Earlier this week, I blogged about my dismay at the way that the mainstream media and Lil’ Wayne himself were characterizing his incarceration at Rikers Island.

In the new issue of Complex Magazine, T.I. is interviewed about his career in music and also speaks about the effects of his incarceration.   Here are some key parts of his interview:

At the end of “Yeah You Know,” you said, “Prison ain’t changed me, it made me worse.” In what sense did you mean that?

T.I.: When I was goin’ through it, I really felt like it added insult to injury. The lesson had already been learned. I already understood the errors in my ways and made the adjustments necessary. It did make me worse in a sense that, before I went in, I was already on a path of positivity. Putting me in prison took me off that path a little bit, and now I’m working to get back on that path—or at least back on the path to the extent that I was before I went in. I’m still not as bad as I was before this incident, but I lost a little bit of my positive focus during that period of incarceration. Being in that environment and having those daily surroundings, it’s going to affect you.

Was there an album that helped you get through your incarceration?

T.I.: I didn’t listen much to records when I was in there. Music is what I do every day. That made me more homesick than anything. I didn’t watch videos. I watched series like Sons of Anarchy. I’m a fan. It’s another form of The Sopranos to me. I watched football and ESPN. Another thing we watched was Hung. It had a good idea, but it depends on where they go from here. They watched a lot of that True Blood. I couldn’t really do that. They got into that shit heavy. The whole prison damn near shut down. Everybody left off the yard, like, “True Blood coming on!” They went crazy for it—there’s a bunch of sex in it, so they were tuning in for that.

What I appreciate here is that T.I. attempts to explain the emotional effects that incarceration has had on his life.  This is far different from the somewhat more “glamorous” portrayal of Lil’ Wayne’s current circumstances at Rikers.