David Banner believes that T.I. is the reason he can now be considered a “million-dollar producer.”
Banner opened up about T.I.’s impact on Club Shay-Shay (around the 1:35 mark in the video below) when explaining how he met the Atlanta rapper and what he did to help him make more money.
“He came early, if you think about it,” Banner said of Tip. “Bro, I was so blessed because what people don’t know is that I produced ‘Thug Holiday’ for Trick Daddy — but nobody knew who David Banner was at the time.”
“So I wasn’t able to take advantage. I wasn’t even in the video. But T.I. is the person who allowed me to be a million-dollar producer,” Banner continued. “‘Rubber Band Man’ changed the texture. He’s also, and people won’t admit this, the reason why producers can put their tags on their beat on the radio.”
Banner then explained the importance of tagging beats because of how it helps producers make more money.
“My tag was on my beats way before ‘Rubber Band Man’ but the radio stations would shave it off,” Banner explained. “T.I. called [the stations] and said, ‘Dont touch my music, that boy worked hard.’”
“Only reason I did that was because Jay-Z would be like ‘Kanye, you a fool! Just Blaze, you did it again!’ And every time he would say their name, they could charge $10,000 extra,” Banner continued. “Southern rappers hid their producers.”
Banner claimed that he was the producer who popularized putting tags before beats on a wider scale. “I’m not gonna let them look over me,” he said of his mindset at the time.
In May, Banner opened up about realizing he needed help for his mental health during an interview with Essence. “There’s this pressure of being perfect or not being allowed to make a mistake,” he explained. “That can make anyone depressed, and I was in it.”
