At 41 years old, T.I. has lived an impressive life, from dropping off bangers like “Whatever You Like” and “Life Your Life” in the late 2000s to acting in films like Ant-Man, Rhythm + Flow, and Get Hard. During a recent sitdown with Tony “The Closer” Robinson, the father of seven opened up about the biggest paycheck he’s ever received, and how he handles the pressure that comes along with it.
“The most money I’ve ever had at once as far as one paycheck?” the rapper responded when asked about his financial history. “I think, I don’t know, $26 million maybe, something like that. To be honest with you, man, it’s a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of pressure to maintain, manage. Because getting the money ain’t half as challenging as keeping it.”
T.I. in 2019 — Paras Griffin/Getty Images
The Atlanta-born entertainer then admitted that he once kept a $10 million check in his wallet for a year. “I ain’t want cash. For one, I ain’t need it. I was still getting show money, it was just a lump sum,” he said.
“And that’s another thing, I’ve gotten big checks, but I already had money. So I just added this with that, neither here nor there. Man, eight-figure checks feel like the devil could potentially pull you under. That shit just feel like it’s a lot of scrutiny, ’cause people are after this.”
T.I. then acknowledged that “a muthaf*cka would tear [his] head off” over his money. “Now that I have it, you can only have as much as you can protect. So it feels like a lot of responsibility,” he told Robinson.
“It’s better than being broke, I’ll tell you that,” the “Dead and Gone” collaborator shared, though he added that he wants everyone to experience mass wealth so they can understand that “Money don’t matter, unless you ain’t got it. Money is an instrument, it’s a tool.”
“You use money to do things that will generate more opportunity to get more money. A lot of us have been taught to use money as a tool to boost and stroke and kinda fan the flames of the ego. Myself included, I ain’t tryna exclude myself, me too,” he explained.
In conclusion, T.I. offered some financial advice to listeners, saying, “But money is a tool – people use money to get more money. People use money to get more peace. People use money to get more security for themselves and their family. If you’re just using it for vanity purposes, that shit is gonna be gone before you know it.”
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[Via]