This is the new T.I., the new un-free world of T.I., where the artist makes music influenced directly by the state. Hip-hop wasn’t meant to be created like this but, even in its infancy, the movement was being watched. The state gaze reflects the un-free civil life that initially birthed the genre. Chuck D’s timeless refrain that rap is CNN for black people is a continuous, sometimes cantankerous update on the ill-conditioned realities of the black present — the tone reflecting a constant frustration with being told freedom is within reach, but hardly ever fulfilled. The music speaks directly to state power about black reality. And that articulation, the literal act of rapping and beatboxing and head-banging, was rappers proclaiming not only their existence but their divinely ordained right to free will. But once an artist must negotiate public freedom with artistic un-freedom the choices are narrowed: however insignificant it might seem, these small linguistic changes can upend the scope of an album or a career.

The situation T.I. found himself in in 2010 wasn’t new at all. It’s one familiar to black people: somewhere between awe-inspiring appreciation of our various art forms and the ever-present possibility that our energy will be controlled, contorted, consumed, then done away with. Luckily he had a network of various revenue channels — from his label Grand Hustle to co-starring roles in Hollywood films like Takers and Get Hard to fall back on — but most black folk simply do not have that level of access. We are paralyzed in an un-free world.

The case of Lil Wayne is even more egregiously separatist. The question of why Lil Wayne would make a rock album — 2010’s Rebirth — after a nine-month stint in Rikers confounded a lot of people. It felt like a reach from an artist who had become satisfied with global prominence. Weezy’s public explanation was that his life most resembled a rock star so it only made sense to put out a rock album. Simple enough. But when pressed about the question by Billboard, Wayne offered more detail:

“When I said I was doing a rock album, it was about doing a freedom thing. This album isn’t hip-hop. When I do my Carter albums, I know I’ve got to rap, I know I’ve got to spit — I know the words I’ve got to say and the subjects I’ve got to talk about. I also know the things I shouldn’t say, the things I shouldn’t talk about. There’s none of those limits on this album. I say what I want, how I want. That’s what this album is: a freedom album. And rock is the avenue that gives you that freedom.”

There it is again. Freedom. Freedom after prison looked different to T.I. and Wayne, respectively. The former distanced himself from lyrical and thematic allusions to guns and violence; and the latter attempted to extract himself from the hip-hop prism altogether. Either way, freedom after prison for these artists meant creating separation between hip-hop, in all of its blackest and harshest realities. Even beloved trap pioneer, Gucci Mane, is showing signs of separatism. Though his post-prison album, Everybody Looking, largely continues on the subject matter of his previous albums and mixtapes, Gucci’s public posturing has significantly shifted. The same artist who impressed fans with the indelible rap analogy of “getting lost in the sauce,” was slated to headline an “All Lives Matter” concert in Biloxi, Mississippi. The world of the un-free is new and old. T.I., Lil Wayne, and, to a degree, Gucci Mane, used their talents and connections to break through the space that linked them to immediate and perpetual violence — only to be forced down to size.