T-Pain:
T-Pain, born Faheem Rasheed Najm, “deliberately and routinely misapplies [auto-tune] to transform his voice into an overtly mechanized form.”[1] This is how T-Pain began to use auto-tune in a revolutionary manner during his musical processes.
“The effect functions in three ways: delineating formal boundaries and structural characteristics, spotlighting poetic attributes of the lyrics, and complementing principle vocal material with melodic, harmonic and timbral embellishment.”[2]
Rappa Ternt Sanga:
Rappa Ternt Sanga was released in 2005, and the single “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper) (feat. Mike Jones)”, peaked on February 18th, 2005 at spot number 5 on Billboard’s Charts. It remained on the charts for twenty weeks, signaling its success with the general public.[3] This album, and specifically this song, had club like vibes and sounds (beats and melodies) that appealed to a wide variety to people and made the music easy to, listen to despite its graphic lyrics. In 2005, Hip-Hop was just starting to detach itself from the late 1990s turf war between the East and West coast that was dominated by the likes of Dr.Dre, Tupac, Biggie Smalls and was continued by those such as Jay-Z, Eminem, and Nas. This album was, therefore, important in this transformation.
Listen to T-Pain’s other songs on this album Here.
Auto-tune Use in Rappa Ternt Sanga
“I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper) (feat. Mike Jones)” features an obvious use of auto-tune by the artist. T-Pain’s distorted voice is heard in the repeating chorus and the main hook throughout the approximately four-minute-long song.[4] The auto-tune use is most distinctly heard during the chorus. These parts of a song normally become the most memorable and popular portions of the lyrics and melody, indicating the parts of the music that would stick with an audience the most. Therefore, his extensive use of auto-tune in the hook and chorus would be remembered. A noticeable example of auto-tune is the “girl” vocal at thirty-three seconds and again at three minutes and fifteen seconds; an early use of the tool in the song, setting the stage for further manipulation and insertion of auto-tune later on. The word has a different sound than the majority of the other lyrics T-Pain sings because he stretches the lyric out and the auto-tune is very noticeable because of this. It sounds more machine generated than human produced. The notes reach a higher range due to the auto-tune and the timbre of his vocals become smoother as the auto-tune allows him to slip from one note to another, extending each note into the next. The auto-tune, by stretching out the vocals, also worked to slow down the tempo into a more danceable accompaniment for the clubs. This sound translated well into the club atmosphere, as the smooth notes and technological sounds allowed people to dance to the beat.
T-Pain strategically uses auto-tune, and in doing so, achieves a sound he believes his audiences will enjoy hearing. Auto-tune holds all elements of his songs together to create the T-Pain sound.
T-Pain is able to take something that is relatively common for musicians to use, and twist it around to create a new type of music unique to his brand, at least for a while. Musicians began to take notice of the popularity, and were influences by T-Pain’s use. Read more about it here.