Thank you everybody for coming out, again. This is weird as hell for me.

March 1, 2019 8:56 AM

T-Pain's back with more of the autotuned vocals he's known for, with his new album 1Up (DatPiff via YouTube, DatPiff directly), which came out on the same day The (autotuned) Monster won The Masked Singer (yeah, you can guess the connection). But let's take a moment to appreciate T-Pain's natural voice, as heard a couple times on NPR: first, on NPR's most popular Tiny Desk Concert of all time (also on YouTube; 13:27, 2014), and then a year later in an expanded performance for NPRandB Front Row (YouTube, 27:09), which lead to his acoustic mini-tour in Fall 2017.
posted by filthy light thief (8 comments total)

I didn't make it past the first episode of The Masked Singer, but when my partner told me last night that he'd won, I was like "???". I figured there had to be more to him than I'd ever considered. Damn.
posted by mykescipark at 9:39 AM on March 1, 2019

I had no idea he was such a good singer!
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:20 AM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is absolutely delightful. I always figured the guy knew what he was doing. He uses autotune more like an instrument than anyone and people ape his techniques for a reason. But that tiny desk bit is gorgeous. Love the wide, dull electric piano song they use too. It somehow sounds like old vinyl. These guys know about sound.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:39 AM on March 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Time to revive this classic.
posted by praemunire at 10:39 AM on March 1, 2019

My favorite T-Pain moment is still when he was on a boat.
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:22 AM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]

I wound up in a random Overwatch match with T-Pain one time. He kicked my ass.

And that's my T-Pain story.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:12 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

T-Pain is also a huge fan of Steven Universe, and for a while his Twitter avatar was a piece of fanart someone had drawn of him as a Gem.

This is basically the only thing I know about T-Pain. Clearly I’ve been missing out.
posted by nonasuch at 5:07 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

T-Pain if you come across this thread, I've loved you since you won my devotion with this Big Ass Chain.

I'm also a huge fan of your b-boying and cover of Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come.

Mr. Pain is married, has 3 kids, and still only 33 years old. After the autotune backlash and financial crash of 2008, he battled clinical depression and became near-suicidal.

I'm incredibly pleased to see Tallahassee Pain get his mojo back. Every artist has the capacity for greatness. But very few have four singles chart in the Billboard top 10 for nearly a month straight at age 22. To many, he was a joke or one-hit wonder. But T-Pain's written 89 songs that charted globally! Like... how you gonna deny this man's talent?

My dude, I'm so thrilled to see you on the comeback trail. Please stay awhile and share more of your genius with us!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:24 PM on March 4, 2019