Truth about T-Pain's career: How the industry SHUNNED him (beef w/ Jay-Z, DJ Khaled, Future, Usher)

[Music] impressive [Music] hello everybody welcome to the impressive channel this is a spotlight video on the rapper singer producer and songwriter t payne between the year 2005 and 2010 t-pain rose to superstardom and he took over the music charts he also revolutionized the use of autotune and that made him stand out but unfortunately autotune became something that affected him negatively even though he made a lot of hits he also took a lot of hits that really shook his career and this video is going to highlight that and it's also going to highlight his success now t-pain first got his foot in the industry being a part of this rap group called nappy heads nappy has had local success in t-pain's hometown tallahassee florida t-pain was the producer and dj in the group and he also rapped and sang hooks for some of their songs nappy heads eventually fell apart because of internal strife they felt like t-pain was getting too much favoritism in the group because his father was the manager they also didn't like the fact that t-pain started recording solo music now t-pain only started recording solo music because he knew that the other group members were secretly recording solo music as well so he didn't see any issue with recording solo music himself but the members of the group didn't like that t-pain's solo efforts did catch the attention of the artist akon he recorded a remake of akon's hit song locked up for the nappy head's beat jacking mixtape and he renamed it f-dub when akon heard the song he reached out to t-pain and he wanted to sign him t-pain also got the attention of other people in the industry and big labels like interscope and atlantic wanted to sign him and they wanted to put money into a song that he wrote and produced called i'm sprung but out of all the offers t-pain got he decided to sign with akon interscope records was offering me a 900 000 signing bonus and they were offering me 900 000 to sign to them for the single i had which was on sprung acon said bro said he said nine hundred thousand dollars i got twenty thousand dollars and a career and to this day i've made ten times that off that one zone t-pain made a very smart decision to go with akon but when he got signed to combat music he was only signed to write songs not to sing t-pain actually wrote the song i'm sprung for aikon but akon rejected the song the first song i wrote for akon was i'm sprung and he said verbatim we don't do records for bills and i did i'm sprung and i'm like i'll take it to i'll take it to somebody inside the acid i don't play it so i took the record back and gave it to felicia foxx in tallahassee and she played it on the radio twice and she was like this is a [ __ ] smash man shout out to felicia fox in 2005 t-pain released his first solo single i'm sprung i'm sprung had a unique sound to it on the course of the song t-pain used his real voice but on the verses he used autotune and this was the first time people heard auto-tune being used this way now t-pain was not the first person to use vocal effects on his voice back in the day artists like stevie wonder and roger troutman from zap would use talk boxes which would create an electronic effect on their voice also other artists would use vocoders and autotune which was a technology created by dr andy in fact the first major artist to use auto-tune was cher and she used it in her song believe other artists in the industry did use a little bit of auto-tune in some of their songs because it was a cool effect to use but nobody used autotune quite like t-pain t-pain used auto-tune in a way that was different he would actually sing a full song using auto-tune alone and he had the musicality to actually make it sound good when i'm sprung hit the radio it became an instant hit the song peaked to number 8 on billboard's hot 100 charts and it was certified platinum t-pain then released his follow-up single called i'm in love with a stripper and that song was also a success peaking to number 5 on the charts this would be the beginning of t-pain's hit making streak t-pain didn't look like the typical r b heartthrob but his music was addictive and his debut album rapper turned sangha was a success his sophomore album epiphany was even more successful than rapper turned sanga epiphany included his platinum selling hit song buy you a drink which featured young jock bayou a drink was his first number one song on billboard hot 100 and his follow-up single bartender featuring akon peaked to number five on the charts making it his fourth consecutive top 10 hit in 2008 t-pain released his third album three rings which included singles like freeze chopped and screwed featuring ludacris and also his top 10 hit can't believe it featuring lil wayne just like his previous two albums three rings was certified gold in between the release of his albums tp was also collaborating with a lot of artists tp became the most sought after artist to collaborate with in the industry and at one point he had up to 17 hit songs rotating on the radio at the same time he wrote and produced songs and collaborated with artists like rick ross dj khaled plies e40 ludicrous even mariah carey in fact he had a song with mariah carey called migrate which would have been another big hit if it was pushed as an official single t-pain's biggest features included his song with chris brown called kiss kiss kiss kiss was a quadruple platinum hit song which went to number one on the charts t-pain also collaborated with lil wayne on his song called got money which sold 3 million another one of t-pain's biggest collaborations was the song he did with flowrida called low in fact low was actually supposed to go to the rapper nelly first so low went to nelly first because he had the apple bottom jeans at the time nelly said it was corny low might have been corny for nelly but the song was a smash hit for flo ryda and t-pain the song peaked to number one on the charts and it also sold 13 million units worldwide another one of t-pain's biggest collaborations was his song with jamie foxx called blame it which was also a platinum record also t-pain's song with kanye west called good life was another multi-platinum selling record and top 10 hit t-pain won grammys for both of his songs with jamie foxx and kanye west another one of t-pain's major collaborations was his song with dj khaled called all i do is win all i do is win featured several different rappers including ludacris rick ross and snoop dogg the song wasn't only a big hip-hop hit but it was a cultural theme song even the 44th president of the u.s president obama played the song at his correspondence dinner at the white house that's how much of an impact the song had on the culture in the late 2000s t-pain was on fire every rapper in the industry wanted a feature from him a feature from t-pain was almost always a hit song but a shift started to happen when other rappers started using autotune i was a cheat code until snoop did sensible seduction which is why i'm so mad at it it's like oh this [ __ ] is good i guess like i said i was the face i was the face of it so anytime anybody had anything to do with autotune it was me i was involved and snoop made it clear to people that you don't you know this is just available for everybody when snoop dogg used auto-tune other rappers started to follow suit lil wayne used autotune in his smash hit song lollipop and p diddy used auto-tune on his album with dirty money called last train to paris and fun fact he actually gave t-pain a credit on his album for using autotune also kanye west was inspired to use autotune because of t-pain now kanye has played around with a little bit of auto-tune on his productions for example one of his tracks on college dropout called graduation day was sprinkled with a little bit of auto-tune but kanye himself did not start singing in auto-tune until he heard t-pain do it t-pain explained that kanye's 808s and heartbreak album was directly inspired by his rapper turnt sanga album well the crazy the crazy thing was i worked on 808s and heartbreaks with kanye i went down to hawaii for like 10 days with them you know what i'm saying and and kanye actually told me himself you know like the my album rapper turned sanga he said i'll listen to your album rapper turn singer i heard all those songs i [ __ ] love your album rapper turn saying i think you a genius i mean it really came down to the same fact of what kanye told me like you know he really he said to me that eight awaits and heartbreaks is rapid turn singer because rabbit turned singers was a bunch of love songs with a ton of bass in them love songs being the heartbreak 808's being the bass so in a sense we just kind of remade uh rapper turned singer but you know in all honesty just like kanye said he just had a better marketing plan so yeah i'm like hey long as i got something to do with it i'm fine but what did you guys actually work on during those 808 sessions uh everything we had writing sessions uh you know what i'm saying i was in there helping with the with the you know a lot of the 808s you know and uh he said he wanted that sound from my first album right so you know i brought all the stuff that i used to make my first album which was pretty much just in garageband no i just helped him out and just you know showed him how you know what what vibes and what feelings i had making my first album and they kind of just migrated over to 808 heartbreak t-pain contributed to kanye's 808s and heartbreak album and the album was very experimental a lot of people didn't understand it at first but this album went on to inspire a whole new generation of rappers and it changed the way hip-hop sounded it inspired artists like kid cudi future travis scott juice world drake you name it if it wasn't for 808s and heartbreak the auto-tuned melodic rap that we hear today probably wouldn't be a thing and even though kanye is credited for his influence t-pain is really the unsung pioneer of this whole new wave his overall sound is very influential and a lot of people loved it including the king of pop himself michael jackson in fact t-pain was supposed to have a record with michael jackson and usher called stop playing unfortunately that song got sabotaged yeah i actually went to michael jackson's house after i released 11 days after i released barton i went to michael jackson house we was on the way to the studio and he called my team and he was like i want to meet t-pain this is the only song i've had somebody go buy a physical copy of in the last four years i i could tell you about a record that would have been like the biggest record of my life that never came out let's go it was me usher and michael jackson and it would have been yeah yeah so that would have been the biggest record of my [ __ ] life and it never came out because the dude that i had doing the reference he leaked the record and michael and michael jackson didn't want to do it anymore since it was up wow t-pain usher and michael jackson so you do your part what'd michael jackson say oh he's ready to go oh [ __ ] he's ready to go and the dude's doing the reference that's that's the great that's what that's why he leaked it because he was doing the reference and he was like this is the biggest thing i've ever been a part of like we recorded this [ __ ] on a thursday and it came out on a tuesday so it was like immediate so it was like before michael jackson could even record on he was just like nope just didn't drop that though because first of all he's firing then it was busy doing that and we just like said and we recorded like four more other songs so uh should we still hit your back though the failed collaboration between t-pain michael jackson and usher was a disappointment for him but t-pain would soon face other disappointments in the industry certain artists in the industry began to attack his auto-tuned sound at first t-pain sound was embraced but once he started making auto-tune more popular some artists in the industry began to get annoyed they felt like auto-tune was taking over the industry too much and it was overshadowing other artists who didn't use autotune singers like christina aguilera wore a shirt saying auto-tune is for uss jay-z attacked the use of auto-tune in his song death of autotune and this song actually affected t-pain a lot in his lyric he said you n-word singing too much get back to rap you ut painting too much so jay-z was kind of taking a dig at other rappers in the industry who were using auto-tune he wasn't so much attacking t-pain however t-pain did catch a stray in that verse and it didn't help that jay-z made a whole song dissing the very thing that made him popular dick you think he's dissing you or you dig of course oh really of course right i was the face of autism anybody anytime somebody said autotune i'm the face right so when you say auto-tune it's whack right i'm the face right when jay-z went at you did you have any other like any reason for any type of reason or that was out the clear blue sky that was that was when i heard it and when mother was calling me telling me about it i literally had to sit for like a day in the same position i just sat and just stared into nothing like the [ __ ] did i do what did i do did i cross somebody i don't fight like that did i mistakenly beat somebody up in my sleep what i don't know you ain't know what it was no my hustle got knocked immediately like i don't know what i did like i'm like what is it guys there has to be some kind of connection to something i've done that can make this man say the very thing that made this guy famous is the worst ever it's a weird thing i have no idea what triggered that bro i still to this day don't know but the perception was that death of autotune was supposed to stop the trend did it affect you in any way that you see any slowdown at that point was it yeah but not i mean and the crazy thing was i was on so much music at that point we was already planning on being like stop it i was going to disappear for a while because i was on so much music i saw i really started getting oversaturated right and it turned into this whole t-pain is on too much radio stations complaining they pulling my records off because that you know as you know like in radio stations they got the the separator joint to where they don't they make sure they don't play too much of an artist right after each other right but if my name is on every song then the [ __ ] machine is shutting down so i was actually planning on like getting ghosts for a while so it was already in place for me to do that but at the same time when that song happened it happened like two months before we were planning to do it and it just seemed like i disappeared because of the song after jay-z dropped the death of autotune t-pain faced a lot of backlash in the industry he even got booed at his concerts and t-pain admitted that he got super drunk and recorded a diss track against jay-z luckily for him the diss track never came out but t-pain did try to get on jay-z's good side he came out to support him during his performance at summer jam this was done in attempts to save his own image as well unfortunately his appearance at jay-z's summer jam set didn't turn out the way he hoped it would i go on stage i'm with him the whole time he's performing the joint and at the end i'm like this is gonna be cool because i'm gonna shake his hand and then we're gonna it's gonna show everybody that's like it's gonna be we're gonna squash it right here in front of everybody right um he looks at my hands like good riddance and then he just [ __ ] walks off i was like [Applause] so did you ever meet jay after this oh a ton of times okay after the photo a ton of times okay i saw him and b at a uh grammy after party i had two cups of hennessy so i couldn't shake his hand i didn't see it it ain't going nowhere no it didn't it didn't leave i wanted to say two things and they collided i wanted to say thank you for everything but also sorry for the confusion and i [ __ ] said sorry for everything bro he knew i couldn't shake his hand and then it hit me with one of the it's all good bro i tried to comfort myself a little bit by doing the elbow to be she hit the elbow the [ __ ] hennessy dropped on her white dress t-pain's meeting with jay-z and beyonce wouldn't be his only awkward encounter t-pain also had a very awkward encounter with usher and this encounter led him into a depression we were actually going to the 2013 bt awards and we were all in first class and uh i went to sleep i was awakened by um by the flight attendant [Music] she said my husband would like to talk to you in the back so i got up and went back and it was like you know how's everything going quick small talk no big deal and um it was like man i want to tell you something man that's like what's what's good i thought he's about to tell me something real he sounded real concerned he was like man you kind of kind of [ __ ] up music [Music] i didn't understand usher was my friend [Music] he was like nah man you really like you really put up music for real singers literally at that point i couldn't listen is he right did i [ __ ] up music and i and that is the very moment and i don't even think i realized this for a long time that's the very moment that started like a four-year depression for me it was a sucking moment and it felt like everybody just hated me every time i saw a troll having his day or somebody just walking with me i always think back to when usher said i [ __ ] up everything and i'm like maybe i am a big [ __ ] up and they can say you [ __ ] up music for real and he was dead serious dead serious and i thought he was joking and i laughed and he was like not for real okay i i think you said you went into depression but you didn't go to depression because of that that was just that was the straw that broke the camel's back uh-huh that was just it i was going through so much already you know from the initial hate of autozone you know it's just from everybody t-pain got a lot of flack for using auto-tune and it seemed like everybody turned on him he went from being the hottest artist out to being the artist that nobody wanted to collaborate with and t-pain did reveal that he collaborated with a lot of people for free but when he reached back out to them for a collaboration they didn't return the favor a lot of people don't know most of those features i did back in 2008 and nine and ten i did all them for free so i did a lot of stuff for free and then you know nothing was reciprocated like there was a time where i started getting cold and the other featured artist was like i don't want to be in any scenes with t-van because i don't want mine to go down wow yeah and this is the person that is like featured on my album like we've done a ton of songs together and stuff like that wow you know but when i started getting cold it was like i don't want to be seen in any scenes with these things all of a sudden you know like i said it was a ton of people that didn't pick up the phone anymore and once you know i guess once uh once jay put out doad and everybody's like well [Laughter] who else can we get on this neo chris brown those are the two main the two main people that stuck by me because most of us talk about them through all their other yeah yeah you know what i'm saying so there's very few that actually was friends with me before and after one of t payne's most hurtful fallouts was his fallout with dj khaled t-pain and dj khaled had a lot of success together and they were actually friends however things took a turn in their relationship when dj khaled started working more with future when future came on the scene he became one of the hottest new rappers out and people did start to compare future to t-pain because future used a lot of autotune in his music t-pain himself noticed the comparisons and it did seem like future was coming in to take his place at that point kanye west already ran with t-pain's auto-tune sound and now future was coming in and using auto-tune too t-pain began to notice that he was slowly being edged out for other artists like future but there was a point when t-pain wanted to actually work with future he told a story about how he met up with future's brother at a club and said that he wanted to work with future and this is what future's brother said future's younger brother told me that future don't work for me and future never he'll never support me and he'll never support anything i do so after that i went on my tangent like well all your [ __ ] this incident triggered t-pain to call future out on social media he actually exposed future and said that future rented his bugatti for his video now around this time future had a big song with ace hood and dj khaled called bugatti but the gag is none of them even owned a bugatti it was t-pain's bugatti that they were bragging about in that video now t-pain thought he was calling out future by posting this picture but he didn't know that he posted a blurry picture of ace hood ace hood was dj khaled's artist and dj khaled was very upset that t-pain put his artist on blast this whole situation led to dj khaled and t-pain's fallout and it also ignited more tension between t-pain and future future didn't want anything to do with t-pain after that dj khaled did try to get them to do a photo op with each other so it would look like they squashed their beef however t-pain wasn't about to fake it for the internet when he rejected the photo op khaled stopped working with him all together he basically replaced t-pain with future on the rest of his projects when we met up at uh at the uh bt awards me future khaled everybody callie was like we're gonna do this for the internet and i'm like i don't do anything for that do what put it in there squash anything i'm not about to do the antics right and he like shunned me for that i've talked to khaled a lot i've cried in front of gallant cried you would do a record with khaled to get more plays on night in our japs 99 jams i was talking to him like bro these guys ain't your friends these do not like you these [ __ ] is literally trying to get spins right on 99 jams and i was like bro i'm the only one that really with you uh-huh and he was like cool i like that and i always i'll tell him and jay wants it too man it wasn't kyla's fault that you know what i'm saying he he was he needed to be a part of the industry still and i know if he would have kept him with me then nobody would for him wow i don't think one hurt me as much as dj khaled and you know it was it was not just him it was it wasn't like him just like saying i'm gonna stop [ __ ] with t-pain it was because of some of the things i was doing a lot of people stopped with me because in that depressive moment of people people it was like an industry-wide thing like don't with t-pain he may very well tell the truth about what you're actually doing i wanted everybody to know how fake and [ __ ] stupid everybody was in this industry and it was a it was a memo that went out and said everybody do not with the pain but if you do don't don't let him know how your operation actually works t-pain was basically blackballed in some circles in the industry around this time he had a lot of different issues including issues with his management in fact he wanted to sign to young money with lil wayne and do a joint album called t wayne but the heads of cash money birdman and slim didn't want to work with t-pain because of his management t-pain did not only deal with issues with his management but he went through money issues he lost up to 40 million dollars from bad investments he went through depression and he also was drinking a lot to cope with everything that was happening not only that t-pain wasn't selling the same and the groups that he had under his belt weren't doing that well either t-pain had two groups one called sophia fresh and the other one called one chance sophia fresh and one chance eventually disbanded because labels weren't interested in putting money into groups t-pain recorded a song called reverse cowgirl that was supposed to go to the group one chance however the label was against it and they told t-pain that he should use it as his leading single for his fourth album revolver unfortunately reverse cowgirl flopped and his album revolver did not do well in sales and there were several reasons why revolver didn't do as well as his previous three albums reverse cowgirl that was the one single that the label picked it was a reverse cowgirl and i had wrote that record for one chance because one chance was signed to me i wrote that record for them the record would have been a smash record for new artists but if somebody has established as me and somebody that was already out there that record wasn't for me the one record that the label picked was the first congress that was the first record i had do bad at radio and that was the first record they picked and that record wasn't even for me they had me snatch it from my one chance you know when my fourth album dropped and i did 30 000 the first week i i was devastated really crying i hadn't prepared for failure like i had never sold less than 150 first week i was assigned to jive and then out of nowhere nobody said anything like a week into the revolver album i was assigned to rta and nobody told me and the reason that the revolver did so bad is because nobody cared they got four labels worth of artists and one label worth of staff job went down to hell there's no more drive i don't know if y'all understand i got signed inside records and there's no more job so if you see your favorite artist in the background you see your favorite artist not doing good it's not their fault don't have enough staff rca really stopped giving a [ __ ] about their artist that wasn't performing as well as the other artists and i literally called peter one day peter is the president at rca and i was like hey please drop me let me go because he's like out of his mouth it's like urban music doesn't make us any money right and i was like well i'm doing urban music i would gladly not be a hindrance right anymore just let me go and he's like you think i'm gonna let somebody else have tv the drastic changes at t payne's label really affected the performance of his fourth album not only that t-pain did reveal that his managers did not promote the album they had no interest in promoting it properly and they tried to make t-pain feel like the reason why he wasn't selling is because people didn't care to hear him sing in auto-tune anymore but the truth of the matter is his managers were lazy and the heads of rca didn't care about t payne's new project either in fact t-pain revealed that he went off on the label executives at a listening party because they weren't listening to the record now t-pain was drunk when he went on this whole rant and that was one of the many instances where his excessive drinking created problems for him the label executives were offended when t-pain went off on them and they stopped caring about him all together t-pain was still held up on rca because the label refused to let him go so he was forced to stay on there for the next six years after t-pain released revolver he worked on other music and released several different mixtapes he also had the idea to record a live album of his greatest hits and he wanted to feature new artists his label however rejected it rca really didn't pay much attention to t-pain until he went viral for singing on npr's tiny desk a lot of people were shocked when they heard t-pain actually sing without auto-tune most people didn't really think that t-pain actually could sing uh baby girl what's your name let me talk to you let me buy you a drink in an empty pain you know me time big meals in every bowl little did the public know t-pain sang most of his first album with his real voice and he almost always sings live with his real voice so he has always been singing but nobody knew he could sing not even his label i did the npr joint the first one that's when they came back and said we need to do a live album they said no to it because they didn't think i could sing none of them have ever heard me sing before and i didn't realize that so they said no to me doing a live album because they thought it was going to sound terrible t-pain was really frustrated that rca did not listen to his ideas about recording a live greatest hits album he also had disagreements with his label about the singles he wanted to release his fifth album was pushed back five different times he eventually released his fifth album oblivion in 2017 and fulfilled his contract with rca and akon around this time t-pain also fell out with akon akon did an interview with vlad tv and said that t-pain's career fell off because he never stopped making hood music he felt like t-pain should have crossed over to dance and pop music but he didn't realize that t-pain already dabbled in edm and pop and rock he had a dance song with pitbull called hey baby drop it to the floor which did well t-pain didn't fall off because of the music he made he fell off because of the issues he had in the industry when t-pain saw akon's interview he threw shade at him and said the very people that held me back is telling y'all how i could have been bigger he also revealed that akon really didn't have much involvement with his career yeah a kind signed all of us for signing bonuses bro and then didn't do a god thing like the whole time after t-pain left akon and left rca he decided to go independent and make music on his own label nappy boy records going independent was a good move for t-pain he was able to get attention on his own in 2019 he became the first winner on the hit show masked singer and following his win he released his first independent album on nappy boy records called one up also t-pain worked with other younger artists in the industry like drizzy tory lanez and k lonnie t payne not only makes music but he also hosted his own tv show on fuse called t-pain school of business also he has his own podcast on his youtube channel t-pain has been very busy and now more artists are starting to work with him he currently is producing and working on music with artists like ty dolla sign young blue kelly roland etc even though t-pain took some hits to his career he still is a very respected singer songwriter and producer today and after years of getting backlash he now is becoming more appreciated in music there's no denying that t-pain is a young legend he transformed the way music sounds today and he inspired a lot of artists and his artistry should be respected that's all for this music documentary tell me what you all think about this video down below and please like comment and subscribe and share this video if you care thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Empressive

Views: 762,771

Keywords: t-pain, autotune, interview, bartender, buy u a drank, i'm sprung, can't believe it, lil wayne, kanye west, 808s and heartbreak, t-wayne, tory lanez, jay-z, dj khaled, all i do is win, rick ross, usher, future, kiss kiss, chris brown, jerry sprunger, flo-rida, low, pitbull

Id: 2LWm7MU9Xz0

Length: 36min 12sec (2172 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021