T-Pain

One Liner: The King of Auto-Tune

Wikipedia Genre: hip hop, R&B, pop rap

Home: Tallahassee

Poster Position: Small Type 
Saturday.

Thoughts:  Fascinating decision here to add in T-Pain in the midst of this lineup of classic 90's Nashville country and a few newer country/Americana artists.  I know that there is some large level of cross-over between country fans and rap fans, but of all the rappers that could have been included on this poster, it is T-Pain?  Wouldn't Bubba Sparxxx or that big ass dude from Big & Rich make more sense?  Cowboy Troy!  I guess most of the rappers who have appeared in major crossover hits are too big for this festival - they're not bringing in Lil Nas X, or Nelly, or Ludacris.  Just an odd juxtaposition for an otherwise pretty streamlined festival lineup.

And also, I don't know squat about T-Pain.  Like at all.  He's more of a punch line to me, just anytime someone has their Auto-Tune cranked to a million, then it's a T-Pain thing.  Which is sort of too bad, because he seems like a nice dude who is kind of funny.  Like, check out his Tiny Desk show!

Wonderful voice - why does he always shaft it up with the effects???  But I could not name you a single song.  I remember his parts on other people's songs, like Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat!" but just not any of his own.  And now that I actually listen to him for a while, it dawns on me that he's actually not really a rapper.  He's just an auto-tuned R&B singer.  Even weirder that he's on this lineup.

Faheem Rashad Najm is originally from Tallahassee, Florida.  He first popped off in 2005 with his debut album Rappa Ternt Sanga.  Since then he has released five more albums, but his main source of fame and success has been as a feature on others' songs.  FloRida's "Low" has been certified diamond.  Grammy Awards for Kanye's "Good Life" and Jamie Foxx's "Blame It."  Wikipedia says that for a time in 2007, he was featured on four of the top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Impressive.  His stage name is short for Tallahassee Pain, and he apparently chose that because of his hard upbringing in that town.  He was raised in a Muslim household, but apparently didn't care much about religion.  For a short while he was in the group Nappy Headz, but by the time of his first album he was back to being solo.

He has a TON more streams than most of the Nashville folks I have been listening to so far.  Like, Doug Stone's most streamed tune had 12 million, this guy crushes that.  His top two songs are from 2007's Epiphany - "Buy U a Drank" (496.4 million) and "Bartender" (258.4 million).  Here is that top track, featuring Yung Joc.

Really weird.  I 100% don't think I have ever heard that song before in my life.  His face looks as Auto-tuned as his voice.  Nothing special to me, but as I have established in the past, I am not an R&B guy.  

He has been married to his wife since 2003, and they have three kids, named: Lyriq, Muziq, and Kaydnz Kodah.  He is a big gamer, and I've seen some of his most popular stuff from Twitch streams on YouTube, and they are pretty funny.

And his hot ones episode is cracking me up too.

Not his second-most streamed, but I want to give you this other one because the name rules.  "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper)" features Mike Jones and has 144.3 million streams.

Kinda funny, but just really not a good song.  "get her over to my crib and do the night thing."  Haha, Mike Jones and his dumb phone number thing.  That is a weak verse.

Yeah, not really my thing!  After a while of just hearing purely Auto-Tune squawking, it really gets painful.  I spent most of today listening to that guy, and I just had to pull the plug and move on.  I hope that loads of people go see this, and he is up against my favorite thing, and I can just go watch that other show by myself while everyone else gets blasted with AutoTune.