T.I. has released the title track from his upcoming album, Paperwork, and it’s a relaxed and catchy recollection of the Atlanta rapper’s somewhat disreputable youth. Featuring a falsetto-singing Pharrell on an irresistible retro hook, “Paperwork” is a little more relaxed than the hip-hop don’s recently released singles “New National Anthem” and “Turn It,” the former of which directly addressed America’s current cultural problems.
It’s not as if the new song is meaningless though. Instead of addressing present-day politics, T.I. looks to the past and his dangerous adolescence and upbringing instead, noting that he “Had a notebook full of rhymes / And a pocket full of crack rock dimes / Time on my side, lift .45 in my jeans.”
You can hear “Paperwork” below while you’re waiting for the King MC’s ninth album, his first since 2012’s Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head, to drop on October 21.
