We saw the slow demise of Auto-Tune after it’s over use on almost every club song played in 2008 – 2010 but that hasn’t stopped Grammy Award winning Florida born rapper T-Pain working on music with his precious pitch-correcting machine. Having released a string of promotional tracks to lukewarm reception [including “Rap Song” featuring Rick Ross, “Take Your Shirt Off” and “Reverse Cowgirl” featuring Young Jeezy] following the disbanding of Jive Records, the Auto-Tune connoisseur is back as a new signee to Young Money with his fourth studio album rEVOLVEr.
Spending most of his time this year as a strong feature artist (DJ Khaled’s “Welcome To My Hood” and Benny Benassi’s “Electroman”) many have politely returned the favour starting off his ‘revolution’ with “Bang Bang Pow Pow” featuring Cash Money’s prolific Lil Wayne at the forefront of the album. The T-Minus produced track that has already surfaced on the net will undoubtedly fair well with Young Money fans.
As well as reaching out to the R&B club goers, T-Pain takes on the Pop/Dance scene with “It’s Not You (It’s Me)” featuring Pitbull that could be easily mistaken with/compared to David Guetta’s “Sexy Chick” that featured Akon. With the help of the Miami born Latin born rapper, the Chuckie produced dance track may appeal to more fans across Europe than the US. Steering further across the border the lead single “5 O’Clock” featuring fellow rapper Wiz Khalifa has fared well in the charts, currently reaching the 11th spot with a sample from British singer Lily Allen’s, “Who’d Have Known” from her sophomore album It’s Not Me, It’s You.
Falling in love with a stripper in 2007 the rapper/singer has now moved on to another way of admiring females with “Default Picture,” dedicated to the lust of a woman via social networking site Twitter, that many of his 600,000+ followers may relate to. Known most for his club hits, T-Pain slows down the pace towards the end of the album with bonus track “Center Of The Stage” where we get to hear R. Kelly lend his voice on a verse and newcomer Bei Maejor on the chorus to give us three generations of R&B merged into one.
Taking the role of producer, T-Pain takes to the keys for the slow and serene “Sho-Time (Pleasure Thang),” with the assistance of David ‘Preach’ Balfour, and “Drowning Again” featuring R&B group One Chance. With the amount of slow-jam type songs that T-Pain manages to churn out on albums, it would be refreshing for him to release one of the many as an actual single but only time will tell. If “It’s Not You It’s Me” has a strong bet on making it to the charts, the Dr Luke-produced “Turn All The Lights On” featuring Ne-Yo will have more of a chance of making it as a future release.
We ALSO get not one but two helpings of Chris Brown, who is no stranger when it comes to T-Pain album features. We first hear the R&B star [turned rapper] on the album with certified club banger “Look At Her Go” [produced by Billboard], and rock influenced “Best Love Song” that was released quite a while ago. When there’s a set of 808s you will often find E-40. so there’s no surprise to hear the Californian rapper feature on the Young Fyre-produced track “Nuthin’” that also features rapper Detail.
Now if you were looking for something than auto-tuned vocals and bass dominated tracks then this isn’t the album for you. But if you are a loyal T-Pain fan you’re likely to appreciate what took almost two years to come out of the woodwork. Combining T-Pain-style ballads, club bangers and a few out of the ordinary collaborations (Pitbull) it should provide enough not to be snubbed by the charts.
T-Pain – rEVOLVer
Release Date – December 6, 2011
Label – Nappy Boy Entertainment/Konvict Muzick/RCA Records
Buy: iTunes UK / iTunes US / Amazon UK / Amazon US