Trap Muzik is released

Why it matters

Trap Muzik came out August 19, 2003, on Grand Hustle/Atlantic. It is T.I.'s second album. T.I. (Clifford Harris Jr.) at this point had had a debut LP (I'm Serious, 2001) that had not landed commercially, and had been working out the trap-rap aesthetic on the Atlanta mixtape circuit for several years. The album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum. The word "trap" was already in circulation as Atlanta vernacular before this album. T.I. did not invent the term. What T.I. did was make the album that put the word into the title and into the national conversation. The production (DJ Toomp, Kanye West, Jazze Pha) is a Southern-bass-and-drum aesthetic that is more polished than the dirty-mixtape sound that would come a few years later, but recognizably the same lineage. "24's," "Rubber Band Man," "Be Easy," "Let's Get Away" with Jazze Pha. T.I. would, by the next album, be the biggest Atlanta rapper in the country. The whole 2000s and 2010s trap economy is in some part downstream of this album. You should hear it. The arc of T.I.'s career starts to lock in here.