Watch T-Pain play "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')", "Up Down (Do This All Day)" and "Drankin' Patna" at the Tiny Desk.
Did you know you can watch new Tiny Desk Concerts on npr.org ONE WEEK before they go up on YouTube? Click here: https://www.npr.org/tinydesk
Follow NPR Music: Twitter: https://twitter.com/nprmusic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nprmusic
T-Pain's fingerprints are all over pop and R&B and hip-hop. He wasn't the first musician to use Auto-Tune as an instrument — he noticed it on a Jennifer Lopez remix, and remembers "Deep" well — but it was, as he says, his style. For a while, in the mid-2000s, he lived at the top of the charts. He dominated that brief moment of our lives when ringtones were a thing. He was celebrated as an innovator, and he happily took his talents where he was invited, which was everywhere.
But somewhere along the way, somebody got it twisted. "People felt like I was using it to sound good," says T-Pain, in an interview that will air on All Things Considered. "But I was just using it to sound different.”
He just turned 30, but T-Pain has already done enough to drop a greatest hits album next week. We asked him if he'd grace the Tiny Desk without any embellishment or effects to show what's really made his career: his voice, and those songs.--FRANNIE KELLEY
SET LIST "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')" "Up Down (Do This All Day)" "Drankin' Patna"
CREDITS Producers: Frannie Kelley, Maggie Starbard; Editor: Maggie Starbard; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Colin Marshall, Maggie Starbard; Production Assistant: Susan Hale Thomas; photo by Maggie Starbard/NPR
