The mid-to-late 2000s were dominated by T-Pain. He was on seemingly every song in hip-hop and R&B radio, to the point of overexposure. But the hooks were so deeply infectious and addictive that it hardly mattered. However, hip-hop traditionalists didn’t love how the Florida legend introduced and normalized autotune within the genre. Consequently, someone like Jay-Z became the flag bearer for all things anti-autotune.
Insert “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”, released during T-Pain’s peak as one of the singles on The Blueprint 3. There, Hov attempted to rid hip-hop of its ringtone era and auto-tuned melodies in favor of the tried-and-true flavor of hip-hop. “You n****s singin’ too much/Get back to rap, you T-Pain’ing too much,” Jay-Z rapped.
Naturally, Pain was at least a little offended at first, especially as a Jay-Z fan himself. During an interview on T.I.’s Expeditiously podcast, he said his first time hearing “D.O.A.” left him in absolute shambles. “That sucked,” T-Pain admitted. “I’m a Jay-Z fan still to this day. One of my favorite songs from him was ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle.’ And getting my hustle knocked wasn’t on my bingo card.”
Eventually, Pain understood that it wasn’t necessarily a mark on him personally. Rather, it was a mark on all the imitators and low-effort artists co-opting the style and tarnishing hip-hop as a result.
T-Pain Opened Up About “The Death of Autotune” Mission Statement from Jay-Z in 2009
“It was devastating at the time. That was another way of [Jay-Z saying], ‘Hey, man, y’all let me do what I’m doing. I’m still over here.’ It wasn’t a call to kill T-Pain. It was like, ‘Hey, guys. I’m still me now. I’m still Jay-Z. Y’all don’t get too caught up with that s**t over there. Ain’t going to last too long,’” T-Pain continued.
The “Bartender” crooner has since spoken with Hov several different times, so there’s no bad blood. But it did take time for him to fully get on board with Jay’s thinking and not take it so personally. With contemporaries like Kanye West and Lil Wayne using Auto-Tune, it was hard not to feel it was a personal attack when he was younger.
“It just came down to me not understanding how to process somebody else’s feelings and looking at things from the other side and trying to see all sides of a situation before I was able to react,” T-Pain concluded.
The post T-Pain Recalls ‘Devastating’ Reaction After Hip-Hop Icon Called for the ‘Death’ of Music Like T-Pain’s (So He Thought) appeared first on VICE.
