Andy Young: T.I. wants to do the right thing

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Grammy Award winner T.I.’s arrest in Los Angeles for drug possession has bewildered former Atlanta Mayor Andy Young, who counseled the performer on his “road to redemption” after the rapper pleaded guilty to federal gun charges.

The news of the arrest hurts his heart, said Young, who officiated T.I’s South Beach wedding in July.

“He not only has a successful marriage going for him and some wonderful children but his new movie is a big hit,” Young told the AJC.

T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., and his new wife, Tameka Cottle, were arrested Wednesday night in West Hollywood when T.I.  made an illegal U-turn.  A Los Angeles deputy said he smelled marijuana coming from inside his luxury Maybach automobile. According to the entertainment Web site TMZ , the deputy then found drugs, reported to be in the same class as methamphetamine and ecstasy.

T.I.'s publicist declined to comment.

“There’s another culture in L.A. that I don’t understand,” Young said. “Most people in Los Angeles would wonder why he was stopped …  I don’t know why they should have been stopped ... When a black man is stopped and not speeding … you call that driving while black.”

Young noted a bit of symmetry between T.I.'s life and the role he plays in his just-released movie, "Takers."

“I didn’t particularly like him doing the movie,” Young said, explaining that the message was wrong. “Part of my hope was he would have a cultural shift as well as a personal shift."

In the movie, which the 29-year-old produced, T.I. plays a career criminal and gang member named "Ghost" who has just been released from prison. "Ghost" almost immediately starts planning a bank heist that is bigger than the one that previously sent "Ghost" to prison.

When he was stopped Wednesday night, the father of five had only been out of prison a few months and was still on probation for the 2007  crime that sent him to federal prison.

T.I. was  just hours before he was to be honored at the BET Awards ceremony three years ago when he drove to a Midtown Atlanta drug store parking lot to take delivery of three machine guns and two silencers his bodyguard had bought. The man who sold the bodyguard the guns was an undercover federal agent.

A few months later, T.I. pleaded guilty to illegal possession of firearms and possession of a firearms by a felon; he was convicted of a Cobb County drug charge several years earlier.

For that he received a somewhat unusual sentence: a year and a day in prison after a year on probation during which he was to spend 1,000 hours of community service hours preaching the message that violence and guns are bad. It was during that first year that he produced and starred in an MTV series "T.I.'s Road to Redemption,"  in which he would give troubled teens a dose of reality.

If he did not complete the first 1,000 hours of community service he could have gone to prison for six years.

T.I.  served 85 percent of his prison sentence, first in a federal institution in Arkansas and then in a halfway house, and he was released  late last March still owing another 500 hours of community service and two years probation.

After he was released from prison, T.I. promised he would be a better person.

"Right now, it's all about moving forward and just acknowledging the blessing that are here today. ... Just moving past the regrets of yesterday — the things that could've been done better," T.I. said in an interview with the Associated Press in July.

Known as the "King of the South," T.I. is one of music's most profitable stars. In addition to the movie released a week ago, he is working on a new album, "King Uncaged," which may be released this year.

“The thing about this is it popularizes his film and sells more records,” Young said about the California arrest.

Despite his show business successes, Young said, T.I. was trying to have a more family-centric life.

“He was always very concerned about his children and tried to be a good father,” Young said. “I never suggested it [getting married] to him. But it’s easier and better to raise children if there is a commitment. I was thrilled when he asked me to perform his wedding.”

The former U.N. ambassador and civil rights leader said he had known T.I., about three years, when the rapper reached out to him during the year before he reported to prison.

“He and a group of his buddies came by my house … and we just talked,” Young said. “I invited him to church the next day and he came.”

After that, Young and T.I. made some joint appearances, including some that would be counted as T.I.’s community service. Some of those appearances were part of an Emmy- winning documentary “Walking with Guns.”

“I developed a great deal of respect for his intelligence and his sensitivity for his children and his family,” Young said. “He wanted to do right but he had grown up in an environment where it was hard to define right according to American middle class values. We never talked about drugs. We talked about violence and we talked about guns. We talked about family and we talked about community.”

Young said he would try to reach T.I. but “I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to think I’ve abandoned him.”