T Pain: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

TPain s fingerprints are all over pop and R B and hiphop. He wasn t the first musician to use AutoTune as an instrument he noticed it on a Jennifer Lopez remix, and remembers Deep well but it was, as he says, his style. For a while, in the mid2000s, he lived at the top of the charts. He dominated that brief moment of our lives when ringtones were a thing. He was celebrated as an innovator, and he happily took his talents where he was invited, which was everywhere. But somewhere along the way, somebody got it twisted. People felt like I was using it to sound good, says TPain, in an interview that will air on All Things Considered. But I was just using it to sound different. He just turned 30, but TPain has already done enough to drop a greatest hits album next week. We asked him if he d grace the Tiny Desk without any embellishment or effects to show what s really made his career: his voice, and those KELLEY SET LIST Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin ) Up Down (Do This All Da