SOHH Squad
Atlanta rapper Future recently discussed his obsession with adding Auto-Tune to records and why he has provided another spark to the voice-changing tool.
According to Future, he flipped Auto-Tune into a way to make his rhymes grittier rather than to help him croon.
“When I first used Auto-Tune, I never used it to sing. I wasn’t using it the way T-Pain was. I used it to rap because it makes my voice sound grittier. Now everybody wants to rap in Auto-Tune. Future’s not everybody. The people who are taking my style are like my babies. I’ve got a tribe of kids that want to be like me… But I understand why people want to imitate the things I do. They’re dope. It comes naturally to me. My fans can expect greatness. If I wasn’t me, I would want to be me.” (Complex)
In summer 2011, Auto-Tune king T-Pain defended swaying away from the one-time infectious enchancer.
“You can’t stick with one thing forever,” T-Pain explains. “After you figure out how stuff works, you’ve got to start making your own. When everybody talks about (Auto-Tune), they pretty much say T-Pain. So what simpler thing to do? It’s supply and demand. You want the T-Pain sound? I’m gonna give you the T-Pain effect.” The T-Pain Effect, which lists for $99, gives users access to the rapper’s “whole vocal chain” of effects, along with 50 beats and a full complement of recording and distribution software. “They can sonically sound like me,” T-Pain notes, “but nobody’s ever gonna be able to write songs like T-Pain. There’s only one of those.” (Billboard)
Fellow R&B singer Ne-Yo previously bid farewell to Auto-Tune.
“Auto-tune was meant to be a safety net,” Ne-Yo explained in an interview. “It was not supposed to be wings. You’re not supposed to strap it on your back and jump off the building. That’s not what auto-tune was meant to be. If you’re using it for what it’s meant for, cool, fine, and good — not, ‘I can’t sing at all, so let’s turn auto-tune all the way up so I just sound like Willy the Robot.’ That wack! That’s terrible! It takes all the character out of your voice and you become a robot –Take the d*mn training wheels off. That’s how I feel about it.” (Amaru Don TV)
Rap mogul Jay-Z talked about the impact his “Death of Auto-Tune” had on the music industry back in 2009.
“Absolutely, it shook it up,” Jay said about the song’s impact. “It shook the town up. ‘D.O.A.’ for me, the meaning of it was really, it was more of a challenge than a diss record. I guess a lot of people took it as a diss record but for me it was more of a challenge. For me it was more of a challenge, you know, let’s go. That’s been done, we done that. That sounds good, I like the way those records sound. I’m not saying I hate auto-tune, I hate a hundred thousand people using it ’cause I don’t wanna hear the same record over and over again. I’m a fan of music so that was my push to my peers, to the music business in general to a counter cultural movement. Hip-Hop is about if you’re doing that, I’m doing this. Everybody doing their own thing and being individuals. I felt we were losing that.” (Tim Westwood TV)
