Clifford Harris has gotten pretty good at this self-fulfilling prophecy thing. Though 2003's Trap Musik made him a regional royal in Atlanta, 2006's King accurately predicted he'd go nationwide. That record, combined with the positive reception of his film ATL the same year, gave hip-hop the legitimate multimedia crossover star it needed as interest in 50 Cent flagged. But his predictive powers worked against him on last year's T.I. vs T.I.P., a sloppy and rushed collection loosely based on the notion that no matter how firmly the rapper entrenched himself in the pop world, anything from his hustler past-- from his hotheadedness to his felonies to his associations-- could compromise his success. Which is exactly what happened: He's now staring down jail time for attempting to purchase machine guns from a federal agent in a Walgreens parking lot.
T.I. apparently learned his lesson, and on Paper Trail, he's not taking any chances with an extraneous narrative. Although some recent mixtape tracks suggest we might be getting a 25th Hour-like confessional from Harris on his way to a one-year sentence in 2009 (or reality TV), Paper Trail bases itself on the assumption that everything's going to be all right for him, emotionally and financially. Breaking rank from his previous two efforts by writing down his lyrics again, he immediately shows a willingness to do something other than coast from hook to hook-- at least at the outset, on "56 Bars (Intro)" and "I'm Illy". Not that he's morphed into Pharoahe Monch or anything: His wordplay likens his weed to celery and his money-getting ability to the U.S. Treasury, which are pretty lame boasts these days.
The real shift in tone, though, becomes apparent in T.I.'s eagerness to please: Even with "Swagga Like Us", Paper Trail hosts as many obligatory guest R&B hookmen as rappers. The conciliatory lover's rock of "Whatever You Like", with its near-absence of rapping, spotlights a synth pluck as flirty and debauched as a coked-up celebutante as proof that this "Lollipop" thing is a full-blown trend, not just a one-off WTF. And despite T.I. making an uncomfortable number of veiled threats to bloggers, Just Blaze goes all Rivers Cuomo by cratedigging in YouTube; the internet-approved "Numa Numa" song is now a hook via Rihanna at her most robo. (The song bottoms out on listenability even before you get to the surprisingly unctuous moralizing of its second verse.) And if you justifiably figured "Porn Star" would be the album's low point, wait til Tip stoops to using a "life is like a..." device so cornball that even Travis beat him to it.
Paper Trail more often succeeds when the positivity sounds more earned than court-ordered. Beyond the fact that "On Top of the World" squashes a Ludacris/T.I. beef that threatened to get even more stupidly dangerous (though T.I. isn't above going at Shawty Lo on "What Up, What's Haapnin'"), it's a perfect pairing that makes you wonder how many awesome collaborations we missed out on. Luda's verse is infectiously joyous and quotable ("We see Samuel L. Jackson, like, 'What's up motherfucker!'") as T.I. provides the perfect foil with the weariness of someone whose fight will never be over. The same goes for "No Matter What", the most musically striking track, with Danja's churchgoing organ sighs and punched-up drums. While T.I. lords over wannabes that want to "get a beat from Toomp and make a hook like shawty," ending with a line like "I just let go and let God deal with it" may seem deflating, but in the context of a rap persona that owes its success to otherworldly confidence, it's a telling display of how little control he really feels.
For better or worse, "Swagga Like Us" defines Paper Trail. In the style of those can't-miss 90s posse cuts, T.I., Lil' Wayne, Kanye West, and Jay-Z spit over a martial beat that samples M.I.A.'s pop chart infiltrator "Paper Planes". What could go wrong? Unfortunately, one-upmanship gives way to self-assured competence and Khaled-inspired complacence. T.I. effortlessly bests them all, but in this track, you see how the album manages to be a more detailed manuscript of Tip's complexity: An impending incarceration has lit a fire under him, triggering an impulse to challenge himself. But T.I. has spent too much of his life fighting to get where he is, and Paper Trail's desire to play things chill suggests a different sort of trap than we're used to hearing about from him.
