T.I. reminisces about the time he helped save Scott Stapp's life. The 45-year-old rapper appeared on Still 400 — The Mannie & Juvie Show on Wednesday, February 4th, and opened up about the heroic feat he accomplished in saving two lives from attempted suicide.
Hosts Mannie Fresh and Juvenile initially asked about the 2010 event when T.I. talked a man down from jumping from a 22-story building in Atlanta, as reported by Rolling Stone. However, T.I. explained that it wasn't the first time he'd spoken to someone on the edge of a building, considering suicide.
He recalled being at a Miami hotel when he and a friend decided to smoke on the balcony. It was there that he heard another man "grumbling." He then realized the sounds were coming from a nearby balcony.
"So this particular balcony, half of it was covered. And then the other half, you could walk to the rail and look over. So I walked out to the rail and looked up. And it's a man, a white man. And he's like mumbling, talking to himself, groaning. And he couldn't move. He was trying to move, but couldn't," T.I. told the hosts.
"And I'm like, 'Man, what's up? You alright?' I don't know why I asked him that. I'm like, 'Man, you alright?'" T.I. explained that the man "was trying to get from one room to another room because he said his girl was in there cheating on him with his buddy."
"So I guess he had fallen, and now he wanted to go on and keep jumping. And I was like, 'Nah, man, nah, man, let's get you some help,'" the "Let Em Know" rapper said.
He said he tried to reassure the man "that it wasn't that bad." Eventually, people reached him and brought him down from the balcony. But T.I. concluded the story by sharing that he learned days later the man "was a dude from Creed, the rock band." It was Stapp, who would later confirm that T.I. saved him.
"He always goes on interviews telling people that I saved him. I didn't save him. He made the decision to save his own life," he said. "Glory goes to God. I didn't do anything."
Throughout the years, Stapp, now 52, has shared slightly different stories about the event. In 2012, Stapp told VH1 that he jumped off a hotel balcony during a drug binge in 2006, calling the event a suicide attempt.
"I laid out there for two and a half hours and my guardian angel showed up — rapper T.I.," Stapp said. "He immediately took care of the situation and saved my life."
"I had met T.I. back in 2004 when we were both writing songs for The Passion of The Christ: Songs Inspired By soundtrack, and we had briefly interacted there and knew what each looked like," Stapp said. "We'd talked about being fans of Alabama … It's ironic — he walked in, and I found out later it was the only room left in the hotel and he came in off the street and came out, and as I'm lying on the ledge, blood fell to [T.I.'s] feet and he looked up and he had an Alabama hat on."
But then in 2018, Stapp retracted his statements, saying it was just "an accident."
"[T.I.] found me injured and called an ambulance. He definitely was quick going to get me the help I needed when I was injured," he told TMZ. "We briefly spoke [afterward] and gave each other a hug. He's a good dude … He seems to be at the right place at the right time. He's a good man with a good heart."
Stapp revealed that he suffered a "psychotic break" and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2015.
