Thursday, October 30, 2014

T-Pain - No "Auto-Tune" Unplugged.

(Video Credit;  T-Pain - "NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert," Undisclosed, USA.)
Posted: by T.FM. Staff. / Written: by T.F.M. Staff. October 29, 2014.

T-Pain's fingerprints are all over pop and R&B and hip-hop.  He wasn't the first musician to use Auto-Tune as an instrument, he noticed it on a Jennifer Lopez remix, and remembers "Deep" well; but it was, as he says, his style.  For a while, in the mid-2000s, he lived at the top of the charts.  He dominated that brief moment of our lives when ringtones were a thing.  He was celebrated as an innovator, and he happily took his talents where he was invited, which was everywhere.

But somewhere along the way, somebody got it twisted.  "People felt like I was using it to sound good," says T-Pain, in an interview that will air on All Things Considered.  "But I was just using it to sound different.”

He just turned 30, but T-Pain has already done enough to drop a greatest hits album next week.  We asked him if he'd grace the Tiny Desk without any embellishment or effects to show what's really made his career: his voice, and those songs. - FRANNIE KELLEY 

SET LIST
"Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')"
"Up Down (Do This All Day)"
"Drankin' Patna"

CREDITS
Producers: Frannie Kelley, Maggie Starbard; Editor: Maggie Starbard; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Colin Marshall, Maggie Starbard; Production Assistant: Susan Hale Thomas; photo by Maggie Starbard/NPR.