The relationship between rappers and producers is akin to cereal and milk, one needing the other to complete the meal. In some cases, however, the combination spans beyond that, entering a chemistry only defined by classic records. Snoop Dogg had Dr. Dre. Missy Elliott had Timbaland. Juvenile, Lil Wayne, Turk, B.G. and Birdman had Mannie Fresh. Guru had Premier. And T.I. is forever linked to DJ Toomp, a bond the man born Aldrin Davis reveals he understood was special from the first time they shared the same studio space together long before the Grammys and chart-topping hits came calling.
Tip’s sophomore album, Trap Muzik, turns a decade old today. It’s also a project whose impact grew to become more significant than anyone involved during the days of 2003 when T.I.’s career was still very much cloudy.
“For the amount of work we put in, we really didn’t know we were carving out a lane like that. It just ended up catching on,” said Toomp.
The lane he speaks of involves “the trap.” The area of life where, in its most explicit form, is the lone job many of the “have-nots” have conditioned themselves is they lone position they qualify for. The same area that can serve as both an office and fitting room for a casket, occasionally on the same day. It was this walk of life T.I. and Toomp – who oversaw the project as executive producer – desperately wanted to bring to the forefront of Hip-Hop.
I had a nearly 90-minute conversation with Toomp earlier this month as he drove around Atlanta (in his BMW 750, of course), one that saw him with no shortage of words in regards to the artist, the project and the nurturing procedure it took to bring everything to fruition. As the man behind the boards, he has always understood the person breathing air over his instrumentals will continually receive the brunt of the praise. It’s an agreement he’s comfortable with and one, in turn, which has made him a living legend in the process. Having worked with the likes of names spanning back to 2 Live Crew to still-relevant personalities like Jay Z, Toomp’s most groundbreaking connection has come with T.I.
With the success of songs like “Be Easy” (which he says Shawty Redd coined as his biggest inspiration as he created his own brand of trap music), “24’s,” “Rubberband Man” and “Bezzle,” the mission was accomplished and seeds were planted. Tip brought the trap to the forefront of mainstream Hip-Hop. It’s a trend that has since carried over to the present day; a blessing Toomp sees equally as a gift and curse.
“It’s a little bit of both. You’ve got some cats who’re really just rapping it because it sounds good,” he says. “Then you’ve got some cats who really were apart of that whole trap movement and I’m thankful that they can continue to touch the stage now. There are some decent records, but some of them really are misrepresenting.”
There are the fiends he and Tip both remember as well as the lower-income housing that basically set up as a invitation to get money however possible. The “competition” is a completely different beast. According to the Atlanta Police Foundation, between the years 2002-2010, the city’s violent crime rate dropped 13% with the two highest years coming in 2002 and 2003, ironically the two years it took to produce the album. Trap Muzik not only defined T.I.’s life, it was a microcosm of Atlanta as a whole.
“To not include both sides of the trap, that’s really being unfair to the youngsters who listen to the music,” said Toomp.
A common misconception about Trap Muzik is T.I. being paranoid. Having just inked his deal with Atlantic Records at the time, Tip claim of being the “king of the south” was seen as peculiar to some. In retrospect, Toomp even saw likeness the occasional backlash to that of LeBron James – another pop culture now-icon who rubbed some the wrong way with his nickname “King James” before even taking a dribble on a NBA court.
“The people who took offense to it ended up falling in line after awhile,” laughed Toomp.
Tip’s debut album, I’m Serious, was a cult classic to those familiar. Anthems in the vein of “Dope Boyz (In The Trap)” and “Still Ain’t Forgave Myself” eventually panned out as catalog-defining records for T.I. Yet, the album failed to meet expectations from a commercial appeal standpoint.
T.I. was still largely unknown outside of his core audience. It was this diehard group of fans, however, Toomp saw as an added advantage moving forward. Serious, if nothing else, was a learning experience.
“We had a chance to see what we did wrong and what LaFace did wrong. One thing about that album was that even though it wasn’t super successful, we were still getting a lot of shows,” said Toomp. “It was a lot of little towns who purchased that album and wanted to see dude live. A lot of relationships were built with I’m Serious.”
A decade earlier, T.I. was finding success in music, but still figuratively had one hand supplanted in his pre-rapper routine. No, drug dealing wasn’t apart of the equation, but Tip occasionally put himself in positions not ideal for a man with so much at stake probably should have.
Toomp laughs when remembering times he and Grand Hustle CEO Jason Geter would engage in boot camp/”Scared Straight”-type verbal altercations with T.I. behind closed doors.
“We’d be like, ‘Listen, man. It’s not just you. It’s all of us. We put a lot of time and invested a lot of energy into blowing you up. We believe in you.’ It took a minute.,” said Toomp. “He was real hard-headed at the beginning until he started bumping his head a few times. We used to have to really drill at the beginning, man.”
For as stubborn as the much younger T.I. was, loyalty to his closest friends was his most non-negotiable trait, one of them being Philant Johnson. The story of Philant and his graphic ending is the darkest chapter of Tip’s career, and the single event that can be traced to when his life began to take a downward spiral from a personal perspective.
While more familiar with the members of P$C at the time, Toomp recalls Philant during the Trap Muzik-era as a guy willing to do whatever if the return meant seeing his childhood friend achieve his dreams as an artist.
“While Tip was recording, Philant was really out here doing the footwork, spreading the word like that. He was putting a lot of stuff together for the road,” said Toomp.
It’s tough to remember a guy like Philant during a festive time such as creation of the album that turned Tip into the South’s most promising star. His story ended too violently and too tragically. Everyone close to Philant sees him everyday through his children. T.I., for all the success he achieved with Trap Muzik and beyond lives with the fact the bullets which took the life of his friend were intended for him. Those are heavy burdens for T.I., Toomp and anyone who called Philant a friend deal with in their own ways to this day.
If a silver lining did exist, however, Toomp saw Philant’s murder as a opportunity to reinvest how to operate when interacting with fans, members of artist’s circle and everyone in between. Toomp used the passing as an opportunity to rebuild his spiritual foundation. An artist like Jay Z stopped attending after parties for awhile. Young Jeezy completely revamped his circle of trust. There was a point in his career when Jeezy, according to Toomp, “was fighting in almost every city he went to.”
“To have Kanye do two songs on Trap Muzik was excitng. What’s wild though was Kanye was still grinding still trying to get respect as an artist,” said Toomp.
Still months away from the release of his classic and generational-defining debut, The College Dropout, Toomp remembers West pulling he and T.I. to the side asking for feedback on his own material. ‘Ye desperately wanted any sort of synopsis he was moving in the right direction, almost as if he was seeking approval from the same artists who wanted his approval to use his production.
Fast forward four years later and Kanye was a superstar. The bond formed during the Trap Muzik sessions never left West. It’s why Toomp was trusted to lay the groundwork for Graduation’s two biggest singles, “Can’t Tell Me Nothin’” and “Good Life,” and later visiting Hawaii for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on “All Of The Lights.”
“To see where Kanye is now and remember where he was on that Trap Muzik album, that’s something that I’m always going to remember. At the end of the day, all you can say about that man is, ‘Damn, boy, you a genius!’” said Toomp. “From that to really using the Internet for the first time to create music. He’d send me different things telling me what he thought about it. And then we finalized it and there it is, ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothin’.”
“That album caught so much attention and I was able to display what I had to offer. It ain’t no telling where I’d be without Trap Muzik. Without that album, I’d still be trying to get my stuff heard. It ain’t that easy,” said Toomp.
The T.I. seen 10 years removed from the one who dropped an eye-opening sophomore set is a completely different artist, father, husband and friend. He’s rap’s Heathcliff Huxtable now as seen on VH1′s massively successful T.I. and Tiny: The Family Hustle. The transformation is one Toomp has been nothing short of pleased to witness court side.
Perhaps he sees it as a little brother navigating through the hurdles life has tossed only to emerge a better person. Perhaps it’s something deeper he chose not to reveal. Regardless, when speaking of his partner-in-rhyme in 2013 – who he fervently says he “can’t wait” to do an entire project with one day soon – Toomp acknowledges the change was exactly what Tip needed.
“You’re definitely seeing a totally different man who has gone through a few ups and downs. All of it was a learning experience. He’s making bigger and better records,” says Toomp. “He’s not just pigeon-holed as this little trap dude. He’s a well-rounded artist who can touch on everything.”
Despite a common belief in rap being evolution harms an artist’s career – and in some cases it may – Toomp hit the nail on the head. T.I. has grown, both in and out of the booth. He had to. He nearly lost everything not doing so.
Nothing will erase Trap Muzik and its role in the South’s rise and decade-plus stranglehold on Hip-Hop. Not the feds, not even death itself. August 19, 2003, changed the life of everyone involved, including Toomp, and the culture of rap as whole. The album proved the same hustler’s ambition, insecurities and pitfalls in hoods from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago to Los Angeles were hurdles in Bankhead and Zone 1, too. The only difference just happened to be the size of a person’s rims on their Chevy.
A king remembered in time, indeed.
