T-Pain, in all of his fame that he garnered in the past fifteen years, is known mainly for one reason: his unique vocal sound that relies on the voice modulation technology known as Auto-Tune. This reputation traces back to his original hit song titled “I’m Sprung,” which was released in 2005 just prior to the release of his debut album, Rappa Ternt Sanga (Shryock, 194).
However, it is worth noting that T-Pain was not the first artist to use Auto-Tune in one of their songs. Famous American pop singer, Cher, claims this title, as her producers incorporated the voice modulation technology in her track “Believe” (Shryock, 104). However, Cher used Auto-Tune to smooth out any vocal imperfections that emerged in her raw recording of the song, which is much different than the way in which T-Pain utilized the technology. Per Andrew Shryock’s “Irony of Absence: Literary and Technological Devices in the Rap of T-Pain,” the artist uses the voice modulation in the following ways: “delineating formal boundaries and structural characteristics, spotlighting poetic attributes of the lyrics, and complementing principal vocal material with melodic, harmonic, and the verses from the choruses” in this initial hit song (Shryock, 195).
In the song, T-Pain talks about a woman who he has fallen for and sings about her physical figure. T-Pain sings about how he knows that he should leave this woman because she doesn’t not treat him well. However, later on in the song, he discusses that a piece of him wants to stay with the woman, adding a strained aspect to the song. The song has a conventional form with three choruses that alternate two verses of equal length. T-Pain uses Auto-Tune most heavily in the middle portion of the song, whereas he barely uses the effect in the choruses. More specifically, he relies most heavily on Auto-Tune in Verse 1 and Verse 2 of the song, where the listeners can easily notice his robotic echo in each line. The peak auto-tune usage in the song occurs every time T-Pain sings the word “do” (Shryock, 195). When he sings this word in the song, he holds the note for an extended period of time. This decision makes the listener associate the song with that this single word in the song, creating a catchy effect.
The official music video of “I’m Sprung,” T-Pain’s first major hit in the United States.
The feedback to “I’m Sprung” was not all positive. In fact, certain media sources such as the Washington Post and the Daily News described T-Pain’s vocals as “gooey, robotic warble” (Shryock, 189). Chris Richards of the Washington Post even went as far as to call T-Pain “a horny, android alcoholic” (Shryock, 189). The backlash came at T-Pain from multiple outlets, including his fellow artists. Usher, a renowned R&B singer and previously close friend of T-Pain, was quoted as saying to T-Pain that he “really (expletive) music for real singers” (Ryu, 1). This comment from Usher had such a deep impact on T-Pain that he, in fact, suffered from depression following the incident (Ryu, 1).
Despite the heavy criticism, T-Pain continued to incorporate Auto-Tune in his songs. He purposefully and directly set the music industry’s expectations that Auto-Tune would continue to appear in his music. As he released new songs, it was clear that the criticism did not outweigh the listeners’ positive response to T-Pain’s pioneering vocal aesthetic. With songs such as “Buy U a Drank,” “Bartender,” and “I’m N Luv,” T-Pain demonstrated the power of Auto-Tune and was responsible for the impact it would have on the previously mentioned music industries. His dedication to his own vocal style kept the Auto-Tune effect around long enough for other artists to catch on and incorporate the technology themselves. When artists such as Jay-Z and Usher publicly denounce an artist’s vocal style, it is hard to keep that style alive and thriving. If T-Pain had succumbed to the berating from those outside of his circle, it is unlikely that Auto-Tune would have gained such great traction in the late 2000s. This pathway can be directly traced to the initial release of “I’m Sprung” where T-Pain debuted the new sound. In this way, T-Pain’s work in his song “I’m Sprung” was the basis for the future sound of pop music as will be discussed later on in this paper, and therefore he should be credited as the pioneer of the contemporary pop sound.