T.I Biography

Biography

Early life and career beginningsT.I. was born Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. on September 25, 1980, in Bankhead, Atlanta, Georgia.[3] He was raised by his grandparents and was a drug dealer as a teenager.[4][5] He was at one time known as Rubber Band Man, a reference to the custom of wearing rubber bands around the wrist to denote wealth in terms of drugs or money.[6] He was nicknamed "Tip" after his paternal great-grandfather.[7] Kawan "KP" Prather, a record executive, discovered and signed T.I. when he was a teenager.[8] Upon signing with Arista Records subsidiary LaFace Records in 2001, he shortened his name to T.I. out of respect for label mate Q-Tip.[9] In 2009, T.I. appeared as himself on an episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. On the episode, he took the comedienne to Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles in LA and gave her a lesson on how to "swagger."[