Goodnight, it's over with, that's all he wrote. Hip-hop mogul T.I. confirmed on Wednesday, Sept. 17, that he's cut all business ties with his former mentee Iggy Azalea.
The "Whatever You Like" hitmaker, 34, has been credited with Azalea's meteoric rise in the hip-hop world, but he shared with the crew of Ebro in the Morning that he was bowing out from his role as her mentor.
"In her defense, she had a lot thrown at her at one time," T.I. told the radio hosts. "Any human being anywhere [is gonna] have a hard time adjusting… It came at a time when culturally in this nation — when she's not from here — we were actually looking for a source to place that pent-up aggression. Some stuff they brought upon themselves. In some cases, it kind of was the easiest place to put some pent-up aggression."
The hosts asked T.I. what the exact breaking point was in their work relationship. "Yeah, after the Q-Tip thing," he noted.
Azalea, who's been at the forefront of numerous controversies in the last year, was famously schooled in December by fellow rapper Q-Tip. At the time, Q-Tip sent 40 direct tweets to the "Fancy" hitmaker, educating her about hip-hop history. T.I. later chimed in via Twitter and even defended his mentee, who faced immense backlash from the Internet for "misappropriating black culture."
"After I kind of had smoothed it over, like okay, 'What is really meant to be said here is…' Then, after it was cool, everything was cool," T.I. recalled. "And then they kind of came back and undid what I had just [orchestrated]. Imma be all the way real: I'm a loyal partner. If I rock with you, I'm gon' rock with you… Right, wrong, we're gonna discuss that in the car."
The Atlanta-raised rapper used a metaphor to further explain that situation with Azalea, 25. "Right now, Imma block the bullets…" he recalled. "When I say, 'Go?' Go! Don't stand around and tote while I'm blocking bullets. You slowing me down, you know what I'm saying?"
T.I. added an encouraging note for Azalea and her team. "But I really do feel that they just needed a little more time to adjust, which I feel they can do," he shared. "They have the talent, they have the charisma."
Azalea most recently made headlines after confirming — in a Seventeen cover story — that she had a nose job and got chin implants soon after getting a boob job. In that piece, she addressed her many haters and explained why she went off social media after being body-shamed.
“It’s hard to be a woman in 2015 with social media. There’s so much more emphasis on taking pictures of ourselves and the ‘likes’ or people commenting on them," she mused at the time. "There’s a lot more pressure to look beautiful… Some days I just want to look like s—t and feel okay with that."
