T.I. is addressing the controversy that stemmed from divisive comments he previously made about his daughter’s virginity.
The rapper, 45, sparked backlash in 2019 when he said on the Ladies Like Us podcast that he took his then-teenage daughter Deyjah, who is now 25, to the gynecologist each year to ensure she was still a virgin by checking her hymen was still intact. He was criticized as misogynistic and later publicly apologized to his daughter for embarrassing her.
In a recent interview with People, the father-of-seven said that since the controversy, “I’ve learned not to do as much talking as I do listening.”
“That sucked,” T.I. said in the article published Saturday. He told the outlet that his family had been filming their reality show T.I. and Tiny: Friends and Family Hustle when the podcast was released and the criticism started.
“When the podcast that the interview was on, when it first came out and everything happened, we experienced that as a family in real time, and it just happened to have been recorded,” he said.
He continued: “By the time the episode or the season was finished and it came around to being aired, we’d already went through it, and the episode of the TV show was taking us back through it again.”
Shortly after the rapper made the comments, Harris told her family members in an episode of their reality show that she was “shocked, hurt, angry and embarrassed.”
“Things are completely uncomfortable for me right now,” the teenager said at the time. “We’re all together in this house, so I have to see my dad and be around him...so it’s not like I can leave and get away.”
She continued, “I mean, honestly, I’m embarrassed definitely for sure. I’m trying to put it in the back of my mind so I’m not really thinking about it. I know it’s not healthy. But I’ve been doing that since I was a child.”
Harris went on to become emotional while speaking about her relationship with her father, adding that she felt that her father spoke about sex differently with her and her two sisters than he did with his sons.
“I just don’t really care to be around him right now,” she said. “I’ll be a better parent. I mean, I’m not saying he’s a bad parent. I’m just saying when it comes to stuff like this, I’m just gonna be more connected mentally, emotionally.”
