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I love T.I. Make that loved — past tense. I’m a fan of trap music — both the genre and his album of the same name (different spelling because ninjas love to replace an s with a z and a c with a k). I listen to Motivation at least once a week to keep me, well, motivated, and I truly find myself tickled by his inability to choose the correct $10 word to use in his many failed attempts at sounding educated and informed (check the apology he already released below). But I can’t lie and say that over the years the Jay Z of the South hasn’t disappointed me, repeatedly so. The first offence being when he was locked up in 2003 just as his national fame was taking off, the more recent being when I waited hours to interview him at an event and he couldn’t be bothered to answer anymore questions, the latest: his undeniably sexist viewpoint that a women can’t be president.

In the most recent disappointing moment of his career, the rapper told DJ Whoo Kid:

“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman. Just because, every other position that exists, I think a woman could do well. But the president? It’s kinda like, I just know that women make rash decisions emotionally – they make very permanent, cemented decisions – and then later, it’s kind of like it didn’t happen, or they didn’t mean for it to happen. And I sure would hate to just set off a nuke. [Other leaders] will not be able to negotiate the right kinds of foreign policy; the world ain’t ready yet. I think you might be able to get the Lochness Monster elected before you could [get a woman].”

Yes, I know. A rapper who regularly spits lyrics about b-itches is sexist? Clutch the pearls! To be honest, I’m not even so mad at the blatant sexism underlying his words because it runs rampant in the music that I listen to and, admittedly, enjoy. The more disappointing revelation here, in my opinion, is the hypocrisy in T.I.’s argument that a woman can’t lead the free world because we “make rash decisions emotionally.” This, from a paranoid man who got busted in a federal sting with three machine guns and two silencers in 2007 because he saw death around every corner after his friend Philant was murdered following a concert in Cincinnati. If spending $12,000 on guns when you’re already a convicted felon isn’t a rash and very permanent decision, considering he spent nine months in prison because of it, I don’t know what is. And let’s address the selfishness of his method of protecting his family as he left a then-girlfriend at home alone to raise his clan of six. Wouldn’t better security have been a smarter, more thought out decision, instead of acting like his crime was no big deal (i.e. “it didn’t happen”) because he feared for his family’s life.

Or what about a man rash enough to yet again jeopardize his wife’s livelihood when he was busted with weed and ecstasy in his car shortly after he and Tiny jumped the broom? Or let’s talk about man who’s allegedly 5’9″ in stature swinging on a lightweight-featherweight-welterweight-middleweight boxing champion at Fat Burger simply because his wife posted a picture on Instagram hanging out with The Money Team? I see 35 years worth of rash decisions from where I’m sitting. The worst thing we can say about Hillary Clinton is she stuck by Bill, which from a political standpoint was actually smart. And she used personal email for work tasks. And yet the Lochness Monster has a better chance of seeing the White House than she does?

T.I.’s right. The world isn’t ready yet for Clinton because small-minded, controlling, insecure, misogynistic hypocrites like him still exist in this world and are able to influence others to follow in his simple path. The only thing truthful to come out of T.I.’s rant is that he can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman because as a convicted felon he likely can’t vote at all, not if he’s still on probation from his many criminal charges that is. I have no time for a man with a wife and young daughters at home with no record of doing anything to improve our nation other than handing out toys with Jeezy every Thanksgiving and ranting about Black people in Ferguson destroying their neighborhoods in the wake of Mike Brown’s death on Instagram while failing to offer up counter-solutions judging what another woman can do. If you want to talk about facts that matter– like the concern Clinton is disconnected from the Black Lives Matter movement or isn’t inclusive of Black women in her pro-feminist musings — then we can have a conversation. Not that a man who wouldn’t let his wife go to a party while he was in prison because he couldn’t go would care much about the latter. The funny thing is for all this chit-chatting, the only person I see being emotional is Clifford Harris. Because you do know fear (of gender equality) is an emotion right? Hey T.I.P., your insecurity is unequivocally showing. And this moment won’t be forgotten.

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