T.I. recalls how Andre 3000 actually surprised him at the studio to record their upcoming collaboration.

The year is coming to a close, and fans are beginning to anticipate the December 18 release date for T.I.’s eighth studio LP Trouble Man. Now, in an interview with 3 Little Digs, Tip speaks on one of the album’s most talked about tracks – a collaboration with Andre 3000.

T.I. explained that it was actually Three Stacks who contacted him one day and made a surprise visit to the ATL emcee in the studio. While there, Tip recalled that the Outkast legend said that he had known that T.I. had wanted to work with him since 2006, but that the time had finally come for the two of them to collaborate. Within 45 minutes, T.I. said that Andre had entirely re-worked their track together and gave him a “really sentimental” guest feature.

“In this room per se, we had Andre 3000, who called me one day – I’m talking about on the humble,” he recalled. “I would come into the studio to record every day as I always did at this time, and so my phone rang, I missed the call and then [an associate] said, ‘Hey, 3000 called, he said he’s coming on the way up here.’ He gets here and he says, ‘Hey, I know you’ve been trying to do this song [with me] since 2006, but today, I’m ready.’ I said, ‘Well goddamn, c’mon!’ He comes up here, in this mutherfuckin’ room here…and this nigga goddamn reconstructed my whole goddamn song in like 45 minutes.”

He added,

“If it was anybody else but him, I would have changed my verse and got busy, however, that was the homie and it was like for real, a lot of the shit he said was…really sentimental and it meant a lot to me.”