T.I. attends the 2014 BET Awards at Nokia Plaza L.A. LIVE on June 29, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)T.I. may be a happily married man, but he's always had a way with the ladies.
"I can't remember a time that I had a problem conversing with girls," he admits in Elle's November 2014 issue. "My most embarrassing moments came from me wanting to talk to older girls, and having them say, 'Oh, that's cute,' when I was dead serious. [They were] probably 18...when I was, like, 8. I mean, I didn't know exactly what I was serious about, but I always told them, 'One day, you gonna be too old. And I'm gonna be just right. And you're gonna wish you woulda took advantage of this opportunity.'"
Tameka "Tiny" Cottle, 39, took advantage of that opportunity when she began dating T.I. 34, in 2001. "Back in my single days, I didn't bother [trying to impress women with lavish gifts]," the "Wit Me" rapper recalls. "I thought it would blur the lines of sincerity. It was hard to know why a person is there if you give them false motivation. I wasn't never one to be showering women with gifts. Tameka broke me in."
Wait, he needed Tiny to teach him to give women gifts?
"Not to give any woman gifts," he clarifies. "To give her gifts!"
Perhaps because of his wife, T.I. embraces a life of excess. In his summer hit, "No Mediocre," for example, he rapped about having "sex on the beach from Bermuda to Cuba." Regarding the lyrics, he says. "I've had sex on a beach. Not exactly in Bermuda," he confesses. "It was more of a metaphor."
He's not worried about sand ruining the moment, though. "You gotta have your utensils together, you know what I'm saying? A towel, a blanket—come prepared for the elements," he tells Elle. "It's the kind of thing you do once, say you've done it, and then say, 'OK, OK, it's enough. Let's go somewhere else."