Street-respected and now commercially accepted, T.I. continues his grind from the trap to the top of the rap game. Whether you feel he’s The King of the South or not,  it’s fine time to give shawty his props.

T.I. is now platinum. Like just now, at 2:30 in the afternooon on Friday, February 25, here in a closet-sized dressing room at the world famous Apollo Theater, where he’s waiting for his TV-taping showtime, the Atlanta D-Boy turned rapper and CEO got the call from an Atlantic Records rep. It’s official. His latest album, Urban Legend, has shipped its millionth unit.

So today is a good day. But it’s been a long, pot-holed road for the man born Clifford Harris some 24 years ago. He was cutting demo tapes at age 11, crack dimes at 12. Discovered by former Parental Authority producer Kawan “KP” Prather, he was signed as a teenager to his hometown’s premier label, LaFace Records. Sadly, though, he was ignored  after head honcho L.A. Reid took over parent company Arista and shifted his focus to pop acts like Pink and Avril Lavigne. Despite production work from rap’s hottest new production team, the Neptunes, and T.I.’s bold and frequent proclamation that he was “The King of the South,” his 2001 debut, I’m Serious, went double-Styrofoam.

Dropped, but not quite humbled, T.I. got with his DJ, Toomp, and his manager, Jason Geter, and started a new label, Grand Hustle. Empowering his Pimp Squad Click crew and signing rappers Big Kuntry, Mecca AK and female duo Xtaci, T.I. wrote his name in fire on the streets. He sold 40,000 mixtapes (In Da Streets Pt. I and II); appeared on records with the likes of Baby, Mystikal, Tupac and Bone Crusher; and completed 80 percent of a second album before signing a joint-venture deal with Atlantic in 2003. Solidifying him, in David Banner’s words, as “the mouthpiece for all the traps and ghettos around the world,” Trap Muzik sold over 700,000 copies before T.I. got knocked last spring for violating parole from a 1998 drug charge. Out just in time to ravage Lil’ Flip onstage at Hot 107.9’s June birthday concert in Atlanta, T.I. then obliterated his Houston-based rival’s street cred with a soon-to-be-classic mixtape, Down With the King.

Today, the “Rose Gold King” is placed on a pedestal by music giants in the studio (“T.I.’s the Jay-Z of the South,” says Pharrell Williams) and in the offices (“Let’s be clear,” states Lyor Cohen. “T.I.—that kid’s the truth”). Jay’s pretty fond of him too, having bestowed an S. Carter endorsement deal, a place on last year’s Best of Both Worlds tour, and a huge look on the Destiny’s Child smash “Soldier.” Grand Hustle’s DJ Drama sums it up: “Tip has been proving himself from day one,” he says. “‘King of the South’ is a lot to have on your shoulders, but he holds it well.”

Minutes ago, you were informed that Urban Legend has been certified platinum. After all the work you’ve put in, and all the obstacles you’ve overcome, do you feel like you can finally celebrate?

Not really, not yet. I never placed a number on success. Whether it’s platinum, double ... triple platinum. If Usher can drop an album and sell a million in the first week, then that kind of sets the [standard] high. Like, what I’m doing, that shit is aight. Platinum is cool. But you got Eminem selling wild records, OutKast and Jay-Z and... Jay-Z and Linkin Park put some shit together with five songs that niggas done already heard, and it went through the roof. They outsold me in their first week. I just feel I still got a lot of work to do.

Hard work’s pretty much your calling card, huh. What’s your idea of “grand hustling”?

It means hustling in a science form, like to the next level. People take hustling and automatically connect it to selling dope. But to me, selling dope is the hustler’s last resort. Hustling is taking nothing and turning it into something, taking what’s only worth five and getting 10.

You see dope as a hustler’s last resort, but you resorted to it early in life.

Selling dope was the only way that I knew to provide sufficient funds at the time and still maintain the lifestyle that I wanted. The only people that I knew that were driving the kind of cars that I thought was cool and who woke up when they wanted, hit the clubs and just did what they wanted to do were dope dealers. So naturally, in the environment that I was in, it’s everyday life. You look outside; that’s what you see. You don’t see a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher or something like that. That don’t seem realistic.

What was your relationship with your family while you were deep in the streets?

They ain’t like it, but they helped me when they could and left me the fuck alone when they couldn’t deal with it. They always told me that I should be doing something else, and at one point in my life, I didn’t really communicate with my family like that. I’d call them just to let them know I was cool but… At one point we was in the streets real heavy, around ’96, ’97, ’98. I knew not to even go around my mama and my grandmama house, ’cause I knew they was gonna be saying, Why I ain’t in school? What am I doing? And I didn’t want to hear that shit.

What was it specifically that turned you off about school?

In high school I seen it like, everybody who drove they mama car to school, mama bought they school clothes and ain’t had to worry about shit else but going to school—them was the cool niggas. But niggas might not know what this man going through, coming back and forth to school, and here they laughing at his sneakers. This nigga [could be] living some grown man situations. I just didn’t like being around that shit. I think I matured way faster than everybody else. I felt like I knew what I wanted to do, and they were trying to figure it out. So why was I there?

But your time in the streets has continued to haunt you, even in your music career. When you got locked up last year, did you feel like you let your crew down?

Kind of. But at the same time, before I actually turned myself in, I knew I was going, so I made preparations. I orchestrated it to where shit could still move. Like, Kuntry was doing shows, Mecca AK was doing shows. They dropped they mixed tapes; they tapes was doing well. Xtaci was doing shows. And in the meantime, Clay and Hammer [of Grand Hustle] was booking shows like crazy for when I get out.