a thought on Tiny & TIP

After dropping T.I. off at the prison, Tiny lays out in the towncar

While watching BET’s Tiny & Toya, I thought to myself, “geez, I hope we don’t spend the rest of the season listening to Tiny whine about T.I. being in jail.” Shortly after having that thought, I started to think about it outside of a reality show context. To me it’s just another “storyline” in a television show I watch occasionally. To her, the head of their family and the love of her life is gone for a year and a day. While she’s trying to maintain a normal life down in Atlanta, GA, T.I. is on ice up in Forest Hills, Arkansas. Normal life might be a bit of a stretch. She’s in front of the cameras on her own reality show. She’s dealing with a father who is steadily losing it due to Alzheimer’s Disease. She’s struggling with resurrecting a singing career. Those things alone would be enough to stress out any one of us. Tiny, though, is shouldering a burden that many women of color carry at some point in their lives… losing a man to prison/jail.

I know he’s a felon*, but so cute!

Look. I’m pretty much grown out of age where I dated “bad boys.” Actually, I didn’t really go through a bad boy phase. I just dated one guy who happened to sell drugs and went to jail. No biggie! The point I’m trying to get to is that T.I. is hella cute and his criminal record has no bearing on that whatsoever.

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Maybe it’s just because he’s kuntry as all get out. I think back to the guys I dated while living in North Carolina for 6 years and sometimes moving back down there doesn’t seem like such a bad idea! I used to tease my ex Marcus about his Southern accent but in retrospect I loved it. To this day I try to get my NY girls to take trips with me down south so they can soak up all that honey-twanged goodness! LOL

Anyway, I like T.I. on Chelsea Handler’s show (she’s friggin’ hilarious, by the way). He was a good sport when it came to personal issues and he had a great sense of humor. Chelsea was dead on though – that smile and those teeth = beautiful!

*By the way, felons can still vote. T.I. voted already since Georgia’s an early voting state. Cute and politically conscious!