T-Pain Takes Auto-Tune Country Despite Jay-Z Diss
Did you see T-Pain Auto-Tuning with Taylor Swift Tuesday at the Country Music Awards? During a skit, Taylor Swift has a three-part dream. One of her dreams is to make a rap record.
For some strange reason Taylor's hip-hop fantasy does not include lyrical rap king Jay-Z who recently sparked a buzz with his song "Death Of Auto-Tune." Instead, Taylor actually has the nerve to record a track and video with T-Pain, the guy Jay-Z blames on "D.O.A." for ruining the genre.
In the 90-second video spoof "Thug Story," cutesy Swift adopts gangsta attire, a white T, diamond-encrusted grill and plenty of bling around her neck as she raps alongside T-Pain about her thuggish tales of living with her parents, baking cookies and not owning a gun.
While the concept is genius, the skit isn't as funny as it could have been. (See my colleague Wendy Geller's full CMT review for her take.) Still, the timing is great, considering all the attention Jay-Z has been getting for "D.O.A."
I know that T-Pain didn't make this Taylor Swift video to spite Jay-Z. But in a way, it still feels like he did. Just two weeks ago, Jay-Z released a song that says that hip-hop is in a horrible state because of Auto-Tune and names checks T-Pain. And when interviewed by Hot 97's Angie Martinez, Jay said he would be fine if the song prompted T-Pain to never speak to him again.
But the best part is that T-Pain is completely unfazed.
Not only does T-Pain walk on stage while Jay-Z is performing this diss song at Hot 97's Summer Jam in New York, a week later, he is on the CMT awards "T-Paining" with country sweetheart Taylor Swift. T-Pain is bringing more mainstream attention to the style and reaching a whole new audience. You never know, a couple country artists might decide to jump on the bandwagon. Maybe this is already in the works.
I just like that T-Pain is focused and does not appear to be bothered by Jay-Z's opinion. That's good stuff.
Yeah, I think there is an over saturation of Auto-Tune songs in the marketplace. But I'm not mad at T-Pain. He is not forcing people to work with him and request his features and production work. If I were in his position, I would ride the wave too. He was smart to take the opportunity to work with Taylor Swift. The girl is LARGE.
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