Review: ‘T.I.’s Road to Redemption’

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On the face of it, ‘T.I.’s Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go’ seems like the ultimate PR move. Arrested last year on federal weapons charges, rap artist T.I. (born Clifford Harris) reduced his sentence from a possible 30 years to an expected one year by agreeing to house arrest and logging 1,000 hours of community service. Much of that service was working with high-risk kids, which is, conveniently, also the theme of ‘Road to Redemption.’ Counting down the days to his incarceration -- ‘45’ will change to ‘44,’ and so on -- T.I. attempts to scare straight a handful of these youngsters.

So it’s tempting to view the show with a cynical eye, as a final attempt to polish up his seen-the-light image -- rap artist T.I. (born Clifford Harris)but ‘Road to Redemption’ quickly rises above its vanity-project status, giving viewers a compelling glimpse into a world too often fetishized on television. The Street and its colorful denizens are mainstays of police dramas especially, with characters running the range from Huggy Bear of ‘Starsky and Hutch’ to Snoop and her companions on ‘The Wire.’

Read the full review here.

(Photo courtesy MTV)