Songfacts®:

• One of the biggest hits of 2008, "Whatever You Like" spent seven weeks at #1 in the US. In the song, T.I. lets a girl know that if she gets with him, she'll be living the good life, drinking Patron tequila and embarking on lavish vacations. He's got the cash and is looking to spend it.
  
  T.I. told MTV News is was one of the first records he penned after his house arrest for weapons charges was over. The Atlanta rapper said: "I wrote that on the way from the airport. I really was just playing around. I didn't intend on making a hit single. I was just f--king around."
• This was T.I's first #1 as a lead artist. He'd previously contributed a rapped verse on Justin Timberlake's "My Love," which spent three weeks at the top in November 2006.
• This samples "Redemption," which was the opening and closing theme of the 1979 movie Rocky II.
• Jim Jonsin produced this track and has a writing credit on it along with T.I. and David Siegel. Jonsin's other production credits include "Lollipop" for Lil Wayne and "Show Stopper" for Danity Kane.
• In 2007 T.I. featured on a song with a very similar title: "Whatever U Like" by the Pussycat Doll, Nicole Scherzinger.
• "Whatever You Like" set a Hot 100 chart record for the biggest leap to the top when it jumped from #71 to #1 in the span of one week (the week ending September 6, 2008). The previous long-jump champ had been "Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5, which bounded from #64 to #1 in May 2007. T.I. told Billboard magazine in response to the song's huge leap: "I guess people like the song - I hope that's what accounts for it. I think it's a new sound for me, something people aren't necessarily used to hearing. It's one of those risky records. It just happened to work in our favor."
  
  The song held the record for just six weeks before T.I.'s follow up, "Live Your Life," leapt from #80 to #1 to replace it at the top.
• The video features cameos from actor Jackie Long, stand-up comedian/rapper Lil Duval, the track's producer Jim Jonsin, and T.I.'s wife Tameka Cottle. It starts with T.I. in a fast-food joint, where he slips the worker his phone number. She goes on a whirlwind trip with him, but only in her dreams - we find out that what she thought was his number was actually a $100 tip.
  
  The director was Dave Meyers, whose credits include "Party Up (Up In Here)" by DMX and "Hey Baby" by No Doubt.
• Director Dave Meyers wanted to create a Pretty Woman-style fantasy for the music video, but instead of a prostitute being wooed by a wealthy businessman, it's a fast-food worker (Reagan Gomez-Preston) living the high life with T.I.
  
  The opening and closing scenes were shot at Pioneer Chicken in Los Angeles. Meyers told VH1's Pop-Up Video his biggest challenge wasn't renting the lavish props for the video - including luxury cars, jewelry, and a Malibu mansion - but making sure the rapper got home by 10 p.m. because he was still under house arrest for federal weapons charges.
• T.I. told Rolling Stone that the album title was a direct reference to his return to writing down his lyrics on paper, a practice he hadn't engaged in since his debut. He explained: "It's called Paper Trail because for the first time since my very first album, I'm actually writing the lyrics down, pen and pad, old school style. I used to just listen to the music and go in the booth and rap. And now that I'm writing things down, I think it's a little more eloquent."
• The song's debut-week sales of 205,000 downloads were the best to date by a rap track. T.I. broke his own record six weeks later when "Live Your Life" sold 334,000 digital downloads in its first week of availability.
• In October 2008, Weird Al Yankovic released a parody of this song, also called "Whatever You Like." This was the first Weird Al Yankovic parody to have exactly the same name as the original. Similar to T.I.'s song, the parody deals with a man willing to give his girlfriend whatever she wants, the only difference being that Weird Al focuses on inexpensive things like clipping coupons, buying a bagel and going out to dinner at Burger King. It also marked the first time Al released a parody while the original song was still #1 on the charts. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• San Diego based singer-songwriter Anya Marina released a cover version with slightly edited lyrics, which entered the Hot 100 after it was featured on the November 10th 2009 episode of CW-TV's Gossip Girl.