Rapper T.I. sat down with NY magazine yesterday during a presser at the Capitale in lower Broadway hours before he hit the stage for his AXE-sponsored One Night Only concert series.

Onstage, T.I. is all about showcasing the swagger that made him a star, bouncing around in his gleaming white wife beater, blinged-out dog tags around his neck. But offstage, earlier in the day, he was all business, pacing around the event space, using his BlackBerry, and conducting a series of short interviews. The rapper has compared King Uncaged to Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez on Me, which made millions off the artists’ musings on life as a felon. T.I. wants Uncaged to be the next great post-prison rap album: “[In prison] when I was so frustrated that it made me feel such and such, I made sure I wrote that down, like, ‘I feel like this is some bullshit, because … ’” he said. “When you hear the album, you’ll be able to pinpoint aggression, and that’s due to me capturing those moments of incarceration.”

But aside from the odd dear-diary missive, T.I. said he didn’t actually write much of the record in jail. He was too busy. “I taught a class; I played handball; I played football, coached softball; I worked out a lot,” he remembers. “But writing? There just wasn’t much time for that.” The way he describes it, jail sounds kind of … fun, like summer camp. “No! Not at all, not even a little bit,” the rapper disagreed, laughing and shaking his head. “By no stretch of the imagination! I don’t want anyone to assume, think, or believe that for one moment. Two thumbs down. Two big toes, down!”

Photo: Wireimage/Getty