You know Southern rappers get better promotion...

That's just a joke. But considering how much I bought into the hype of this latest release by TIP "TI" Harris (why do I love saying that), I have to think that this man has gotten one of the best promotional efforts in effect since 50 Cent and "Get Rich or Die Tryin'". TI's probably gonna ship half a million the first week.

This is the beauty of good marketing. They got the four P's on-point with this album (product, price, place, and promotion). The album isn't even better than the last joint in my opinion. I'm a T.I. fan and I must say that I am little disappointed right now. Granted, this album is probably better than half the albums that will come out this year but it's just not an improvement on the last album. But it will sell because T.I. is all you have been hearing about for the last two or three weeks. From "Front Back" to "What you know" to the ATL movie trailers. And his last album was solid so people will expect this one to be better than that (unfortunately, it's not). On top of that, T.I. was smart and released two street-ish songs (the two aforementioned) that can still be played in the club. And he's still got like 3 soft-a$$ (Goodlife, Why you wanna, and Stand Up Guy) radio cuts on the album the mainstream radio listeners haven't heard yet (unless they got the album already). So I think he'll be platinum by mid-April and once he releases 2 of those 3 radio joints (which really piss me off by the way) he'll go double-platinum.

I would review the album song-by-song, but it's not really worth it. I'll just tell you what to download for free:

"Front Back"
"What You know" (this is my shyt right now)
"I'm Talking to You" (shows some nice versatility with his flow on this one)
"Live In the Sky"
"I'm Straight" (BG and Jeezy do their thing on this one)
"Goodlife" (not a good song, but Common's on it so it's worth a listen)

I suggest waiting for this joint to show up on www.yourmusic.com and paying $5.99 for it. I know that sounds harsh but $12 is hard to come off of nowadays considering that's only a quarter tank of gas for a ni99a like me. By no means is this album a BAD album. It's just not better than the last joint and after Urban Legend, T.I. needed to step his game up a little to be one of the top tier rappers in the game. I don't think he did that with this album. Maybe the next. So he might be KING right now, but if Lil Weezy gets some solid production and promotion on his next album, Tipper might be dethroned. It's good to see TI making his money and being successful though.