S. Samuel
Former auto-tune hitmaker T-Pain recently reflected on his rise to fame and why he credits Jay-Z's 2009 "Death of Auto-Tune" for helping his career.
Pain also said he did not initially take offense to the song attacking auto-tune’s popularity.
After Jay-Z released his anti-Auto-Tune anthem “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” T-Pain’s craft came under fire, but he acknowledged the positive impact it had on his career. “The crazy thing is, and a lot of people don’t see it like this, but if you really look at it, he made me famous,” he explained. “A lot of people see this as a bad thing, but it only made me more famous because no one knew who he was talking about. If I can be in Jay-Z’s category at the end of the day, I am fantastic. I love it.” When he ran into Jay after the song’s release, there was no beef. “That whole thing was stupid,” he said. “He’s Jay-Z, he’s got probably more power than anybody in the industry right now and I’m me, so nothing’s gonna change. I make smashes, he make money, nothing’s gonna change.” (Rap-Up)
Following a publicized anti-Jay rant in September 2009, Hov said his record was not directly aimed at him.
“I made it very clear I wasn’t talking about him [on ‘Death of Auto-tune’],” Jay explained. “I think he’s talented, I don’t thik he needs auto-tune to sell records but if that’s his prerogative — Everybody has a birthday. They don’t have much else to say, they can’t attack my credentials as an artist or my lyrics as an emcee.” (“The Ed Lover Show”)
Regretting his decision to taunt Hov, Pain later released an open apology.
“So that Nuvo got me poppin’ sh*t,” Pain says on the song. “All right, so let’s talk about this Jay sh*t/Somedays I wish that I ain’t never say sh*t/And Diddy said ain’t no excuse for what I did/But I felt like he was knocking the same sh*t that feeds my kids/I do music ’cause I need it to make my world spin/So when you down it, it’s like you dissing my girlfriend/And Jay one of the only n*ggas I hear bringin’ it/So I didn’t think that he would even entertain the sh*t/’Cause entertainment is see through/But if you really feel like I’m dead, then n*gga me too/I ain’t tryna write your rhymes/But you coulda skipped one DJ and all you had to say was ‘T-Pain, we cool’/But by all means don’t that this as a diss or hatin’/I just wanna explain my side of the situation/So if you knew just how much respect I had/You’d know that I’m a real n*gga when I say, ‘My bad.'” (T-Pain’s “Successful” Freestyle)
In March 2010, Pain revealed they eventually had met face-to-face and came to terms with one another.
“We talked at the Grammys,” Pain said in an interview. “It was a pretty big thing. Word for word, he said, ‘That’s f—ed up the way you took that song.’ I’m a [crazy] n—a, so we gonna take the song like that. That’s how we take songs. He was like, ‘I didn’t mean nothing by that.’ I was like, ‘I already put out my apology song. So there you go. My bad. I apologize. Apologize for taking the song like that.’ We shook hands, did the little chest bump. That was the end of that.” (MTV)
Check out T-Pain’s interview below:
