T.I. wants to ''protect'' his daughters from ''heartbreak''.

The 39-year-old rapper is father to daughters Deyjah, 18, and Heiress, four, and has said that whilst he's happy for his children to ''date and have experiences'', he doesn't want them to be negatively impacted by the end of a romance.

He said: ''To be honest with you, I only feel the need to protect the girls from heartbreak. So for me, it's about making sure that my daughters grow up as happy and unencumbered by outsiders tweaking their emotions as possible. That doesn't mean that I don't want my daughters to date or have experiences. It just means I know that they will hold onto those experiences and I don't know how that will translate when they come out of it.''

But T.I. - who also has sons Messiah, 20, Domani, 19, Clifford, 15, and Major, 11 - doesn't feel the same way about his sons dating, as he believes they need to ''deal with heartbreak'' in order to discover who they ''are for real''.

He added during an episode of his E! show 'T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle': ''For a young man, you're not really going to know who you are for real until you deal with heartbreak.

''It's supposed to get to a point where they can handle it on their own and they don't want you all in their business. If it doesn't get to that point, something's gone terribly wrong.''

The 'No Mediocre' hitmaker's comments come after he previously came under fire for saying he accompanies his daughter Deyjah to the gynecologist in order to ''check her hymen''.

T.I. - whose real name is Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. - later clarified his comments when he said: ''My intentions I think have been terribly misconstrued and misconceived. Let me go set this record straight, I never said I was in any exam room, that is an assumption, that is a falsity. I never said that it was being done present day as an 18-year-old ... and I never said that her mother wasn't present. Her mom was present every time.''