It's her little smile right before she starts singing.
That's what gets me every time.
It's not a huge theatrical grin.
It's not a smirk.
It's not contrived.
It's not performative.
It is a tiny, life-affirmingly human gesture in a sea of smug, blaring, bleached teeth artifice.
The proverbial eyes of the world. are upon her, but her smile is directed inward, not outward.
She's smiling for herself, and it's a smile of eagerness, of delight, of unembarrassed excitement.
It's a smile that says oh, She's smiling because she just found some money in the pocket of an old jacket.
She's smiling because she just saw a super cute wiener dog paddling toward her on the street and she knows she's going to get to pet it.
She's smiling because she gets to sing now, which means that everyone around her is finally going to shut up.
I dreamed a dream in time gone by.
And as she starts singing, her little title card shown right below her on screen, it reads Susan Boyle unemployed, comma 47.
And that, my friends, is the rudest shit imaginable.
Wow.
That is rude.
Unemployed.
Wow.
On April 11th 2009, roughly 103 million people, presumably mostly British people, tuned into the reality TV competition Britain's Got Talent to watch one, Susan Boyle go super mega, ultra viral by singing the bejesus out of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables and thus vanquishing, thus vaporizing all the smug jerks around her, by which I mean virtually everyone on screen with her.
Hi, what's your name, darling?
My name is Susan Boyle.
Okay, Susan, where are you from?
I am from Blackburn, near Bathgate, West Lothian.
It's a big town.
It's a sort of collection of... It's a collection of... Villages.
So let's back up 60 seconds.
Susan Boyle saunters saucily on stage with one hand on her hip and she encounters the three Britain's Got Talent judges led by Simon Cowell.
Performative hater comma 49.
And despite her stammering, despite her struggle to recall the word villages, Susan is bright and bubbly, and unguarded.
You can hear quite loud giggling already.
In the crowd here in this auditorium.
You're about to hear an impressively loud wolf whistle as well.
But Susan cannot hear any of this.
Or at least she appears not to.
And how old are you, Susan?
I am 47.
And that's just one side of me.
All right.
And here's where the smirking and the eye rolling starts.
We get a primo smirk from our second Britain's Got Talent judge one, Piers Morgan.
Smug jerk.
Comma 44.
The crowd is roiling now with a rising bloodthirsty quality to their hooting and hollering.
There is a distinct cringe element there here, familiar to anyone who has ever watched any of these big prime time talent shows where gentle earnest amateur singers and whatnot biff their auditions horrendously and humiliate themselves on national television.
And look, okay.
As Susan Boyle says, and that's just one side of me.
She's still got one hand saucily planted on her hip and she starts gyrating the vigorously to illustrate another side of her.
And this is disconcerting, this action.
And it would be disconcerting coming from anybody.
Also disconcerting.
Susan's wearing a lovely dress but her Britain's Got Talent contestant sticker, her audition number or whatever this sticker appears to have been slapped onto her bare skin right beneath her lovely necklace.
And I am very concerned that it's going to hurt later. when she rips that off.
I really hope it didn't hurt.
I'd like a word with whoever told Susan to do that, or let her do that.
I am concerned for her.
I've been manipulated into feeling concern for her and I can sense this manipulation, but of course that does nothing to assuage my concern.
Okay, what's the dream?
I'm trying to be a professional singer.
And why hasn't it worked out so far, Susan?
I've never been given the chance before, but here's hoping it'll change.
And here we start mixing in rude crowd shots.
Individuals.
Extra smirky individuals.
Perhaps a theatrical eye roll.
Perhaps an incredulous scowl.
Perhaps a few discouraging words whispered indiscreetly to one's neighbor.
In a few seconds.
Here we even get a young lady in the crowd with her hand over her mouth, and her hand is completely swallowed by the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
I know that pose.
That is a pose that says, oh no, this interaction is terrible.
I myself am in that pose during most face-to-face conversations, including not at all stressful conversations.
We are manipulated into understanding that the crowd expects Susan to fail and, worse yet, wants Susan to to fail.
We know the rhythm of this encounter.
We know that Susan is headed for a William Hung-type faceplant.
And if that name means nothing to you, keep it that way.
Okay, and who would you like to be as successful as?
Elaine Page.
Elaine Page.
What are you going to sing tonight?
I'm going to sing I Dreamed a Dream from the Miserables.
Okay.
Big song.
That's Elaine Page, the first lady of British musical theater.
Star of the original West End productions of Evita and Cats.
Star of Chess.
My wife loves the musical Chess, plus Sunset Boulevard and The King and I on Broadway, etc.
Via the hooting and hollering we are made to understand that Susan's ambition to be as successful as Elaine Page is ridiculous and only further embarrassing for Susan.
But shush now.
I will shush now.
Because now the song starts playing.
And then Susan Boyle gives a little delighted inward smile.
And then Susan Boyle burns down the motherfucker.
Did you?
Did you?
No.
And first thing I get is some bloke pointing his finger in my face and going you didn't expect that, did you?
Did you?
No, bitch, don't tell me what I expected.
You don't know me.
Don't point at me.
Bob, I don't care that you're English.
Of course, I knew Susan Boyle would burn down the motherfucker.
I knew this, of course because, like most American viewers, I watched this clip later on the Internet when it was blogged and reblogged many thousands of times, with some variation on the headline.
Random Scottish lady burns down the motherfucker.
Your favorite music blog blogged Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent audition.
Stereogum blogged it.
Dude, the first line of the Stereogum blog reads as follows.
Quote a frumpy virginal, somewhat hammy, 47-year-old cat lady from Bathgate, West Lothian in Scotland said performed on Britain's Got Talent this weekend and for a really long time it looked like she was definitely your girlfriend.
End quote.
I don't know what that means.
This was a big deal.
Indeed, this went super mega ultra viral.
And the shock here is not that Susan sings the bejesus out of I Dreamed a Dream, but that any reality talent show contestant can grab our attention for doing anything at all anymore.
This is 2009.
Britain's Got Talent is in its third season.
American Idol is...
America's most prominent equivalent, of course, also judged in part by Simon Cowell.
Performative hater, comma 49.
American Idol is already in its ninth season.
Kelly Clarkson won American Idol in 2002.
Carrie Underwood won in 2005.
And I'm oversimplifying, but no yeah, that's been just about it in terms of even the winners of these fiascos achieving escape velocity and enjoying any sustained prominence in the wider pop music world.
Whereas six and a half months later after this moment, Susan Boyle is going to release the second best-selling album in the United States in 2009, called Beaten Out Only by Fearless by Taylor Swift.
Ah, damn it, Taylor.
Let Susan have this.
And immediately, big smiles, raucous cheers, and a rolling standing ovation.
And meanwhile, Simon Cowell's just sitting there, and all I can think watching him is teeth.
Disconcertingly white teeth he's got.
Also, visible dollar signs floating above Simon Cowell's head.
He knows he just hit the jackpot.
And he knew.
He always knew.
Of course he always knew.
If you've never watched the Susan Boyle audition in full, I encourage you to do so the next time.
You've got a spare six minutes and change.
This video is a small masterpiece of audience manipulation.
And it's not subtle manipulation.
Just in the first 30 seconds the mockery, the wanton underestimation of Susan Boyle is laid on so thick.
And the gleeful shock here when Susan burns it down.
Even the least savvy and least skeptical viewer is well aware that somewhere between 65 and 98 of that shock is not entirely fake but painstakingly contrived.
Everyone knew she was going to kick ass.
Hell, the whole crowd probably knew. she was going to kick ass.
But even if you knew the game from the second Susan sashayed on stage.
There is a sincerely heartwarming thrill in watching this unfold.
Seven months from this moment, Susan Boyle will be back on television on an hour-long program of her own called I Dreamed a Dream, colon The Susan Boyle Story.
Singing a duet with Elaine Page.
They sang I Know Him So Well from Chess.
My wife will be thrilled.
And so let Susan have this.
Let everybody have this, even if they're totally faking.
We got Piers Morgan, smug jerk, comma, 44.
Piers is trying to cry and failing.
We got Amanda Holden the third judge comma.
You seem all right and I'd rather not look up how old you are.
Amanda's trying to cry and almost succeeding.
And meanwhile we got Susan ferociously tearing into the line.
So, different from this hell, I'm living.
That's the best line, the best part of the whole thing, right before Susan brings it home and burns down the rest of it.
She doesn't even overreach for a huge, shrill, bombastic, melismatic, unnecessary finish.
She's got class.
But speaking of rude, an odd component of the great, mega viral Susan Boyle audition is that the show's rudeness, the show's condescension, weirdly intensifies after Susan's done kicking ass because now the judges feel compelled to extravagantly perform their shock at her expense.
Tell us how you really feel.
Piers Morgan, smug jerk, comma 44.
When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said I want to be like Elaine Page, everyone was laughing at you.
No one is laughing now.
We are certainly not laughing now, peers.
Sheesh, that is mean.
Why you got to be so mean?
She's standing right there.
Even Amanda Holden, you're still cool, but maybe chill out, age unknown.
Even Amanda gets into the act.
And here's where this whole small masterpiece of audience manipulation business falters.
Because that rude extra English guy pointing at you and going, I bet you didn't expect that.
And Piers and Amanda both telling Susan to her face that everyone was laughing at you.
Everyone was against you.
None of that is true.
I do believe that was y'all laughing.
The show is engaging in maximum cynicism while chastising you, the savvy viewer and or stereo gum reader, for being cynical.
The show almost ruins the whole moment, and almost ruins Susan's whole moment, because the show can't stop hammering at this giant red button that reads we all just looked at you and assumed you couldn't sing.
Anyway, Susan Boyle gets three yeses and thereby passes her Britain's Got Talent audition.
And she gets to go on to Hollywood or whatever.
Not Hollywood, obviously.
Whatever the British equivalent of Hollywood is.
Stoke-on-Trent or whatever.
She gets to start competing in Britain's Got Talent, a competition that hasn't really started yet.
Can I tell you something?
Did you know that Susan Boyle didn't win?
Susan Boyle did not win. the third season of Britain's Got Talent.
She did make it to the finale, which aired in June 2009 and was watched by 173 million presumably British people because Susan Boyle had become an international phenomenon.
Would you like to see and or hear who beat Susan Boyle in the finals?
No, it turns out that Susan Boyle lost in the third season Britain's Got Talent finale to a super intense and quite lovable and themselves heartwarming dance troupe called Diversity.
If you didn't get to see that just now, that was the sound of at least eight presumably British dancers combining to mimic a giant robot.
Was that the actual Transformers sound effect?
Just now we can't tell, but i think that was the actual transformers.
Like right after this moment a rad little girl in glasses shows up and does like six flips in two minutes.
It's astounding.
My glasses would have fallen off after the first flip and also i would have killed myself even attempting a flip.
Much to consider here, much to absorb, I mean fine cool.
Shout out diversity.
Congratulations to diversity.
The future looks bright for diversity.
I can't be too upset about this.
Now we should briefly note that Susan Boyle struggles enormously at first with sudden viral global fame.
And in fact she checks into a psychiatric hospital shortly after the Britain's Got Talent finale, amid criticism that the show has exploited her.
Talking to The Telegraph, Susan's brother Jerry says, quote Susan is coming to terms with the fact that the world wants to hear her sing.
She's just exhausted and trying to take in everything that's happened.
I think her friends in America are End quote.
Susan recovers.
In November 2009, Susan releases her blockbuster debut album called I Dreamed a Dream, which gets shafted by the Taylor Swift album but still sells around 10 million copies worldwide.
If you personally did not buy a Susan Boyle CD for your parents and or grandparents during the 2009 holiday season?
Do you really love your parents and or grandparents?
I really dig it when Susan sings Daydream Believer by the Monkees.
Cheer up sleepy Jean.
Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?
I just really dig the restraint, man.
She's got enough casual confidence to not over-sing it.
You ain't gotta over-sing The Monkees.
But I fear this record is missing something.
I fear all seven Susan Boyle studio albums are missing something.
She's had a nice, weird...
Occasionally quite uncomfortable, medium chaotic, but still quite nice pop diva career.
But what's missing is the performative doubt.
What's missing are the rude onlookers, cynically accusing you of being cynical.
What's missing are the haters.
As annoying and disheartening a scene as it might be, Susan Boyle doesn't sound quite right if she's not surrounded by 50 to 5000 performatively shocked people all hammering at the we-all-just-looked-at-you-and-assumed-you-couldn't-sing button.
But five years later, the we-all-just-looked-at-you-and-assumed-you-couldn't-sing button found a new home and a new target.
How's everybody doing?
That's pretty good.
Sizable applause there.
That's pretty good.
Um, thank you everybody for coming out again.
Um, this is weird as hell for me.
Um, it's his palpable and awfully sweet and weirdly endearing unease.
Right before he starts singing, the crowd applauds and he's surprised.
He is about to sing and this too, is evidently surprising to him.
Here we have a modest handful of people, presumably mostly NPR employees, clapping and cheering and laughing along as pop superstar T-Pain performs a three-song NPR tiny desk concert that will indeed go super mega ultra viral upon its release on October 29th.
2014.
This video will eventually amass 30 million views on YouTube and T-Pain will be asked about it constantly in interviews.
And T-Pain will gladly tell you that this moment truly was weird as hell for him.
Talking to Stereogum in 2023, T-Pain says, quote, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
I walked in there.
I thought I was going in for an interview.
I didn't even know what I was doing that day.
And Stereogum's like, were you receptive to performing that day?
And T-Pain says quote at the time I was smoking cigarettes and I had just smoked a cigarette before I walked in there and that's not good for singing.
I was also very hoarse because I just had a show the night before in a club and it was also smoky as hell.
So my voice was at like 60% during that whole thing.
I didn't know what to do and I couldn't back out while I was there.
End quote.
Keep this in mind.
T-Pain does not, in this moment, believe that he's about to give arguably, the defining performance of his career or the most triumphant performance of his career.
No, right this second, T-Pain really wishes he could back out of this.
Never done anything like this?
I didn't think you guys were going to be here, but I guess we're doing this.
Everybody, this is Toro, one of the best people I've played with.
Pianist.
Funny word.
Shout out Toro the pianist.
Incredibly, Toro is part of the ambush here.
T-Pain tells Stereogum, quote, I saw my keyboardist there and I was like, what are you here for?
I thought he was just in town, just chilling.
And then they walked us into a room with a keyboard and a stool.
And I was like, oh, OK, what's that?
What's going on?
End quote.
How did nobody tell T-Pain that this was happening?
Did he really not know this was happening?
He's maybe lying, isn't he?
He knows it's a way better story now if he insists now that he didn't know back then.
Right?
We're doing a little bit of pop star myth-making here.
Maybe.
We might be.
That's okay.
Because more importantly, pianist is a funny word.
And, as a society, we rely on horny, goofball pop stars like T-Pain to remind us, to reassure us, that pianist is a funny word.
There's something so charismatic, so musical, even about how he says it.
Pianist, funny word.
T-Pain is in total command, even if T-Pain is not aware that he's in total command.
But what's most terrifying, and therefore most triumphant about this moment is how exposed, how musically naked T-Pain appears to be.
It's not what he has or the charisma he has as he sits on that stool.
I really dig his glasses, too.
No, what's about to make this performance a legitimate cultural event is what T-Pain doesn't have.
I know everybody's wondering where the auto-tune is going to come from.
It's okay.
I got it in my pocket.
It's totally fine.
You got it right here.
It's all surgically inserted.
So I guess we're going to get to this.
T-Pain is about to sing without auto-tune, the pitch-correcting vocal manipulation technology that makes him sound like a robot.
I'm oversimplifying, but yeah.
He sounds like an endearingly sweet, horny goofball robot.
This is 2014.
T-Pain is four albums deep into a blockbuster career.
He has been a pop star for roughly a decade.
He is using this allegedly unexpected Tiny Desk performance, in fact, to promote a new compilation called T-Pain presents Happy Hour colon the greatest hits.
And T-Pain's music is synonymous with autotune.
T-Pain's persona is synonymous with autotune.
His robot voice is far more recognizable.
It's far more famous than his human voice, which leads many of us to the conclusion that T-Pain's robot voice, it's all he has.
It is the source of all his artistry and all his power.
And so many of us look at T-Pain in this moment, nervous and auto-tuneless, and we assume that T-Pain can't really sing.
Well, guess what?
Baby girl, what's your name?
Let me talk to you, let me buy you a drink.
And I'm T-Pain, you know me.
Well, look at that.
It turns out T-Pain can really sing.
T-Pain really sings the bejesus out of that last line there, especially.
He imbues the words convict music, nappy boy, oo-wee, with galactic import.
Convict music is T-Pain's record label run by his friend and fellow mid-2000s pop superstar Akon.
Nappy boy is the smaller label T-Pain has started himself.
Oo-wee, that just means oo-wee.
The oo-wee is self-explanatory.
There is a modesty Even a slight nervousness to T-Pain's visual presentation as he sings.
He is huddled awkwardly on his little stool.
He is tugging at his hat.
He is adjusting his glasses.
I really love the glasses.
He is clutching his little water bottle with both hands as though it is a life preserver.
Talking to the Canadian documentary series This Is Pop.
In 2021, T-Pain says that in this NPR-facilitated performance, quote, I am devilishly awkward.
If you really look closely, I didn't look at them, the crowd, at all.
Not the entire time.
I stayed looking at the floor.
I was looking off to the side.
I just stayed looking at something else.
I couldn't even look at them people because I felt I was doing a bad job.
End quote.
But there is no such modesty or nervousness present in his voice.
The tremendous force of it, the nonchalant lasciviousness, the silliness, the glee, the humanity.
Ten plus years later, T-Pain's Tiny Desk Concert has 30 million views on YouTube.
And the top comment don't read the comments generally, Or ever really.
But let's read just this one comment just once.
The top comment says, he's hella funny, too.
Autotune didn't make T-Pain famous.
T-Pain made Autotune famous.
I know the club, close at three.
What's the chances of you rolling with me?
Back to the crib, show you how I live.
And even without the no-autotune shock, it's wild enough, it's unexpected enough, in a sweetly cornball sort of way, to hear a silly pop song about getting drunk and picking up a lady in the club, here in the hallowed halls of National Public Radio, here at the hallowed tiny desk.
The first Tiny Desk concert took place in 2008, after NPR music dudes Bob Boylan and Stephen Thompson went to see the folk singer Laura Gibson at South by Southwest.
And the crowd talked so much they couldn't hear Laura singing.
So they figured they'd just get Laura to come into the office and sing directly to Bob, right at Bob's desk.
And that was the Tiny Desk vibe.
At first genre, wise folk singers, who especially benefited from audience silence.
A 2016 Vox article on the tiny desk phenomenon described one tiny desk crowd as quote a confluence of cardigan wearing hipsters and old fogies in suits.
End quote.
That's pretty rude.
That same article described Bob Boylan's personal music taste as favoring.
Quote hipster-infused indie rock.
End quote.
That's at least less rude.
Bob Boylan does not historically champion songs that rhyme, buy you a drink with money in the bank.
I think that's the point Vox is rudely making here.
I'll buy you a drink, then I'm gonna take you home with me.
T-Pain just omitted, he just gracefully elided the word Cadillac there.
The line on the radio would be I'll be in the gray Cadillac.
But now it's just, I'll be in the gray.
And that's such a startling, alluringly vague image.
Now that I think about it, T-Pain singing, I'll be in the gray.
I dig that very much.
And look, the tiny desk empire is expanded, has broadened its horizons considerably over the course of 17 years.
Myriad rappers, R&B singers, pop stars, etc.
Here in 2026, in the past few years, Usher has done a tiny desk.
The Clips did a tiny desk.
Juvenile, Dochi, Cypress Hill, E-40.
But T-Pain in 2014 still felt like a delightful anomaly in this particular venue.
In terms of both mainstream pop appeal and friskiness.
I wrote about Tiny Desk Concerts myself for The Ringer in 2017.
And then Bob Boylan told me quote I do what I do because I think the heart and soul of music that's missing in music is intimacy.
End quote.
But as you might imagine, intimacy means something quite different to T-Pain.
In the bad life Oh, in the bad life T-Pain just gracefully elided a whole bunch of oohs there.
A whole bunch of ooh, ooh, ooh, to be precise.
It's not even that he's censoring the oohs, per se.
This song is quite horny, but it's like PG-13 horny at worst.
It's possibly even regular PG horny.
The crowd is generally silent and respectful.
Call the crowd rapt, if you want.
Call the crowd awestruck, if you really want.
Toward the end of this on T-Pain, points at a lady in the crowd and asks her.
I think he says is that what you want?
And I know for sure that her answer is, yes, oh my God.
And then T-Pain sings two more songs and then he laughs nervously some more and he yells back to work and then it's over.
And then this video hits the internet and it goes super mega ultra viral.
And it's here, in the virality, in the blogging and reblogging of this momentous occasion, where a slight rudeness, where the we all just looked at you and assumed you couldn't sing of it all, kicks in.
Billboard calls T-Pain's performance eye-opening.
Cosmopolitan says that it blows the entire world's mind.
Entertainment Weekly says, quote surprisingly, behind all that auto-tune, he's a phenomenally talented singer.
End quote.
Low-key rude, but T-Pain was also surprised.
Talking to Stereogum T-Pain says quote the whole time before it came out I was like man, this is going to end my career.
I sounded like shit.
It was pretty surprising that people were like, oh, this is good, end quote.
So the question before us today is, how did this guy get so down on himself?
I like I'll Be in the Gray way better than I'll Be in the Gray Cadillac.
I feel very strongly about this.
My name is Rob Harvilla.
This is the 31st episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s colon, the 2000s parenthesis.
Pivot to video.
Exclamation point, question mark close parenthesis.
They will never let me do that again.
And this week we are discussing Buy You a Drink Shorty Snappin' by T-Pain from his 2007 album Epiphany.
That's by, capital U, a drank, D-R-A-N-K, parenthesis, shoddy, S-H-A-W, nevermind.
I wasn't kidding about all the ooh, ooh, oohs, by the way.
We in the bed like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
We in the bed like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Fabulous.
You know what puts money in the bank around here?
Ad breaks.
That's what.
We really did hurt T-Pain's feelings.
I don't mean to upset you and I don't mean to say we.
I don't mean to drag you into the royal we.
But no, seriously.
When we all pretended to be shocked that T-Pain could really sing, we really hurt his feelings and we should all feel bad.
I don't know how, but somehow I got more mad.
I just got more angry because it was such a surprise to everybody that T-Pain has an actual human voice.
And it's like, what the fuck, guys?
This is from that Canadian series, This Is Pop.
It's on Netflix now.
And what's extra heartbreaking...
Hearing T-Pain talk about the dark side of his tiny desk viral explosion is how musical his voice sounds even when he talks.
Even when he talks about how we all bummed him out.
Dig both T-Pain's words and T-Pain's melodies here.
He's got such swagger even when he's moping.
The way T-Pain says, like, really?
And especially the way he says, like, what?
That is a monster hook.
Like, really?
Did y'all think my whole success was based off of software?
Like, what?
You still got to write good songs.
You still got to produce good beats.
You still got to do all these things.
And y'all are paying attention to this one plug-in.
Come on the falsetto, jump on.
You still gotta do all these things immaculate.
T-pain can really sing even when he's not singing like this autotune episode of this is pop.
It starts with t-pain talking about being on a plane with usher.
They're flying to the bet awards and usher summons t-pain to the back of the plane and usher says to t-pain's face.
Usher says man, you kind of fucked up music.
You really fucked up music for real singers.
And T-Pain looks at the camera now and says, quote, literally at that point, I couldn't listen.
Is he right?
Did I fuck this up?
Did I fuck up music?
And that is the very moment.
And I don't even think I realized this for a long time.
That's the very moment that started like a four year depression for me.
End quote.
And that moment was, was not as depressing for me as this moment where I thought, is he right?
Did I personally insult T-Pain worse than Usher did?
And it's so weird that you know it made me so angry that people are like, oh my God, T-Pain can sing.
In one light, it showed how much people were respecting him more.
In another light, it showed me how much people didn't respect me before.
Sheesh.
We should all feel so terrible.
Okay.
T-Pain, in fact, is born into an atmosphere of tremendous disrespect.
Florida.
He is born Fahid Rashad Najim in Tallahassee, Florida on September 30th, 1984.
He's a Libra.
That's fine.
I thought T-Pain was older than me, but it turns out he's several years younger than me.
That's less fine, but it's still fine.
Growing up.
He wants to make it as a rapper.
But it's awfully challenging at the turn of the century to make it as a rapper when you live in Tallahassee, Florida.
Hence the stage name T-Pain.
The T stands for Tallahassee and the pain stands for pain.
There's some family stuff animating that pain, but generally he's way more comfortable discussing the Florida aspect of that pain.
Talking to NPR in 2014 as his tiny desk was blowing up.
T-Pain says quote if you're trying to get into cheese and you're not from Wisconsin, I don't think it would be a real easy thing to do.
I was trying to do music in Tallahassee and there's really not a lot of avenues to get out of Tallahassee musically.
Could a mere piece of software have made that excellent Wisconsin cheese comparison?
I don't think so.
Young T-Pain starts out as a relatively conventional rappity-rap type rapper.
I would describe T-Pain's rapping style, then and now, as slower than Twista.
Do you know Twista, the extremely fast rapper from Chicago who is older than me?
Thank God.
Now, obviously most rappers rap slower than Twista, but T-Pain sounds more like slower Twista than most of those other slower rappers.
In 2004, T-Pain puts out a mixtape called Back At It.
The at is the at symbol, like in emails.
Let's pick a song totally at random.
This one's called Testicles.
Slower Twista.
That's my read and I'm sticking to it.
Note that he's already addressing the haters.
Can I tell you, I was like, I wonder if anyone's even transcribed early T-Pain lyrics.
So I attempted to Google the lyrics to this T-Pain song called Testicles, which of course entailed Googling T-Pain testicles.
And I got results that I did not care for.
I got results from the Mayo Clinic website. for example, regarding possible causes of testicle pain.
It took me five to eight seconds to understand what I was looking at and why this had occurred.
I was very confused and upset, and then I figured it out, and then I was just upset.
That's what I get for picking testicles at random.
This ain't going to work for T-pain.
T-Pain is a skilled, ambitious, charismatic young rapper.
But alas, mere rappity rapping will not suffice to get him out of early 2000s Tallahassee.
T-Pain needs a new style.
Fortunately, a new style had recently been accidentally invented.
You're telling me a singer can sing into a microphone a bad note and out the speakers comes a good note.
Yes.
Now, that's evil.
To modify something isn't necessarily evil.
My wife wears makeup.
Is that evil?
Is that okay, honey?
So, Auto-Tune was invented in the mid-90s by this guy.
Not the first guy, not Neil deGrasse Tyson, the second guy.
Here we have a 2009 episode of Nova Science Now, in which Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Dr Andy Hildebrand, the inventor of Auto-Tune, who just said a wildly out-of-pocket thing about his wife on television.
Fellas and ladies, fellas and ladies, don't talk about your wife like that on TV.
I don't give a hoot what you invented, up to and including Auto-Tune, which is a very complex and nuanced technology that we will indeed summarize here, as a singer can sing a bad note into a microphone and out of the speakers comes a good note.
That description of Auto-Tune will suffice.
I'm sure Dr Andy is a lovely guy, but he is also, quite frankly, the smuggest looking dude I have laid eyes on in recent memory.
And very recently, I also laid eyes on Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan.
In 1996, Dr. Andy invents autotune using science.
In 1997, Autotune is released to the confused and appalled general public.
In 1998, Cher makes Autotune famous using art.
Do you believe in life after love?
I can feel something inside me say I really don't think it's true.
Yes, it's Believe, the biggest song of Cher's career, both mathematically and spiritually.
We've discussed Believe at great length in this venue.
So this time let's just say that Believe is Cher's fifth number one single on the Billboard Hot 100, which means that Cher had four number one songs prior to this one.
By 1998, Cher has been wildly famous. for 3.5 decades.
Cher sang backup on Be My Baby.
Cher can sing.
We, yes, the royal we, we all know Cher can sing.
And so, when we encounter Cher on Believe, singing like a robot, we don't think Cher is evil.
We don't think Cher is cheating.
We think Cher is innovating.
Okay, the royal we weirds me out.
Excuse me.
I think Cher is innovating.
And I suspect that for autotune to be even grudgingly accepted by the general listening public, it had to be unofficially introduced as a crafty stylistic trick, as a futuristic tool, as a cool new weapon.
And it had to be introduced by someone we already knew could sing.
Not in his share?
Okay, fair enough.
Care for some J-Lo?
So here we have a remix.
The Dark Child remix.
Shout out Rodney Jerkins.
Here we have the Dark Child remix of If You Had My Love, the 1999 debut single from one Jennifer Lopez.
And if we know one thing about J-Lo, we know that J-Lo can refuse to hire backup dancers who are Virgos.
J-Lo can sing.
J-Lo can't sing the way Cher can sing.
But who among us?
Let's not get into it.
Blackstreet.
The dudes in the blockbuster R&B group Blackstreet can sing.
No diggity and so forth.
Teddy Riley can sing.
Teddy Riley is a Libra, by the way.
That's probably fine.
So won't you come and get it?
This is a 2003 black street song called deep.
The image of a robot lighting candles is very amusing to me.
With like a robot flamethrower arm like sometimes when people interview t-pain and they're talking about Autotune, the interviewer will be like oh yeah, Autotune share.
And T-Pain will be like, yeah, but also Autotune, J-Lo, and Blackstreet.
T-Pain talks about that J-Lo remix and that Blackstreet jam as the two songs that first caught his ear and led him on a hero's journey to hunt down this mysterious new piece of software that T-Pain did not even initially know was named Autotune.
Now I'm not about to argue with literally T-Pain about what is and isn't autotune, but if you'd play that Blackstreet song for me on the street, I'd have guessed Teddy Riley was singing through a talkbox or some such older technology.
Here in the mid-2000s, when T-Pain hears Black Streets Deep and starts getting ideas.
There is already a rich, decades-long history of electronically treated voices invading pop music, talk boxes, vocoders Peter Frampton, Roger Troutman, George Clinton, etc.
And so if you were a 90s teenager like me or a 2000s teenager like not me, You're hearing plenty of robot voices on the radio, but often those voices are paired with or tethered to human voices.
The robot voice is chaperoned.
It is co-signed by a human voice.
Recently I was in LAX standing in a long airport security line listening to Snoop Doggy Dog's Blockbuster 1993 debut album Doggy Style.
And this part of Snoop's Blockbuster debut single, Who Am I?
What's My Name? came on.
Listen, that's where I was.
That's what I was doing.
And this is what I was listening to while I did it.
It made a great deal of sense to me at the time.
Pitchfork recently informed me that this is the 100th best hip-hop album of all time, by the way.
And it occurred to me while I tried to find my boarding pass that already in 1993, as a know-nothing 15-year-old, I'd been hearing weird, cool synthesized voices like that bow-wow-wow-yippee-oh-yippee-ay, George Clinton, sample all my life.
But here, the robot is paired with a lovely and extremely human voice.
Shout out Jewel.
Two L's.
That's Jewel.
She's the singer going doggy, doggy, doggy.
On Snoops, who am I?
What's my name?
Robot voices get the spotlight.
They get a big pop song all to themselves sometimes.
California love.
Roger Troutman himself singing the chorus to Tupac's California Love, of course.
But on that song as the focal point, the aggressively, painfully human voice of Tupac Shakur provides a counterbalance.
He provides an emotional anchor.
Whereas when T-Pain finds a new style and gets out of Tallahassee and invades the pop music mainstream with his own blockbuster debut single in 2005, T-Pain's proposition is what if you turned the human voice way down and turned the robot voice way up?
Ooh, she got me doing the dishes.
Anything she want for some kisses I'm cooking for when she gets hungry, All she doing is.
In 2005, T-Pain releases his blockbuster debut single I'm Sprung.
The fact that T-Pain formally introduces himself to most of America with the line she got me doing the dishes is very funny to me.
It's a great opening line.
Actually, I'm watching this video and I'm wondering if America's enduring surprise that T-Pain is an actual human voice.
I wonder if our surprise is this video's fault.
In the I'm Sprung video, T-Pain is singing with aggressive, ostentatious autotune on his voice, but it doesn't look like it.
He doesn't look like it.
He looks like a normal guy sitting on the roof.
He's not even singing through a microphone.
Even if only on a subconscious level.
The I'm Sprung video implants the idea that this guy just happens to naturally sing with that voice all the time.
Also, this podcast is available on video now.
And don't tell anybody I said this, but you absolutely do not have to consume it on video.
But in the event you are watching this, get a load of the breakfast T-Pain just laid on this lady in the I'm Sprung video.
I'm cooking for her when she gets hungry.
Look at how hungry this woman is.
We got three or four scrambled eggs apiece.
We got hella bacon.
We got giant waffles.
Boy, he really is sprung.
Look at all the butter on these waffles.
Did she ask for that much butter?
It's a nice carrying tray, by the way.
It's excellent presentation.
Now T-Pain is no problem telling you that T-Pain worked his ass off to even find Auto-Tune to hunt down this mysterious little-known plug-in that made J-Lo's voice.
Do that.
And when he did finally get a hold of Auto-Tune.
T-Pain has no problem telling you that he mastered Auto-Tune.
Talking to VladTV in 2014.
T-Pain says I really studied this shit and I know for a fact that nobody has sat down in the studio and studied that much.
Nobody has done that because it happened too fast.
End quote.
He means that once T-Pain got famous for using autotune, everyone immediately started ripping him off and using autotune without the proper training.
T-Pain says, quote, I studied autotune two years before I used it once.
After I started using it, people just started coming out of nowhere.
In other words, when you were partying, he studied the blade.
Of course, I'm just kidding.
T-Pain was also partying.
T-Pain was both partying and studying the blade.
T-Pain can multitask.
This song is called I'm in Love with a Stripper.
He had us at damn.
I'm in love, parenthesis, with a stripper, close parenthesis.
That's love spelled L-U-V.
And if you're like me, you might laugh out loud at the line she coming down from the ceiling to the floor.
But you might also genuinely admire the dexterity, the singular charisma of the way he blazes through the line.
Got eyes butter, pecan brown.
I see you, girl.
Every line, every word of a t-pain song is shot through with such energy, such infectious personality.
He mixes up speeds, he mixes up vocal tones, he bobs and weaves, he delightfully surprises constantly, always.
The auto tune is never the only thing going on.
You still got to write good songs.
You still got to produce good beats.
You still got to do all these things.
I submit to you that the best part of I'm in love parenthesis with a stripper, close parenthesis is the guitar, the acoustic guitar, the simple, perfect and yes, palpably human country rap guitar lick that shines through amidst everything else going on here.
The guitar intertwining beautifully with the rad dinky little ringtone riff there.
That's a perfect synthesis of a classic acoustic sound and a futuristic keyboard sound.
A perfect synthesis of country and rap.
A perfect synthesis of the past and the future.
A perfect synthesis of man and machine.
I'm sprung and I'm in love with the stripper are the two big singles, the two top 10 pop singles.
Thank you very much.
Off T-Pain's debut studio album released in 2005 and called rapper turn singer.
I'm not going to sell you too hard on the idea of T-Pain is an underrated album artist.
T-Pain albums are generally quite long and he is perhaps best consumed in hit single form, but I am quite struck by by the autobiographical vulnerability of a song called Ridge Road.
Note the relative lack of autotune, possibly the total lack of autotune here.
Note the sumptuous harmonies on Life Just Wasn't Happy At All.
A full T-Pain album might leave you exhausted, but it will never leave you bored.
It will never leave you disengaged.
You connect at a molecular level with this person.
You like him and you care about him, even if you can't quite figure out his deal, even if you're not yet convinced that he can really sing.
The chorus to Ridge Road involves a lot of spelling, but the deep sighing nostalgia, the melancholy, the unguarded humanity shines through.
I dig that song, Ridge Road.
I dig the Florida disrespect radiating from that song.
But yeah, T-Pain's true art, T-Pain's ideal delivery system is the goofy bonkers, everybody's partying hit song.
T-Pain's second album is released in 2007 and is called Epiphany.
And Epiphany is the sort of album that begins with T-Pain, both defining and spelling the word epiphany.
But it's also the sort of album packed with ludicrously rad songs like Bartender.
And please do admire the truly sublime Dr. Seussian perfection of she made us drinks to drink.
We drunk them, got drunk.
That is incredible.
Absolutely.
But also, please bask in the immensely endearing sweetness of I think she thinks I'm cool.
I cannot stress to you how adorable and relatable that is.
I think she thinks I'm cool.
Bartender, co-stars Akon T-Pain's label boss and friend and fellow somewhat baffling blockbuster hook-singing pop-rap superstar.
The chorus to Bartender rhymes bartender with bartender. at the bar with her.
And I say to you now that, as objectively dumb as that might be, it does not matter, because T-Pain's adorable horndog charisma makes it not matter.
This is auto-tune for feelings and logic.
You're telling me a singer can sing a dumb rhyme into a microphone and out of the speakers a great rhyme comes out.
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying.
Ingenious bartender is a song about being in love with your bartender.
T-pain has put out seven studio albums to date, plus a bunch of mixtapes etc.
And i do think he missed a golden opportunity to fall in love with a different member of the service economy on every album.
I'm an luv with a stripper.
I'm an luv with a bartender.
I'm an luv with a postal worker.
I'm an LUV with the lady at Chipotle who makes the guacamole.
I'm an LUV with a podcaster, etc.
That's a free idea.
T-Pain's first number one song is called Buy You a Drink, Shody Snappin'.
I'm pretty sure I know what crunk juice is.
Little John sells it.
But I'm less clear on what a crunk juice bomb might be.
Specifically, let's see.
Urban Dictionary defines the phrase crunk juice bomb as quote, the process of taking a shot in which you lick cocaine, shoot Patron and smack a booty.
End quote.
That is not accurate.
Just to be clear, that is 100% made up.
I think.
I personally have neither tasted crunk juice nor ever set foot in T-Pain's conception of the club.
But nonetheless, that's made up.
Probably.
So T-Pain's viral Tiny Desk performance of Bayou a Drink.
Setting aside the no autotune aspect, it's that classic idea.
The Tiny Desk Bayou a Drink is a slow soulful semi-acoustic, deconstructed version of a silly frivolous cheesy, heavily produced pop song, right like how every super dramatic movie trailer is soundtracked by a slow solemn haunting, more prestigious cover of beyonce's crazy in love or whatever.
But, with all due respect to the tiny desk version, is a mildly insulting cultural event.
Buy You a Drink is a delightfully silly and frivolous pop song that deserves to be heard and appreciated as such.
The colossal, electrifying, enduring appeal of this song can be summarized as follows.
That melody, the gorgeous simplicity, the soothing lullaby cadence of that melody.
That melody is 85% of this song's appeal.
The other 15% of this song's appeal is the word patrone.
At some point, now is probably not the time.
At some point we should talk about the absolute unrivaled, sonorous beauty of the word Patron of the tequila brand Patron.
I love it when a rapper raps the word Patron or a singer a rapper turned singer sings the word Patron.
What a great brand name.
A perfect union of the hard consonant sounds puh and truh, and the sumptuous vowel sound.
Own great rhyming word also a phone moan bone, etc.
Patrone is the cellar door of pop music.
Now is not the time for this discussion because this script is past the 9 000 word mark and you know when you're playing super mario brothers and the timer gets below 100 seconds and the music to let you know that you're going to beat this level ASAP or you're going to die.
That's what happens.
The music in my head speeds up when the script gets over 9,000 words.
Hey, look, it's Young Jock.
Young Jock.
No O in Young, no K in Jock.
He's from Atlanta.
When I whisper in your ear, your legs hit the chandelier is a fantastic line.
I also really dig it when he says, I'm going to let T-Pain sing it.
I love it when a guest rapper uses the last line of their guest verse to acknowledge the main guy singing the song.
It's very respectful.
I always think, oh, that's nice.
They're really friends.
T-Pain plays well with others.
T-Pain mixes well with others.
Any respectful holistic assessment of T-Pain's career would involve a whole bunch of songs that are not technically T-Pain songs.
This one, for example.
There are exactly two kinds of people in the world.
Either you interpret boots with the fur as boots with fur on them or as boots that compliments a fur coat or some other fur-based item of clothing, but the boots are not themselves fur.
Buy You a Drink was the number one song in America for one week, whereas Low by Flo Rida, also released in 2007, Low was the number one song in America for 10 weeks, which is, of course, a great credit to Flo Rida, a rapper from Indiana.
That's a joke.
Even though if you remember one part of Low, it is 1000% guaranteed to be the T-Pain part.
Buy You a Drink is the moment when T-Pain officially becomes a chart-topping pop star.
But to my mind, low is when T-Pain becomes an era-defining pop phenomenon.
Which means low is when T-Pain becomes an artist lots of other artists start imitating.
Which is when T-Pain becomes a target.
Which is when T-Pain becomes an object of ridicule.
Here's when all those other rappers who didn't study the blade start using the blade anyway.
Yes?
Do you want to hear Kanye West using copious amounts of autotune on 808s and Heartbreak?
No?
Me neither.
Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg on sensual seduction, Future to varying degrees, and usually to far more critically acclaimed degrees.
Many of the biggest rappers in the post-T-Pain universe veterans and relative newcomers alike they all owe some debt to T-Pain.
But T-Pain also gets blamed for the less critically acclaimed autotune-heavy rap music that followed in his wake.
Can I say just one thing about T-Pain's larger catalog and the critical disrespect it often inspires.
In 2017, T-Pain puts out an album called Oblivion.
That's not how he says it.
That's how I say the T-Pain album title, Oblivion, for some reason.
And a dude from The Guardians That's a British newspaper.
A dude from The Guardian reviews Oblivion and says, quote, the music is just tasteless and tired.
The sound of a migraine struggling to maintain an erection.
End quote.
Yo, you can't print that.
Well, that's just nitpicking.
Isn't it?
That's very rude.
And I'm sorry, but I need to hear this record now.
Right?
Okay.
I would rather not say out loud on camera what that song is called, but the S's in the title are dollar signs.
Okay anyway, with that super rude review, I understand the erection part way more than the migraine part, right.
Forget it.
This isn't important.
The music T-Pain himself has made is less damaging to T-Pain's reputation than the music made by his myriad shameless imitators, famous and otherwise.
The backlash, the ridicule, The we thought you couldn't really sing underestimation.
The impulse.
Usher has to tell T-Pain to his face that he's ruining music for real singers.
That's not about T-Pain so much as it's about T-Pain's influence.
Even the rudest gravest, most public insults leveled against T-Pain personally are not actually about T-Pain personally.
Yes, even this one.
In 2009, Jay-Z releases a song called DOA, parenthesis, Death of Auto-Tune, close parenthesis.
Not a great Jay-Z song.
Not a good Jay-Z song either.
I would say this is an old man yells at cloud song, but that reference makes me sound like an old man.
But like, yeah, this is a song about an old man attempting to announce the death of a cloud.
On the surface.
DOA is an explicit shot at T-Pain, the quintessential rapper-turned-singer who allegedly can't really sing.
But even at his worst, Jay-Z is smarter than that.
Jay-Z is not attacking T-Pain the person.
He's attacking T-Pain the verb.
T-Pain is not the enemy.
All the inferior rappers and singers T-Painin' are the enemy.
That's buried deep in the third verse, though.
It's a bad song.
It's a bad Jay-Z song, at least.
Nonetheless, Jay-Z does get it.
Jay-Z probably knows that T-Pain can really sing.
Jay-Z definitely knows that all the people ripping off T-Pain aren't really T-Pain's fault.
And T-Pain himself certainly knows that the ripoffs ain't his fault.
Talking to Nylon Magazine in 2018.
T-Pain says quote It's like if I'm the ShamWow, then everybody else is like the Shammy Cloth.
It still does the same thing, but maybe just not as great, and it probably won't last as long.
End quote.
So ask yourself.
Could a mere piece of software have made that excellent ShamWow comparison?
I don't think so.
We are thrilled to be joined once again by Tyler Parker Ringer.
Staff writer, Southern Renaissance man, author of the fantastic novel A Little Blood and Dancing celebrity, Oklahoma City Thunder fan and T-Pain aficionado.
Tyler, it's great to see you again.
Man, I really appreciate that intro.
That's more than generous.
I'm stoked to be here.
Yeah, let me buy you a drink after this.
That's great.
Please, please do.
Tyler, can you describe for us the very first time you heard the song, the T-Pain song?
I'm in Love with a Stripper.
What was your reaction exactly?
Shock and awe.
I...
I was driving to a friend's house and it uh, listening to the radio, like listening to 1069 K hits, means today's best music.
Uh in and um before, like before the song comes on, I hear that it's, you know, T-Pain and Mike Jones.
And at this point in my life, Mike Jones means way more to me than T-Pain does.
And so I'm very, you know, I've got the number two eight one three three eight zero zero, four.
I've got that.
I've got that off the top of my head on speed dial.
I'm ready to go.
I have, I dialed it with my friends.
Absolutely.
More than once, you know.
So I'm pumped up about it and I'm sure I had heard I'm sprung before this moment.
Like I'm sure that happened, but it didn't register with me that it was T pain.
I had not, in my head at this moment, I had never encountered T-Pain before.
And, you know, you hear that spoken word intro and he's really setting the mood for you.
And I'm just like, what is going, what is this?
Like I've, this is, and I'm, I'm seeing on the little, you know, dial that it says, I'm in love with a stripper.
I've heard the DJ say the song title already.
And yes, right off the bat, I'm appreciating, uh, the candor.
I'm appreciating how upfront we're being like as a as a sheltered young boy.
Innuendo is confusing for me.
And I, I, I, I don't understand what you mean when you're peddling in these metaphors.
I appreciated how, uh, how upfront he was, uh, with his message and yeah.
And he, uh, he opened his mouth and it was like a spaceship came out.
And I just, I couldn't believe it.
I was driving through my friend's neighborhood, driving very slow.
Cause I was just like, I gotta like pay attention to this.
I get to his driveway.
The song's not half over.
And I just sit there in the driveway and listen until it's over and kind of can't believe it.
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked by the Like.
I'm scandalized by it because, like my, you know, I grew up with like Jesus-y parents.
You know what I mean.
And so I'm a little bit like, wow, we're just really getting to say it on the radio now.
This is fantastic.
And so and I had just started driving, like you know I was I would have been 16, I guess, at this point.
And this was really the time in my life where I actually started listening to music.
That wasn't the music my parents was making me listen to in the car.
You know what I mean?
And so it felt, yeah, I was just like, this is a new thing.
I've never heard of this guy before.
And why does he sound like this?
Why is it so kind of soulful to me and beautiful?
Yeah, I was, I was really just sort of transported to be honest with you.
And I I, when the song ended, or before the song ended, my friend Chris comes out and he's like what are you doing?
Like, why are you don't come inside?
And I'm like, you know, I give him, hold on.
And I rolled down the window and I'm like, Hey, have you heard this song?
I'm in love with a stripper.
And he was like, yeah.
And I was like, this is unbelievable.
This is incredible.
You know, That was my first T-Pain experience.
This is a beautiful image to me because I've always believed that the highest compliment you can pay a piece of music is listening to it in your car and sitting in someone's driveway or going around the block.
I do that a lot.
Just extending your car trip for longer than is necessary to finish listening to a piece of music.
That's the highest compliment you can pay to a song, in my opinion.
That's a beautiful image to me. yeah, it's gotta be the goal, right?
The driveway moments for some, where you just like, especially when you're listening to the radio.
Cause at that point, I don't know when I'm gonna encounter this song again.
You know, I so it.
Yeah, I've just, I was just trying to, you're just, you're trying to savor every little bit of it.
You know what I mean?
And you're hoping that the you wouldn't know otherwise, but I would always hope like okay, don't cut out early.
Like, let me listen to the whole thing.
Don't come in with some nonsense.
You know, let's let it resolve itself.
Let's let it play out.
Would you say that he sounded like the future to you?
Like he said, I love he opened up his mouth and a spaceship came out, right?
Like there's a lot of precedent for his voice, like vocoders and talk boxes.
Did his physical voice strike you as an alien presence?
You're listening to the future.
Did you have that sense?
Yeah, it felt like something brand new to me.
I knew sort of tangentially like, oh, this kind of sounds like that Cher song.
I know that one of the first songs that used it was a J-Lo song, those sorts of things.
I have some idea of this but yeah, the way he was using it and how hard he was singing, if that makes sense.
One of the things I love about T-Pain is And you can see this more like as he's you know, transition into like not using auto tune as much in some of his stuff.
And with these live performances and things like the on top of the covers, you know live concert that he did, which is just incredible.
And then obviously everybody knows about the Tiny Desk concert.
But he's like he's got a lot of feeling in his voice.
You know what I mean?
Like and he's like he puts you there with him.
And you can tell how much he loves singing, if that makes any sense at all.
Like there's a, he's, you know, there's, um, there's a deep well there.
And so it, uh, I was, I, I just remember thinking like, yeah, this feels brand new.
And in retrospect, how could it not have influenced so many people?
It just sounded so interesting and so fresh.
I, it, uh, Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Like science fiction.
You know, you mentioned Cher and J-Lo and these are the precedents, obviously.
But like, what did you make of the autotune at all?
Was there any kind of moral objection or resistance to the idea of autotune?
Like where are you in the autotune wars, especially when T-Pain is first starting out, when he's first starting out, like I don't even know that they exist.
You know what I mean?
Like it, it uh.
To me it just it felt like you know I had heard on.
You know there's that song on dropout where Kanye uses it a little bit.
And I know that Kanye is like gone on record saying that that song was T Payne's favorite song, because if Kanye can give himself some credit, obviously he's going to take that opportunity.
Um, but, uh, to me it was just cool at the time.
You know what I mean?
Like I, I was I.
I had virgin ears, and and and and was not.
I wasn't even like messing with a lot of country music, like stuff outside of country music at that point.
You know what I mean?
Like I, I was a sheltered little boy.
And so all this stuff, all these sounds are new to me.
And then you hear like, Oh, you know, it, it makes people who can't sing able to sing.
And that, that always seemed pretty reductive to me and like well if that were the case then like a lot of people would be able to like it just it didn't surely there's more than that you know what I mean right um so yeah that was that was my relationship to auto-tune I mean like I got into DOA whenever Jay dropped that just like everybody else like I thought you know I enjoyed it, but it always felt a little bit like, what do y'all care?
Like, what do you want?
Like what, you know what I mean?
Like they're not space for this too.
Cause it wasn't like I mean, I've knowing we were going to do this.
I'm, you know, doing some more like reading on T-Pain and it's been a lot of fun just to go back and just cause I just I just dig the vibe just of him as a person.
And he him talking about like you still have to write a good song, you know, knowing he's like producing a lot of these beats himself and stuff like that too.
Like he just a real renaissance man and like a like a real super talent to me.
And so it.
Yeah, I.
I always thought that that death of auto tune, this like usher saying shit to him about how he's you know ruined, you know it, for everybody else in the industry.
They just sort of felt like kind of nonsense whining to me.
And I think that was more about it was less about T-Pain than everyone trying to imitate T-Pain, like up to and including Kanye right.
Like DOA.
It's easy to listen to that song at first and think Jay-Z is, you know, dissing T-Pain directly, but it seems like he's much angrier about the fact that now everybody is just ripping off T-Pain, you know, which is not T-Pain's fault, you know?
Or it doesn't just detract from what T-Pain himself did?
Like you can't be mad at somebody for how influential they are and like how much everyone else wants to be like them and sound like them.
No.
Yeah.
It's, I mean, it's ultimately a compliment to him.
Right.
And, uh, exactly.
Yeah.
It, it just tasted the sour grapes to me the whole time too.
Like, like you know, maybe they're scared that hip hop is going in this direction or something that there's.
Like you know, they like there's a little too much singing going on for them, or whatever.
And so they like, you know, I always found that argument to be a little thin.
The country thing you mentioned is really interesting to me because I'm an over the stripper guy.
Most songs on country radio now sound like t-pain, like this it's.
You cannot discount, you cannot overestimate or exaggerate how influential this song specifically is to what modern country is now like.
This song is the ideal bridge, you know, for a young, sheltered 16 year old who only listens or, you know, mostly listens to country, like moving into rap, moving in to pop, like this is the best possible introduction for you personally to the wider world of music.
And this is what country music sounds like, full stop now.
This sound is everywhere, all over country radio now.
Um, and it i mean it makes total sense that he was in nashville writing for country musicians from whatever that was, 2014 to 2016, i think i read.
And when you listen to those Florida Georgia line songs, like I loved in that, there's that, there's that great.
Um, I think it's a billboard profile on him from a few years ago.
And he can't even he's like.
I wrote for the uh, the the Florida Georgia or Georgia Florida, whatever it was.
He doesn't, which is perfect.
Just a job.
Just perfect.
Yeah.
Like there's a Florida, Georgia line song that's called damn baby. but damn is spelled D-A-Y-U-M.
That's how you know it's a T-Pain song.
Even if he's not, that's T-Pain.
Even if he didn't write it, that's his influence fully on those guys.
From some of the newer country artists like Thomas Rhett and things like that, and then also Luke Bryan and stuff.
Morgan Wallen.
Oh, so much Wallen.
I mean, I don't like the guy, but yeah, he definitely has taken pages out of T-Pain's playbook.
You know, what a moment on top of the covers when he sings Tennessee Whiskey.
Like it, just he's.
I love that.
The artist that he said he wanted to work with at the time when that red carpet was Carrie Underwood.
You know what I mean?
Like he just, and when you hear T-Pain sing live like without any of this stuff, like it makes total sense that Carrie Underwood is like one of his people he wants to work with because they both like to wail.
They both like.
They both like big choruses, where they get to kind of, you know, dance up in the clouds a little bit.
Like it, it, it makes, it makes so much sense.
What did you make of, The Tiny Desk concert, the Tiny Desk Renaissance, you know, in retrospect, it's this huge moment in his career, you know, in a great way, but also like an objectively insulting way where everyone's like, oh, my God, T-Pain can really sing.
Right.
Well, as you say, like, of course he can.
Like what did you make of the Tiny Desk concert and that phenomenon, you know, when it first came out?
I was surprised that people were surprised that he could sing.
That seemed like kind of a foregone conclusion to me.
That was never.
That was never anything that I like, I was like I could see people being surprised by like how powerful the voice was, like how strong it was and like the facility.
I guess.
But, of course he's going to sound good.
You know what I mean?
In my head, that's kind of how I'm thinking about it.
And yeah, it's crazy.
I mean, I went and looked at it a couple of days ago.
It's even now it's got like 31 million views or something.
It's like clearly this massive, massive thing.
I love that.
He didn't even know that he was supposed to even be there to to sing, that he just thought it'd be an interview.
Like I, that's just, it, uh, it makes the whole thing so endearing.
And when you're watching it you can see him kind of surprised by the reaction of the people in the room.
Um and nervous, you know, you can tell.
You can tell that he's freaked out and that only makes him seem more human.
Yes.
That kind of thing.
Yes.
There's, that's like, as we've gotten to see, like, you know, sort of more of him being his real self and these sort of later years and stuff like it, just a very vulnerable, very human dude who it just, you naturally want to root for him.
You know what I mean?
Like when you, when you, when you see him um work through his emotions and you know, read these quotes of him talking through the stuff that he went through and all the doubts and the depression and stuff like that.
It's just uh yeah I, I feel so bad for him that for those years uh, He was – because you know, to him he's like sitting there, like I know I got a set of pipes and people aren't giving me – like people aren't treating me like that.
And especially when he's writing these and he's doing the beats and stuff, like I'm sure it was just maddening for him.
Like how can you people not see how good I am?
What was your like thought process while you're watching – while you're watching the –
Tiny Desk, but then in the aftermath, whenever everyone starts freaking out like what's going through your head.
Yeah, those are sort of two different phases, right?
Like it's delightful.
You know, the Tiny Desk, now it's like a huge phenomenon and everybody does it.
And it's like part of culture.
And especially after COVID, right?
When that became the only way we could listen to music, any kind of live music for a while.
But the T-Pain Tiny Desk is caught up for me in the novelty of just the Tiny Desk idea, you know, and the idea of this.
This pop star, you know, who sings about being in the club, you know who sings through auto-tune, is now sitting on a stool with his water bottle, you know, playing to an audience, you know, like a couple dozen NPR employees, like everything about that setup was so novel to me before you even got to the question of whether he could sing or not.
Like I could just enjoy this as like a really delightful, like stripped down.
Like this is the the, the paragon of this idea of the stripped down performance.
Like it was awesome, but then it's it just got weirder and weirder.
Like the initial coverage, like holy shit, t-pain can sing right like we're.
You would never have guessed it, you know.
But this huge pop star actually has like a wonderful like you know it just the praise.
You know the extravagance of the praise for him was insulting you.
You know what people clearly thought about him before.
And that's how he took it.
You know, you mentioned like there's a run of press and it's after the Tiny Desk concert for like three or four years where it's really depressing.
Like there's a New Yorker story.
And you mentioned Usher telling.
You know Usher telling T-Pain to his face like you fuck things up for real singers like T-Pain, for all his goofiness, like went through like a really dark period and a really, as you say, like vulnerable period about.
He talked about it.
He talked about how depressed he was.
He talked about how insulted he was by this rapturous response to the tiny desk, because he realizes what everyone had thought of him before the tiny desk.
Right.
Like it doesn't really register as a compliment to him that people are so shocked that he gave like a beautiful performance in an intimate setting.
Like I, it, as you say, it made me feel bad for him more than anything.
Totally.
Because you'll go back through previous interactions and that will that that new information will color all of those and look back.
And he's like, did these people think I was a clown the whole time?
Like, like, and yeah, that can't, it, uh, Yeah, it's just so condescending.
You know what I mean?
It feels like it's even condescending towards just the industry as a whole.
Just R&B singers in general, you know what I mean?
I don't know.
Maybe not.
I know what you mean.
To be surprised that a singer can sing is weird.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. okay i i don't okay i i would love to talk with you about t-pain's personal style yes like i love his glasses especially you know but i just i just think as a visual as an audio visual package i've always just been very enamored with this person like what do you make of him just his look and how does it further set him apart you know from all the other pop stars r&b stars oh i mean like i that one of the things I love is how much he embraces like colors and wild, wild prints.
Like he's peacocking a little bit in a good way.
And even as he's gotten older, he hasn't lost that in that on top of the covers thing.
You know when, when the intro to summertime starts and he starts walking into that room, he's in that like tiger print robe, just looking like a billion.
You know what I mean?
It's just unbelievable.
And, you know, later in the performance, he takes that off.
He's got some salmon color jacket on.
Then quickly that thing comes off and it's this like bright gold leopards, you know, all over the shirt and stuff.
And it's just the white belt.
It just reeks of like, comfort to me for him.
Like I would not be comfortable in that shit, but like yeah, that's a guy who's cool with himself.
Now
You know what I mean?
Like he's like I mean even back in the day, like there are, there's a, there's a picture of, or I think it's like the um, what is it?
It's like the 2008 AMAs or something like that.
He shows up and he's wearing, like, a tiger print top hat.
And it's got, like, studs here and stuff, white shades.
He likes tigers.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's a big fan.
And who among us?
You know, like, I get it, you know.
It's a big-time animal.
And I loved just how, like, maximalist the whole thing was.
One of my favorite things to do with like any – artist athlete, whatever that i'm trying to like dig into a little bit, is to go to getty images, just search them and then do the filter but put it on oldest and then just the very first, the very first pictures of them as they're coming onto the scene are always just fascinating.
And there's a there's, there's a pic, one of the one of the early um pictures of him, and I forget at what event it is, but he's wearing like a Bugs Bunny shirt.
You know what I mean?
And it's like the outline of Bugs and Bugs is like plaid though.
And then he's got a hoodie over the top of that that's got the exact same design as the t-shirt he's wearing under it.
And that's plaid Bugs too.
You know what I mean?
As you read all those pieces that came out in the wake of that Tiny Desk concert where he talks about, like that, there were times in his career where you know he's listening to his managers too much and he's trying to you know, maybe not be himself because they're telling him that his instincts are not.
Quote unquote cool.
When you go back to those times where, like it had to have been before, they got their claws into him and you see how much fun he has, just like putting on clothes.
You know what I mean?
Like it's a, yeah, there's something joyful about him.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just like, he's having fun and that, and I think there's, there's something to that.
It's interesting to think about the Getty Images chronology and like the rise and the fall.
Like he comes in and he's doing whatever he wants and then he's getting a little popular and you can tell he's getting tons of advice and they're trying to tamp down his but then so he does it for a while, but then he realizes that he's better off being his authentic self and it goes even higher.
Like I really dig the Getty image timeline as a way of determining how comfortable an artist is with themselves.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, how much you know outside noise.
You know they're listening to or filtering out based on whether they're wearing a plaid Bugs Bunny t-shirt combination.
That's, that's how you tell.
He did some performance with Young Jock on Leno.
And I forget if it was like 2009 or 2007 or something, but it's.
It feels like something that he wore after.
They started to tell them like Hey, now you, we got a, you're big time star.
Now we got to let you let's let's, you know, make you uh, you know, look elegant, this shit up a little bit.
And he it's like a tan blazer, but one of the lapels has this like orange and yellow kind of viney design on it.
It it's, but the other lapel is just like bare uh.
And then on the blazer pocket is just a TP, you know, like a monogram TP or whatever.
And don't get me wrong as someone named Tyler Parker, would I love to have that?
Absolutely.
But when I saw it, I was like, he, he, he, he wanted something else.
Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but he wanted something else than that.
You know what I mean?
No, I can see that.
I think you're right.
You identified the part of the outfit that was him, you know, surrounded by this attempt to class him up.
That's beautiful.
I don't want to be presumptuous, but do you yourself, TP, Tyler Parker, spend much time in the club?
You know, and if not, do you rely on T-Pain?
Do you live vicariously through T-Pain's musical experiences in the club?
Like, how do you picture the club today? based on how it is depicted in a T-Pain song.
I mean, it sounds like your presumptions are correct.
I do not frequent the club.
Okay, that's a relief to me.
Nor have I ever.
I've never really felt cool enough to venture in.
Yeah, there was something like a little um, what would the word be like voyeuristic about it for me so much.
He paints stuff where it's just like yeah, this is a world.
I don't, this is a world i don't know anything about um, and he is bringing me in to it in a way where it makes it seem like just a great time.
You know like, and uh, I was never interacting with music on that level where it's like Oh, this is going to be this.
I can't wait to hear this in the club.
You know what I mean?
You're, I mean, even hearing myself say that, right?
Like, come on, you know, it, uh, I'm wearing a Bob Dylan hat right now.
You know, I can't get away with too much.
That's come around.
That's come back around.
You could wear that in the club.
You could wear a Dylan hat in the club.
Okay.
That's good.
The, uh, um, But no, yeah, like I, yeah, your suspicions are correct.
Did you, were you ever, I can't, you were never, you ever go to the club?
I can't say that I did.
Yeah.
I would have to be honest and say, say no.
I think we're in the same boat.
I would have loved to.
I'm sitting in my car in my, in someone's driveway.
I think we're, we're alike in that way.
I would have loved to have like felt comfortable or confident enough to do such a thing.
But a, like I didn't have the money to even be able to go there and have a good time at any point.
That's a good point.
Excellent point.
And, uh, but yeah, not a ton of like clubs to go to in rural Oklahoma.
Funnily enough, we weren't littered with them.
No.
Yeah.
Uh, just to wrap up, I When I listen to Jay-Z's Death of Auto II now, like I hear, like an older person.
I think he's younger than I he is younger than I am now when he does Death of Auto II.
But I just hear an older person baffled by new music in part.
And I just I'm trying to put myself in the mindset of, like an older listener, an older artist hearing T-Pain for the first time and comparing it.
Like when I listen to 2026 rap music now.
Sure.
I am confused and baffled and possibly even a little afraid.
And I sort of understand that that's the point.
That's what pop music is supposed to antagonize older people.
For sure.
I feel very strongly about that.
And I was wondering if you heard that or you could sense that from T-Pain at the time, if you could understand how T-Pain in 2005 was possibly as threatening as to people of a certain age as, like you know fill in the blank, you know is is threatening to us now.
No, I mean, I'm sure that, that makes so much sense to me.
I'm sure that Jay was, was hearing this music knowing like, well, this is not at all what I do.
And I've, and I've been on the top of the mountain here.
And now you're telling me that this dude is making his way up the mountain and he sounds like this this is what people want.
Like, I'm sure it's just, I'm sure it's all fear.
And yeah, he's, he's screaming at clouds, man.
I think that's a great, I think that's a great call.
The, and what, what you said too about like, I mean, I've experienced that too.
Not, not all rap is that way for me.
Like I I, you know I'm still big into tyler the creator and things like that, but he's not new on the scene either now at this point, right like it's, so it's, i know that there's, you know, entire generations uh underneath, underneath him age-wise, and so it uh yeah, that that that resonates with me too.
I, i try to think about that stuff a lot, like to try to shift from like when i was younger like, if it's something I don't understand, it's like the shit sucks when I'm younger, but like it is the way of youth.
Yes.
As I've aged, I, I've, I try to keep in my head like, Oh, like this ain't for me right now.
Like whatever this is, this isn't, I'm not supposed to be into this or maybe, you know, like maybe if I give it a chance, I will be, but like, Yeah.
There's the old guys.
I think they get they.
They hang onto their corner a little too hard sometimes.
You know what I mean.
And they can't, uh um, appreciate when shit's trying to sound new, and they can't remember when they were sounding new and that there were old people that treated them like that.
Um, yeah.
Okay.
So we'll discuss this further, Tyler in the club, of course.
Yeah.
I look forward to it.
That'd be great.
I'm going to put my outfit together now.
It's been wonderful talking to you again, Tyler.
Thank you so much for being here.
Oh, dude, it was a blast.
I'll send you some Bugs merch.
Thank you.
That's very kind of you.
Thanks very much to our guest this week, Tyler Parker.
Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales and Olivia Creary.
Thanks to Kevin Pooler for additional production help.
Thanks to Sarah Reddy for engineering help.
Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton and additional art by Matt James.
Also special thanks to Cole Kushner of Dissect, who's been very patient and very helpful throughout this whole process.
And of course, thanks very much to you for listening slash watching.
And now, let's all go listen to some T-Pain.
You can pick any song you want.
See you next week.
