T.I. became a star by rapping about the gritty west Atlanta neighborhoods near the Georgia Tech campus.
On Monday, the entertainer and entrepreneur visited the institution as part of an effort by Georgia Tech to expose students from those neighborhoods to the university and encourage them to use technology to create innovative projects.
The hour-long visit was organized by Magnus Egerstedt, the Steve W. Chaddick Chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Vernell Woods, who earned a scholarship to attend Tech and is current chief technology officer for Grand Hustle Records, the label founded by T.I.
“If we have an alignment with an entity like Georgia Tech...we have no choice but to advance,” T.I. said.
More than 100 Atlanta Public Schools students from those nearby neighborhoods attended what Georgia Tech described as a “fireside chat” with T.I., Egerstedt and Woods. A similar number of Georgia Tech students also attended.
In 2014, Georgia Tech announced a program which guarantees admission and provides financial support to the top graduates from Atlanta Public Schools. However, just 39 APS students from the graduating class of 2018 attended Georgia Tech, according to a report by Achieve Atlanta, an organization that helps Atlanta students enroll in college. Seven colleges and universities had more students.
“Georgia Tech is not the first thought of the young people of these nearby communities, but it should be,” Egerstedt told reporters beforehand.
T.I. and Egerstedt during the chat discussed the possibility of offering more scholarships to APS students from those neighborhoods.
Egerstedt noted that many Georgia Tech have never faced adversity in the classroom until arriving on campus and have difficulty dealing doing so. Egerstedt he hoped T.I. would inspire the Georgia Tech students in the audience to learn how to be “relentless.”
T.I., the self-proclaimed “King of the South,” credited Atlanta’s history of “black excellence” to that relentlessness.
“I feel like that’s the spirit of this city...That entrepreneurial spirit allows us to be who we are today,” he told the audience.
Egerstedt, who described himself as a “scientist from Northern Europe,” joked about their differences during the chat. The department chair used the phrase “swagger up” several times, which drew a question from the star.
“Explain this swagger up,” T.I. said to laughter.
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