T-Pain: The EM interview

Feb 26, 2009 12:26 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander

           
 

BRINGING THE SOUND OF AUTO-TUNE OUT FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Technology has been an interesting gift to Faheem Rasheed Najm. Just three short years ago, you could have mentioned the Tallahassee, Florida-born singer/songwriter/producer by his more marketing-friendly stage name, T-Pain, and it would have gone largely unrecognized. Today, that moniker is practically a household item. It is synonymous with “must have” ring-tones among the kids and neatly defines the current ‘sound du jour’ for urban and top-40 radio programmers world wide.

That sound, of course, is the gimmicky and incessant vocal staircasing effect that seems to have tickled the funny-bone of artists from Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne to Britney and Rihanna. Love it or hate it, the 23-year old T-Pain, and a bit of dumb luck, is to thank. Even the kindest of critics argue that he owes much or all of his fast-rising success to Antares Auto-Tune. A chance meeting with industry mogul Akon and his Konvict record label didn’t hurt T-Pain’s rapid career trajectory, either.

Bursting on the scene in 2005 with his debut album Rappa Ternt Sanga (2005; Jive Records), its massive lead single “I’m Sprung” introduced us to the signature vocal sound. It appeared throughout the 2007 release, Epiphany (2007; Jive Records), which sold more than a million copies. In 2008, T-Pain won a Grammy and multiple BET awards for his collaboration with Kanye West on “Good Life,” again, vocal trick in hand.

With that kind of success, it’s little wonder that the computer-generated vocal undulations are featured prominently on over half the tracks from his latest solo album, Thr33 Ringz (2008; Jive Records), a title that came from people telling him that he’s now running the ‘circus’ that is hip-hop, and the music industry as a whole.

Electronic Musician recently caught up with T-Pain at his Atlanta studio for a brief interview, just before he jetted off to a session at the Hit Factory in Los Angeles.

Describe your very early beginnings as a hip-hop producer, how it all got started for you as a kid?
I was pretty much in my bedroom. My dad found a keyboard on the side of the road that looked perfectly fine to him, so he brought it home and it was the kind of keyboard that didn’t record any MIDI or audio. So, I hooked it up to my little PA system and just started playing stuff along to songs on the radio. You know, I had no means of recording back then, so that’s pretty much how I learned to play and about putting notes together into melodies. Then I started upgrading keyboards and got this little bitty recorder that you could only record one track on it and started doing that, and finally worked up to a little workstation—a Kawai K5000.

A pretty modest setup. How old were you at the time?
Yeah, definitely modest. I had the first setup when I was around 10 years of age and the Kawai when I was about 17. I was producing tracks for myself and also friends by then, getting really involved.

Briefly tell us the story about how you met award-winning hip-hop artist/producer/label-mogul Akon and began working with him?
I’d just reworked one of his songs called “Locked Up.” He pretty much found my phone number from some place, I have no idea how. He kept calling because I kept hanging up on him; I didn’t think it was really him at first, you know? I thought somebody was playin’ with me on the phone and I didn’t know, so I just kept hanging up on him. We finally connected, sat and talked, and he just said that he wanted to sign me to his label. He flew me to Atlanta, I signed, and the rest is history.

He obviously heard something pretty unique in your lyrics and style from that one song to sign you so quickly. You’ve described your music as “Hard & B.” Could you explain that?
It’s just reality, pretty much. Reality is the thing that everybody can relate to. Hard & B is all about reality, you know? When I go in and write I just go from experience. While a lot of my stuff is talk about stripper girls and drinkin’, I mean, it’s what I do, you know what I’m sayin’? If I need something to talk about, I make it about my life, I don’t go in there and try to make up clever ways to make up songs. I don’t need that. I mean, if you’re trying to make a love song and you’re already in love, then you don’t need to go trying to make up a love story, just go in and talk about yourself, by divulging. That’s the hard way out. So, basically that’s why I call it “Hard & B,” ‘cause you’re not just going the easy way out and making up shit.

Describe your personal studio for us.
Actually, I’ve got three studios in my Atlanta house right now. The main room has a 48-channel V-Link hooked up to a [Mac] G5 with an Apple 30-inch screen, and that’s pretty much all it is to be honest.

You’re pretty much entirely in-the-box. You use Apple Logic Pro, right?
Yeah, I pretty much create the entire beat in there. Once I’m finished arranging it and I’ve got all my stuff together, my engineer bounces everything over to my Pro Tools HD rig for editing and mixing.

You also have Garage Band, I see. In what capacity do you use it?
I used to use it all the time. I made the whole Rappa Ternt Sanga album in Garage Band. But I don’t use it anymore. Same with my MPC. I used to use it a lot, but not anymore. Not since Logic Pro. I just didn’t switch from them until I had time to mess with Logic in between albums.

You travel a lot. Do you take advantage of time in the air to do much pre-production?
Yeah, I do! I just went to the Apple store last night and picked up a new Mac Book Pro, 49 key M-Audio controller, Western Digital USB Passport hard drive and a copy of Logic Express to run on the laptop.

What virtual instruments and plug-ins do you use the most?
I use a lot. I just go to every store I can and get all the synths and software I can find and use them all. I just go crazy and randomly pick, because I just don’t want to use the same sound every time. I mean, a lot of producers do that: They just find one of their favorite synths and you can hear it every time, they use it on every beat. So I just go around randomly and pick. As far as effects go, I think Sound Toys Echo Boy is the one I use the most. Actually, it’s about the only one I use consistently.