T.I. has written so many lyrics in his life that remembering most of them has apparently become a struggle.
Speaking to HipHopDX on the red carpet at the 2023 BET Awards in Los Angeles, the Atlanta rapper admitted that he has a hard time recalling the majority of his rhymes and offered some insight into his memory struggles.
The Grand Hustle honcho explained that songs are a “snapshot” of the moment they were written and said he’s often impressed when he hears some of his old lyrics.
“I cannot answer that question definitively because I don’t even remember most of the lyrics that I wrote,” he said when asked about his most underrated verse. “That’s the beauty about art as it pertains to music in Hip Hop because it’s about the mindset of the person at the time the song was created.
“So as soon as that song was created, once you walk out that booth, once you walk out that studio, you continue to live life, your mindset, your consciousness evolves, but the song is stuck in that moment, you see what I’m saying? So it’s a snapshot of that moment.”
He added: “We can listen back and be proud. I still to this day hear a lot of songs that I’ve written, a lot of verses that I’ve spit and I’m like, ‘Damn, okay. I had a hell of a perspective at the time.’”
T.I. isn’t alone. Eminem and Lil Wayne have previously admitted they have to research their own lyrics to avoid repeating lines that they may have forgotten.
“When we first start out, it’s a blank canvas,” Em told Wayne during an appearance on his Young Money Radio show in 2020. “We start painting on that canvas until that shit’s full. But when you’ve made so many song about everything, it gets a little tricky. The trick is to do the next one and keeping it going, do the next one with a little twist.”
Weezy then revealed his Google search history includes “Lil Wayne lyrics” because he’s constantly checking to see if he’s repeated himself.
“If you look in my phone history, with Google history, and you press the letter L, it comes up ‘Lil Wayne lyrics,’” he said. “I literally have to Google my own lyrics to make sure I didn’t say certain stuff before.”
Eminem replied: “Oh my God! I swear to God I do that too! I just did that shit last night. Man, that’s funny as hell. I been doing that for the past five years! You be like, ‘Oh, I knew I flipped this before.’
“It’s crazy because when you’re really into the craft you gotta come up with a new pocket, a new cadence, melodies. You can’t do the same flows, none of that.”
