T.I. appeared to take a jab at YouTuber Charleston White last week as part of his verse on Jucee Froot’s latest single, “Step.” White and the Hustle Gang boss engaged in a contentious e-battle in October, with the dogmatic online personality saying he was going to “Trayvon Martin” Tip’s 18-year-old son at one point. A heated war of words ensued, so T.I. took his grievances to wax.
“Boy, I will drop you from a place so far from grace,” he raps on the song. “White folks will doubt you/Hey what a day/My son respond to what a f### n***a say /I end up on the internet, going back and forth with a jay/You’s a neva was, suck-a-dick-to-get-a-dub n-gga.”
White clearly heard the verse and decided to fire back with a short “diss track” (if it even qualifies) aimed at the Atlanta rapper. Clocking in a just over a minute, the track is essentially a compilation of several audio clips of White’s old T.I. commentary set to a beat. As for the video, it’s a low budget affair and shows White just dancing in front of a green screen.
T.I. spoke to AllHipHop about the entire Charleston White saga as it was unfolding. He explained why he initially responded on his social media platforms with so much vitriol—and it really didn’t have much to do with White.
“I was just in a real dark place—and not at all because of the words of a buffoon,” he said. “Not because of that. It was the silence of the community that really hurt my feelings. For a couple reasons, one, I’m a grown man. I’m a big boy. Whatever somebody says about me, whatever happens to me is fair game. God has blessed me to be able to deal with anything that come my way.
“But it kinda just brought back all of the hurt that came with the first situation when social media was used to attack my family. Not just me. Not just T.I. But to attack my family, and it was weaponized against me for political interests.”
Shaun King and Deon Taylor were two people who ultimately did stand up for T.I. As King wrote in an Instagram post at the time: “ Some cowardly man called himself making public death threats against TI’s teenage son, King. He started targeting King and somebody else’s son for clout. I won’t even repeat the vile and violent words this shameful man put out there.”
Revisit it below.