CD Review: T-Pain, ‘Thr33 Ringz’ - Expressnightout.com
—CD Review: T-Pain, ‘Thr33 Ringz’ - Expressnightout.com
Written by Roxana Hadadi
VIRTUALLY ALL SUCCESSFUL rappers have some kind of shtick. Jay-Z banks on the reliability of retirement; Kanye West is a pretentious, pastel-loving elitist perfect for college-age hipsters; and Lil Wayne milks his Promethazine-addicted, drug-addled image to his advantage.
Even for all that, though, you can’t deny their prowess — Jay-Z may be getting too safe in his old age, Kanye may use ghostwriters and Weezy may miss more concerts than he actually ends up performing at, but their appeal is grounded in some fundamental skill-set. Their images, as outlandish as they may be, are only the icing on their already talented cake.
But for T-Pain, the Tallahassee native formerly of Nappy Headz, image is everything — and the only thing. With “Thr33 Ringz” (Konvict Muzik/Jive), T-Pain proves that his best talents lay behind the artist on the mic, not as the one on it. His reliance on Auto-Tune saps the entire album of any genuine feeling or personality, instead leaving a robotic, monotonous mess that leaves listeners yearning for that lost time when singers actually, you know, sang.
As a producer, T-Pain has helped create hits such as “Kiss Kiss” by Chris Brown and “Got Money” by Lil Wayne; as a singer, his charted singles include “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)” and “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’).” What do all those songs have in common? The drastically overused Auto-Tune, that little vocoder that can immediately perfect one’s pitch but also makes any normal-sounding human seem more like HAL than a living and breathing specimen of flesh and bone. And all over “Thr33 Ringz,” T-Pain shows his dependence on the mechanism — from “Chopped & Screwed” featuring Ludacris to “Blowing Up” with Ciara to “It Ain’t Me” with T.I. and Akon (a fellow Auto-Tune victim), creating songs that work as mindless dance music but fail as anything else.
In fact, the redeeming value of most of these tracks — such as “Therapy,” with its proclamation of “I don’t need your sex / I’ll masturbate;” “Long Lap Dance,” with the demand of “I need more than a minute with you / Before I spend a minute with you;” and “Bad Side,” with the suggestion of “Bend over and show me that backside” — is slim to none. While T-Pain is a master at creating outrageously catchy choruses that take up residence in one’s brain like an annoying fungus (such as in first single “Can’t Believe It” and even the aforementioned, teeth-gratingly repetitive “Chopped & Screwed”) that can’t forgive the album’s numerous other transgressions.
Take, for example, “Keep Going,” a song about how T-Pain’s commitment to his family inspires him to continue working in the industry and providing for them. The track is meant to be the album’s most touching, but it seems bizarrely out of place — the honesty shining through T-Pain’s lyrics and delivery makes one wonder what the rest of the album would have sounded like if T-Pain had used the same level of emotion throughout. Unfortunately, listeners don’t get to find out, as the next track, “Superstar Lady,” focuses on chasing girls and sex games — business as usual.
Similarly, when T-Pain revisits another not-totally-sex-related topic — the idea of eliminating racism, intolerance and hate in “Change” — he steals lyrics from, um, Eric Clapton’s “Change the World.”
Sure, it makes sense that T-Pain has to further the “Ringleader Man” shtick for as long as possible, but it’s too obvious on “Thr33 Ringz,” too much like he wants the album to be a concept album verifying his own authenticity as an artist. The most telling example is “Karaoke,” wher T-Pain sings without Auto-Tune and defensively claims, “It ain’t no disrespect, man, y’all keep doing your shit / But my daughter told me to tell you to get off Daddy’s dick.”
From the useless skits sprinkled through the album to the numerous guest spots, almost everything on “Thr33 Ringz” lacks original thought. Instead, it merely continues along the same brainless route mainstream rap has carved for years — and if T-Pain wants to be that ringleader, then we’re going to have to pass on this circus.
Tags: T-Pain, Thr33 Ringz