Please listen to Jay Smooth’s October 2007 commentary on rapper TI’s arrest on federal gun charges right before he was scheduled to appear at the BET Hip Hop Awards where he had been nominated for nine awards.
Jay goes way beyond acknowledging that if T.I. was guilty of those charges (which he eventually plead guilty to after this video was made) that it was a ‘stupid choice’ which Jay in no way excuses — to a very sensitive analysis of why someone might do something like that.
T.I. says now in the biography on his website:
“Obviously that was one of the worst mistakes of my entire life, but I will not let that mistake characterize my existence or my contribution to society,” says T.I. “I cannot go back and change the past, but I can learn from it, and teach others how a poor assessment of a situation can not only affect you drastically but also impact the ones you love. It’s something that I still have to deal with.”
Jay talks about having worked in a group home for youth in the past, and what he learned there. I very much agree with what he understands based on my own work at shelters with young people.
Thank you, Jay. I’m glad to be allowed to share this.