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Pop & Hiss

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Category: T-Pain

T-Pain's animated 'Freaknik': 'Strippers start coming and flying out the air'

March 4, 2010 |  4:48 pm

Freaknik

Cancún. Daytona Beach. Panama City. Fort Lauderdale.

All popular spring break vacations for college students looking to unwind, drink copious amounts of alcohol and perhaps partake in a wet T-shirt contest or two. The frequency of the latter sort of debauchery may or may not depend on the presence of MTV camera crews. 

There was a time when Atlanta was a hot destination during spring break with its annual Freaknik festival, which in its heyday attracted hundreds of thousands of predominately black students from the surrounding colleges and universities.There was loud music, barely there bikinis, globs of people clogging traffic, and cameras were known to be rolling -- mostly to record the ladies.

It’s been more than 10 years since Atlanta has seen the festival, but thanks to Adult Swim and T-Pain, the party has been resurrected from the grave.

On Sunday, the Cartoon Network will premiere “Freaknik: The Musical,” a 60-minute animated feature produced by, and starring, the rapper -- and yes, there will be use of Auto-Tune.

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Kanye West needs his own "Sorry, Blame It on Me" single

September 18, 2009 |  2:05 pm

Kanye-west600

For a bit of context on how a pop-rapper behaving terribly can recover in the public eye, think back to the halcyon days of 2007. Akon, the singer/producer, was fresh off an incident in a Trinidad 18-and-up club where he engaged in a lascivious bit on onstage grinding with a female fan who, it turns out, was 16 at the time. Trinidad police launched an investigation (that they soon dropped), but Verizon pulled a reported $3 million worth of sponsorship money from his tour with Gwen Stefani in response. In the court of public opinion, "Konvict Music" proved an apt name for his business ventures.

Now, Akon could have chosen to go the R. Kelly route and simply ignore all this while making even more sexually overblown (and brilliant) records. But he didn't. He went full-bore meta and released one of the strangest singles of the year, "Sorry, Blame It on Me," a monument to passive-aggressive R&B wimpsterism. On the track, he self-flagellates in great detail about both his absentee relationships and the Trinidad incident while -- sort of justifiably -- ducking much of that aforementioned blame:

"I'm sorry for Club Zen getting shut down / I hope they manage better next time around / how was I to know she was underage?...Verizon backed out disgracing my name / I'm just a singer trying to entertain / Because I love my fans I'll take that blame."

It was so weird, so contrary to all standard PR-agent instincts to decline comment on anything like this, that "Sorry" left upset fans with nothing to complain about that Akon hadn't already said first in the song. And wouldn't you know, people stopped talking about Akon as creepy-dance-floor-guy and let him get back to producing and writing in peace. Of course, he then promptly bodyslammed a kid at a radio festival and started this all over, but that's another story.

Which brings us to Kanye West, who had a less aggressive but even more public-upsetting run-in with a young girl onstage recently. There might be something for Kanye to learn from in the tale of Akon: It's a lot harder to criticize someone if they said it all first, and loudest (Eminem's character also tried this to great effect at the end of "8 Mile"). And who better to put out a withering self-critique than Kanye West? He's practically already written one, with "Everything I Am" from "Graduation" taking on the topic of his awards-show bad behavior (and, presciently, praising Beyonce).

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First Miley, and now T-Pain: Taylor Swift to slowly take over all of pop music?

June 11, 2009 | 10:39 am
Taylor_miley_grammys

First Miley Cyrusthen John Mayer and now T-Pain? Everyone seems to want to partner with country superstar princess Taylor Swift, and Swift seems happy to play along. 

When Swift teased via Twitter that she might be in the studio with T-Pain, which came a few months after Mayer teased he was in the studio with Swift, we were either being fed trinkets from what would surely be one of the oddest and warped mainstream duet albums in history, or simply watching a pair of young media masters do their work. The latter appears to be the case with the T-Pain announcement, as Swift will indeed be working with the Auto-Tone kingpin, but there may or may not be music involved, and if there is, it may or not be a novelty number for a sketch at the "Country Music Television Music Awards," which air Tuesday night.

The folks at CMT have shared a photo to generate some hype for the pairing. But this is well played, Mr. T-Pain, well played. While the CMT Music Awards aren't exactly the cream of the crop, they do kind of mark the unofficial start of the music award season. Yes, it's here. 

With the Grammys having shifted their eligibility period from the last day of September to the last day in August, now is the time to take part in a stunt to get your album back in the minds of Grammy voters, a notoriously unadventurous lot. Swift doesn't have anything to worry about, but T-Pain's "Thr33 Ringz" drifted off the U.S. pop chart a few weeks ago, and the time is ripe for the artist to get back on the campaign trail. 

Additionally, let's not forget that there's precedent. Shoring up the country base worked well, come Grammy time, for Lil Wayne, who appeared with Kid Rock at the Country Music Assn. Awards in 2008.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift at the 2009 Grammy Awards. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

T-Pain's Auto-Tune app for the iPhone is in progress

February 10, 2009 |  5:22 pm

T-Pain

At the end of this now-boilerplate "Intro to Auto-Tune for Frightened Boomers" story in Time is a small glimpse at a future in which drunken phone fights with your ladyfriend can precisely replicate "808s & Heartbreak." T-Pain and Antares are collaborating on an Auto-Tune app for the iPhone, with which you can use the company's vocal-transforming software to pitch-shift your own voice via cellphone.

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