Music Review: T-Pain

T-Pain is an artist that I’ve admired since his break-out single “I’m Sprung”.  The Akon protégé has gained quite a bit of respect in the music industry, putting out 2 successful albums and collaborating with a long list of A-List artists.  He recently put out a third album, Thr33 Ringz, which I also snagged for free at work.  The spelling of the name makes me want to hurl, but I gave it a listen anyway.

T-Pain opens with “Welcome To Thr33 Ringz Intro” where he puts on a cocky rapper persona (apparently he was originally a Rappa Ternt Sanga), spitting lines like “Styles change up like Lil Kim’s face”.

He then goes into the first song, “Ringleader Man”, which comes off as redundant after the intro.  The song seems to juxtapose his frustration with the commercial music industry and his influence over it.

“Chopped N Skrewed” is a dedication to the late hip-hop semi-legend DJ Screw of Houston.  He uses elements of DJ Screw’s signature style of slowing down a record and “chopping” it by making it skip and repeat rhythmically.  The lyrics are about a girl leading you on and subsequently thwarting your expectations in a club situation (and who hasn’t had a “girl” do that to them).  Ludacris’s contribution is just okay.  Far from his best work.

The first song that made me want to dance was “Freeze”.  It’s a hip-hop song with a delightfully playful track that features an unexpected beat box interlude after the verses.  Honestly, I have trouble differentiating between T-Pain and Chris Brown’s voices (between the auto-tune and the nasal quality they both have) unless I really concentrate, so it’s hard to say what he adds to the track besides the name.  The transition between this song and “Blowing Up” is very cool because it sounds like one is a continuation of the other.  Unfortunately, by the end of the second song, I was a little tired of this theme.  “Blowing Up” could have definitely been a postlude to “Freeze”, but we love Ciara.

“Can’t Believe It” is a cool song, but I’ve heard it way too many times.  Why is the cover of King Magazine something to aspire to?  I’m pretty sure those models don’t get paid for those shoots.  And T-Pain is from Florida; why is he trying to attract girls with frigid locations like Toronto and “Wiscansin”?  And Lil Wayne sounds like he’s having an auto-tuned stroke.  I have to admit, hearing it on quality speakers does make it much more appealing than on my alarm clock radio (every morning for 2 months).
 

To get the idea of the next song, picture this: you’re at Chi Chi’s (or whatever dive bar) enjoying the scene.  A guy comes up to you, and after a minute of talking, he suggests you buy him a drink.  Excuse me?  That’s exactly what “It Ain’t Me” is about, except from a rich straight hip-hop perspective. The ever-entertaining T.I. does it again on this track (“T-Pain, where’d you fin' this ho!”).  BTW, that’s a true Chi Chi’s story from more than one person I know, but it’s never happened to me.  Guess I don’t give off that rich-guy vibe with my well-liquor screwdrivers.

Ever been so driven away from someone that you’ve thought “I don’t need your sex; I’ll masturbate”?  This I’ll admit: “Therapy” spoke to me.  Sure, he does the corny thing where he counts to four and then does a line that rhymes.  But he does it really well!  The counting really doesn’t fit into the theme of the song (therapy tells you to count to 10 not 12, right?), but whatever.  The fact that it still flows is that much more impressive.  And Kanye West brings it as usual.  He’s so damn clever!

Next on the tracklist comes “Long Lap Dance”.  Another strip club song?  What is his mother thinking?  I have to hand it to T-Pain for making yet another slow jam that I could actually listen to at the gym.  I just wish he would have collaborated with my favorite stripper ternt rapper, Trina.

I hate it when artists tie interludes into the same track as a song.  Especially if the interlude is whack (have you ever seen me use the word “whack” on this blog?  Right).  Honestly, I think artists should leave the interludes to the funny (see Redman) or the wish-it-were-a-full-song (see Danity Kane).  However, after the first minute, “Reality Show” turns into a cool song.  It features Musiq Soulchild, and the track sound like it was written specifically for him.  Raheem DeVaughn and Jay Jyriq don’t ring a bell, and honestly, they’re contribution to the song is take-it-or-leave-it for me.  I’m guessing they’re brought in to win points with the Neo-Soul crowd that this song caters to.

Whether they do or not, every singer wants to prove that s/he can sing on an acoustic track and use chords and still sound amazing.  “Keep Going” does just that, but thank god this was only an interlude (runtime 2:14).  Yawn!  That’s definitely not what I was looking for when I ‘bought’ this album.

T-Pain pieces together his dream woman in the next song, “Superstar Lady”.  “Thighs like Angelina, Aguilera, Christina.”  Maybe Angelina’s known for her thighs (I’ll give her Tomb Raider), but as far as I know, Christina’s definitely not.  Also, who is Young Cash, and since when do rappers only do 8 bars?  That definitely could have been cut.  But it’s a fun track that moves.

“Change” is one of those if-this-were-a-perfect–world songs that I’m way too jaded to appreciate.  T-Pain uses a part of Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” (despite my culturally disadvantaged state, I recognized the chromatic line, but I had to google the artist).  I had to listen the song twice to find Diddy’s part (which is the spoken intro… I thought it was T-Pain’s voice).  Mary J Blige was the perfect choice of collaboration for this song.

“Digital”  is a fun, mid-paced song more or less in the southern rap tradition.  After my first listen, I had no idea what the song was about.  A second listen didn’t reveal much (I got this; I got that).  I have no problem with a look-at-me hip-hop song, but the track behind this song didn’t grab me, so I wasn’t left with much. Tay Dizm spits a rap on this song.  Whoever he is, he’ll probably have an awesome career south of Atlanta (if he doesn’t already)!

For the closing song, T-Pain’s cocky rapper persona is back.  He’s basically calling out people who are stealing his style and calling it “Karaoke”.  “Grab your microphone; set your auto-tune.”  True story: he set a trend, and people jumped on it.  The first person that came to mind was Lil Wayne, but he gives Lil Wayne a shout-out on the record (no surprise since everyone in hip-hop is on his nuts and he appears with T-Pain on his lead single… sell those records, dude!).  He gets Terror Squad’s DJ Khaled to scream over the track, adding to the intensity of the rap-persona swagger.

I think this was a pretty solid album.  T-Pain gets primary writing credits on all his songs ($) plus sole production credits on every track ($$$).  I’m a fan of his style, so the album was a pleasure to listen to even though not many songs stick out as singles.  Let’s just hope we don’t have to endure too many live performances.

Suggested Tracks:

It Ain’t Me

Therapy

Maybe:

Chopped and Screwed

Freeze

Reality Show

Long Lap Dance

And I’ll keep “Digital” since it’s free.