, we were kinda the same age as Wayne, so when he was 14 or 15 in the Hot Boyz, we were like 16 or 17 in the streets so he was speaking our language. We came up together, so we have a different level of appreciation [for him].”
Akin to T.I., Lil Wayne was an integral part of the rise in popularity of Southern hip-hop during the late ’90s and early-2000s. From the rise of Crunk to the emergence of trap music, Lil Boosie, Young Dro and many others were part of the movement that made Tha Carter musician so influential in the culture.