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T-Pain - Thr33 Ringz
| Nytimes |
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In the year and change since his last album, “Epiphany,” was released, T-Pain has gone from outlier to insider, laughingstock to innovator. Thanks to high-profile imitators like Kanye West and Lil Wayne and up-and-comers like Ron Browz, his once-signature cyborgesque Auto-Tune-enhanced vocals have become something of the norm. As a result, T-Pain has made an additional transformation: eager salesman to indignant complainer. He has a point, though, and on “Thr33 Ringz,” his third album, he makes the case for his misunderstood genius — “This is my circus I’m working/I can flip this whole game with one hand” — by reasserting that no one has a better idea of how to make a T-Pain song than T-Pain. He even breaks the fourth wall, talking process on “Long Lap Dance,” about how a private dance in a strip club, a fixed-price commodity, is a better bargain the longer the song that accompanies it is. “Don’t you feel dumb/when shorty comes over to you/and starts getting it on,” he commiserates. “Then the song is over/ that’s so wrong/ so I made a long lap-dance song.”...full text |
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| Blender |
| Some R&B lovermen boast about bagging six girls at once. T-Pain can’t handle even one. “Therapy,” from his third album, is about a stubborn shorty. His solution: “5, 6, 7, 8/I don’t need your sex, I’ll masturbate!” The top-hatted Floridian who calls himself Teddy Penderass is an overweight, undersexed lunk who drinks too much, crushes on strippers and writes an extra-long lap-dance song just so he can get his $20’s worth in the club. Single “Chopped N Skrewed” celebrates getting dissed at the bar, and on “Blowing Up”—the kind of bootylicious electronica Wall-E and Eve might bump circuit boards to—our hero gets the ice-princess treatment from Ciara … and loves it. Since his 2005 debut, T-Pain has seen his Auto-Tuned swagger jacked by everyone from Kanye to Lil Wayne, but he has kept his sound fresh with a bottomless bag of hooks and a grainy rasp that the computers can’t buff away. Call him the Six Million Dollar Everyman....full text |
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| Ew |
| Cynics who knock T-Pain for overusing Auto-Tune are missing the point. What he lacks in melodic and lyrical creativity, he's always made up for with playful production. And on Thr33 Ringz, more than ever, that robotic voice is just part of an effort to reconcile cold technology and warm soul. When he dials back Auto-Tune, T-Pain winds up with ''Keep Going,'' a plodding ballad that proves he can record without any noticeable electronic crutches. But without them, he's way less fun. B...full text |
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