It's that time of year again—the Keuka College Spring Concert is fast approaching! Are you excited for T-Pain to arrive? Could you not care any less? Either way, let's take this opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the artist that will be headlining this year's concert. This year's Spring Concert will take place on April 30 at 8 p.m., in the RAC Main Gym.
Our headliner for this year's Spring Concert is T-Pain. He's won multiple Grammy awards, and is both a multi-platinum recording artist and producer. It seems, though, that everybody knows T-Pain for his auto-tune-filled hooks in his most popular songs like Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin').
Do you remember that weird autotune phase everybody was going through when T-Pain was played like, everywhere? There's a lot of judgement people put on artists who use auto-tune, but it turns out that T-Pain just thought it sounded cool. He's got a really solid voice. Just watch the dude sing the National Anthem:
Whoa, right? Before we recount some of the top hits that we'll be sure to hear next Saturday, let's dive into T-Pain's background as a recording artist and producer first.
In 2004, T-Pain recorded "I'm F**ked Up," a cover of the Akon song "Locked Up." Akon heard the cover, and signed T-Pain to his label, where T-Pain began to focus on singing over rapping, evident in the title of his first album, "Rappa Ternt Sanga." It's on this Gold-certified album that we start seeing those hits that T-Pain is still known for today. "I'm N Luv (Wit A Stripper)" is the single from that album with the most influence. You don't even have to click the link to know what it is. Admit it, that song's already in your head.
More solid hits come out of T-Pain's second album, "Epiphany," which represents the so-far peak of his mainstream popularity. "Epiphany" gave us songs like "Buy U A Drank" and "Bartender." Really, this is the record that defines T-Pain as we know him today, and there's a lasting influence to rap and R&B that comes from this album and the one that precedes it. You can hear that influence in Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," for example.
While promoting "Epiphany," T-Pain played the guest appearances game. You can hear him on songs from a ton of artists after that first album: Akon, R. Kelly and Kanye are a few. "Low" is a standout track from this era. There was a two-week period around this time when he was featured on four out of the top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
After that second album, T-Pain put out two more albums: "Thr33 Ringz" in 2008, "RevolveR" in 2011. Along the way, he was still prominently featured in guest appearances. These three albums represent a shift in the attitude and direction of T-Pain's career. While it is too much to include in a basic rundown of the artist, numerous beefs about the use of auto-tune in popular music came to light in this five-year time period.
Those back and forths involving T-Pain and artists like Jay-Z and Future led to the reinvention of T-Pain's image in his upcoming fifth album, "Stoicville: The Phoenix." The album is due fall of this year. The lead single, "Make That Sh*t Work" features Juicy J (who sounds exactly like T.I. in that song, another throwback). In talking about the forthcoming album, T-Pain has said: "..there are some things you need to know that went into making this album. There are some situations that happened between the last time you heard from me and now, so here's all that, here's why everybody hasn't been seeing me..."
As the April 30th Spring Concert comes closer and closer, it's a good time to review some of T-Pain's biggest hits. He's known mostly for his club bangers, so here's the top five most played tracks from his Spotify page:
Up Down (Do This All Day) ft. B.o.B (45 million plays)
Turn All the Lights On ft. Ne-Yo (33 million plays)
Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin') ft. Yung Joc (31 million plays)
5 O'Clock ft. Wiz Khalifa, Lily Allen (28 million plays)
Best Love Song ft. Chris Brown (23 million plays)
If you want to really impress your friends with some more solid T-Pain trivia, you can check out both T-Pain's website and Twitter as you prepare for the upcoming concert.
