NEW YORK (Billboard) - Beyonce logged a fourth week atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart Friday, while near-record digital sales drove dance-pop singer Lady GaGa to the No. 2 slot.

Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” a track from her chart-topping album “I Am … Sasha Fierce,” sold a massive 382,000 downloads last week according to Nielsen SoundScan, a 157% increase.

But Lady GaGa’s Grammy-nominated “Just Dance” featuring Colby O’Donis sold 419,000 downloads, the second biggest single-week sum of all time behind Flo Rida’s 467,000 from the same week last year. It rose one spot from the previous week, swapping places with T.I.’s “Live Your Life” featuring Rihanna.

Kanye West’s “Heartless” held at No. 4, and Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” rose two to No. 5. Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” remained at No. 6, and Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” fell two to No. 7.

Rounding out the top portion of the Hot 100, West’s “Love Lockdown,” T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” and Beyonce’s “If I Were a Boy” were are unchanged at Nos. 8-10.

Nickelodeon star Miranda Cosgrove’s cover of Sugababes’ “About You Now” was the top debut at No. 51. The song was released last June on the “iCarly” soundtrack but is now doing strong digital business after a performance on Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade; it sold 74,000 copies last week.

Reuters/Billboard

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

The recording, which scaled the Billboard Dance Music Club Play chart months ago, is currently the number two song on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. It is also number one on three Billboard charts, namely the Billboard Pop 100, Hot Digital Tracks and Hot Digital Songs charts. The track features Colby O’Donis.

Lady Gaga who was once signed to Def Jam for only three months, is a Grammy-nominated artist. Finding herself surrounded by singers who all wrote the same style of music, she decided to do something fresh and provocative in the rock ‘n’ roll underground. In 2006, she started working with music producer Rob Fusari with whom she wrote several of her early underground releases including Beautiful Dirty Rich, Dirty Ice Cream and Disco Heaven.

She created the name Lady Gaga which is a reference to the song Radio Ga-Ga by rock group Queen. Lady was later added to give the stage name a bit of feminity.

In early 2007, she was offered a deal with Interscope and hired as a songwriter and partnered with hip hop star, Akon. While working on demo tracks for Konvick recording artist Tami Chynn, Akon would have GaGa go into the booth to lay down reference vocals. Realising her singing talent and after listening to her demo recordings, Akon later signed her to a joint deal with Kon Live.

It was through her affiliation with Akon that Lady GaGa started to work on her own new material for her debut album with various heavyweight producers.

She later relocated to Los Angeles working closely with her record label to finalise her debut album, The Fame, which was released in August in Canada, Australia and other European countries. It peaked at number five in Canada and seven in Australia. In October 2008, the album was released in stateside and reached number 17 on the Billboard 200 with first week sales burst of 24,000 copies. It also debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart and received rave reviews from critics in the New York Post, Billboard magazine and US magazine.

Poker Face, the second single from The Fame, reached number one in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Akon weighs in on the Lady GaGa vs. Christina Aguilera comparisons. “I definitely feel that Christina Aguilera is very inspired by Lady GaGa. It’s almost identical,” he tells Rap-Up TV about Christina’s uncanny resemblance to his Konlive artist, who currently has a top 5 hit with “Just Dance.” “She was never doing that before Lady GaGa came out.”

Plus, he gives us the scoop on signing TLC’s Chilli to his label and the possibility of a Grammy for his camp.

Even in the OTT insanity that is Las Vegas, Lady GaGa stands out a mile. Dressed in a Thierry Mugler-inspired black rubber dress adorned with gold origami pyramids, stupendously long false eyelashes, crystal-encrusted sunglasses and impossibly high heels, she cuts quite a figure as she wanders past the agog gamblers. “This is just how I am all the time,” she shrugs, oblivious to the attention as she prepares to perform at the wonderfully ostentatious Mirage hotel. “You’ll never see me in flip-flops and a T-shirt.”

The surreal city is the perfect setting for a GaGa gig. The Italian-American singer is a perplexing, somewhat camp combination of brash, bright and slightly strange. “It’s the future of pop music,” she insists of tracks such as the excellent new single, Just Dance. Surrounded by four male dancers and brandishing a glow-in-the-dark disco stick, she gamely stagedives into her adoring audience, which tonight includes the R&B superstar Ne-Yo.

Having seen her perform in both Los Angeles and London earlier this year, I can say that her spirited showmanship isn’t reserved only for the bright lights of Sin City. She is just as enthralling at all of her shows, regardless of location. “Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show,” she says of her impressive stage set. “I don’t give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can’t drive.”

In combining music, fashion, art and technology, Lady GaGa evokes Madonna when she was good, Gwen Stefani circa Hollaback Girl, Kylie 2001 or Grace Jones right now. “My art is my whole life,” she says of her “digital age”, multimedia approach to artistry. As well as touring with huge moveable screens that display myriad images, GaGa uploads self-made documentaries to MySpace: “I’ve taken something decidedly commercial and made it interesting.”

Her debut album, The Fame, is indeed just that. Written and co-produced by GaGa, it’s a fantastic mix of Bowie-esque ballads, dramatic, Queen-inspired midtempo numbers and synth-based dance tracks that poke fun at celebrity-chasing rich kids. It’s entertaining, incredibly witty and, above all, captivating.

“I’m defying all of the preconceptions we have of pop artists,” says the 22-year-old with a penchant for Chanel, Gareth Pugh and Marni. “I’m very into fashion — I channel Versace in everything I do. Donatella is my muse in so many ways: she’s iconic and powerful, yet people throw darts at her. She’s definitely provocative, and I channel that more so than anything else.”

There are a lot of other figures being “channelled”, though. Her stage name is a nod to Queen’s Radio Ga Ga, while her ideology is Warholian in essence. She works with a collective called the Haus of GaGa, who collaborate with their muse on clothing, stage sets and sounds. “In this industry, you get a lot of stylists and producers thrown at you, but this is my own creative team, modelled on Warhol’s Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.” The point of her pop music, she adds, isn’t merely to entertain, but to provoke response and discussion. “How do I make pop, commercial art be taken as seriously as fine art? That’s what Warhol did,” she says, sipping a green tea an hour before show time. “How do I make music and performances that are thought-provoking, fresh and future? We decide what’s good and, if the ideas are powerful enough, we can convince the world that it’s great.”

GaGa’s success is far from overnight, but after she made a career out of songwriting for other acts, the buzz about her is starting to build. Currently No 5 in the Billboard Hot 100 with Just Dance, she is also the recent recipient of a Grammy nomination. In the UK, she has been tipped in the influential BBC Sound of 2009 poll. If all goes according to her pop masterplan, she is set to be a huge act next year. “I’m filling an enormous hole. There’s a wide-open space for a female with big balls to fill,” the classically trained pianist announces. “I’m here to make great music and inspire people.”

It’s not only GaGa herself and music- industry insiders who are excited. The influential American gossip blogger Perez Hilton predicts she will be “massive” in 2009: “She makes good music, it’s pop with substance. She’s the real deal, the total package.” Another fan is the fashion designer Henry Holland. “Her music is pure, brilliant pop, and I love the fact that she has such an iconic look,” he says. “It’s not very often that someone comes along and looks different and individual . . . I think that’s exciting and inspiring.”

GaGa is apparently already influencing other artists, with numerous blogs gleefully pointing out the similarity of Christina Aguilera’s styling, hair and make-up in recent months. “I’m not sure who this person is, to be honest,” Aguilera sniffed when asked whether she was a fan. “I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.” GaGa, for her part, is unbothered by the backbiting.

“I think she’s very talented and, anyway, look at me: I might as well be a gay man. When I hear comments like that, I’m like, ‘She’s dead on’, because she saw the Warhol in me. Of course it bears a resemblance, but nobody can copy me, because I can’t be copied.”

Lady GaGa is loath to give her real name, insisting friends and family refer to her only by her stage name (“When I make love, they say GaGa”), but some digging reveals she was born Stefani Joanne Germanotta on the Upper West Side (“I am New York, I’m a hustler, I ate dust since I was 15 and I kept going even when I was told no”).

She attended the private Catholic school Convent of the Sacred Heart, whose alumni include the Hilton sisters and Caroline Kennedy. Contrary to popular belief, the song Beautiful, Dirty, Rich isn’t about her former classmate Paris Hilton. “I never saw those girls for more than 10 seconds down the hallways.” Yet it seems the school has had some part in her transformation from fitted blazers to Balenciaga shoes: “I was the arty girl, the theatre chick. I dressed differently and I came from a different social class from the other girls. I was more of an average schoolgirl with a cork.”

That cork eventually popped when she graduated from NYU, where she had studied art. Her entrepreneur father was, unsurprisingly, shocked when his daughter ran off to the Lower East Side to dabble in drugs and appear in burlesque shows at dive bars with drag queens and go-go dancers. “He couldn’t look at me for a few months,” she admits of her early experimentations. “I was in leather thongs, so it was hard for him — he just didn’t understand. But my parents saw me getting better, and now my father cries when he sees me perform.”

The drugs disappeared around the same time as her act began to take serious shape. “I had a scary experience one night and thought I might die,” GaGa remembers. “I woke up, but it helped me become the person I am. I see things in quite a fragmented, psychotic manner, which I think is because of that. But I decided it was more important to become a centred, critical thinker. That was more powerful than the drug itself.”

Refining her act in downtown Manhattan, she signed to Def Jam at the age of 19, but was dropped shortly after. “It just wasn’t for them,” she says nonchalantly. She was spotted a couple of years later by the music executive Vincent Herbert and signed to Interscope in January 2008. Impressed by her ear for melody and knack for spotting a great hook, various acts — Akon’s Konvict label, as well as Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney and New Kids on the Block — have hired her as a songwriter.

Now, though, her music is surpassing those she provided hits for. With plenty of hype surrounding GaGa, only time will tell whether she will take over planet pop — or fizzle without trace. Either way, there’s no doubt she is currently the genre’s most interesting proposition. “If people think GaGa is over the top and decadent now, I’m afraid for them, they have no idea what’s to come,” she laughs, contemplating her future. “I eat, sleep, breathe and bleed every inch of my work. I’d absolutely die if I couldn’t be an artist.”

The single Just Dance is out digitally on December 29 and physically on January 5.

The album The Fame is out on January 19.

Lady GaGa tours the UK with the Pussycat Dolls from January 18

—Lady Gaga - Disco Heaven: MP3 Download & Lyrics

DOWNLOAD: Lady Gaga - Disco Heaven [Bonus Track]

—Lady Gaga - Disco Heaven, Lyrics

Intro:
Oh, the disco heaven
Oh, the disco heaven

Verse 1:
Get back, bunny
It’s getting cold in here little honey
We got a show to put on your dress
Take a minute for us and relax, relax
Cupid’s got me, oh with his bow and arrow, baby
He’ll hit you in the pants, hot pants
Get the people to dance and relax, relax

Chorus: 2X
Oh the lights still on, we’re dancing
Yeah the floor is shaking
In this disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)
The disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)

Verse 2:
Throw your head back, girly
Throw it like those girls in the movies
We got a show to put on your dress
Take a minute for us and relax, relax
The ball is turning, 300 mirrors burning
Through the hearts of the crowd
In the back hips just banging the track
To the music, the music

Chorus: 2X
Oh the lights still on, we’re dancing
Yeah the floor is shaking
In this disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)
The disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)

Break:
Oh we got that disco
D-I-S-C-O
And we’re in heaven
H-E-A-V-E-N
Disco heaven
Feels just like heaven
Disco heaven
Disco heaven

A line up for the dance
Yeah bring those fancy pants
Y’know there’s disco in the air
And hairspray everywhere

A disco heaven
A disco heaven
Disco heaven
Disco heaven

Chorus: 2X
Oh the lights still on, we’re dancing
Yeah the floor is shaking
In this disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)
The disco heaven
(Oh, the disco heaven)

—The Fame: Original Track listing & I Like it Rough DOWNLOAD [Bonus track]

Download: Lady GaGa “I Like it Rough” [Bonus Track: Original release]
Canadian iTunes, Australian and alternative European edition bonus track

—Lady GaGa - The Fame: Track listing (Original release)
1. “Just Dance” (featuring Colby O’Donis and Akon) — 4:04
2. “LoveGame” — 3:33
3. “Paparazzi” — 3:30
4. “Beautiful Dirty Rich” — 2:54
5. “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)” — 2:57
6. “Poker Face” — 3:59
7. “The Fame” — 3:44
8. “Money Honey” — 3:08
9. “Again Again” — 3:06
10. “Boys, Boys, Boys” — 3:22
11. “Brown Eyes” — 4:05
12. “Summerboy” — 4:16

Bonus track:
13. “I Like it Rough” (Canadian iTunes, Australian and alternative European edition bonus track) — 3:22 (Download)

—Lady GaGa holds Oz No.1 for third week
Monday, December 1 2008, 10:33 GMT
By Alex Fletcher, Entertainment Reporter
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/…

Kings Of Leon are also at four with ‘Use Somebody’, while Rihanna and T.I. remain at five with ‘Live Your Life’.

The top ten singles in full (click where possible for our reviews):

1. (1) Lady GaGa: ‘Poker Face’
2. (2) Kings Of Leon: ‘Sex On Fire’
3. (-) Wes Carr - ‘You’
4. (4) Kings Of Leon: ‘Use Somebody’
5. (5) T.I. Feat Rihanna: ‘Live Your Life’
6. (3) Beyoncé: ‘If I Were A Boy’
7. (6) Jessica Mauboy Feat. Flo Rida : ‘Running Back’
8. (7) Britney Spears: ‘Womanizer’
9. (10) Pink: ‘Sober’
10. (8) Pink: ‘So What’

The first time I met Lady GaGa was in her dressing room at the MTV TRL studios on Times Square back in May. I was briefly introduced to the singer by her PR handler while she was getting ready for her performance on the MTV Logo NewNowNext Awards. I nominated the singer for the MTV Logo Brink of Fame Award, which led to MTV’s invite to perform the show’s big finale.

Since then, Lady GaGa has been traveling nearly non-stop to promote her debut single “Just Dance,” which has become a bonafide smash hit around the world. But Lady GaGa has a whole lot more she wants to unleast on the world. In our interview last week, we talked about her inspirations, the importance of her “performance art” and her music. I tried to include as many of your questions as possible. Thanks so much for sending me all questions.

Arjan: Hi there Lady GaGa. How are you?

Lady Gaga: Doing well. I’m getting ready for my next performance with New Kids On The Block tonight.

You might remember me. Back in May, I nominated you for the MTV Brink of Fame Award, which led to your performance on the show.

Ooooh, you’re ArjanWrites.com! love you Arjan. I know exactly who you are!

Thank you so much. Good to talk again. I decided to take a few questions from readers to satisfy their inquiring minds about the GaGa phenomenon. The first question is about the origins of the House of GaGa. Can you tell us more about your creative troupe?

The House of Gaga is my creative team. They’re all really young people in their twenties. Friends of mine, fashion people, sculptors, engineers - we all come from different creative backgrounds. Some are just singers. We all work together to design the show, and design all my work.

Your recent hits were all produced by Redone. How did this partnership come about and do you think you’ll work with him again in the future?

I met him through my management at the time. I’m not with the same manager anymore, but at the time we shared the same management, and I met him that way. I did “Just Dance,” “Poker Face,” “Money Honey,” “Boys, Boys, Boys” and “Paper Gangsta” with him. I worked with a lot of other amazing producers as well. But absolutely, Redone and I will work together again. We have such an incredible creative bond.

A lot of fans have been asking about the unreleased track “Retrophysical.”

I did that song last year, but I didn’t think it was my best work, and I decided not to release it. Perhaps it will be a b-sde one day.

If you go back to the songs that you wrote for this album, do you have a favorite? Is “Just Dance” a special song to you, or do you have other songs that you feel that define you as an artist?

I think that “Paparazzi” really defines me as an artist in a lot of ways. It’s a real pop record but still kind of twisted too. And it has a really intelligent pop art message behind it. That’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I’m really proud of that song.

You have transformed your artist persona quite a bit over the last 12 months. You were pictured in W Magazine last year in which you were a brunette and now you have become a blond electro goddess. What inspired this new look?

I’ve just been growing. I think everybody grows, just as people over the years, and I grow as an artist. I grow every three weeks! I’m constantly changing. I’m inspired. Especially now. I’m traveling the world. I’m in a different city every night. I am constantly pushing the envelope to be more and more creative and different and original. And create this beautiful, graphic, important imagery.

Was the choreography inspired by Stefani’s Harajuku Girls?

The reference for my dance style is Claude Vanheye. He was a performance artist and singer in the 70’s who worked with David Bowie. And I’ve always been inspired by the way that he used this sort of android, androgynous, mannequin-like dancers. have a clear concept in my mind. I could sit down with you and go through magazine clippings and film and videos that reference every single detail of my show.Those things are part of learning and studying art, and being someone that really – I live and breathe for my work. Those ideas all came together to create the vision of my show. I’m so proud of it. It’s my baby.

People are really connecting to it. They are really inspired by what you do.

I appreciate that you say that Arjan, because what I love so much about this project, is that there is no fans in the world like Lady GaGa fans. My fanbase are people from different backgrounds, different sexual orientations, different music tastes, they’re all dressed up like they’re going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The L.A. Times asked Christina Aguilera about the visual resemblance between you and her. Aguilera wasn’t sure who you were and allegedly called you a “shemale.” What do you make of all that?

I’m not offended by it. But I love my gay fans so much because they always run to my rescue and are so sweet to defend me. But truthfully, I’m not offended by it. I talk endlessly in my interviews about David Bowie and Grace Jones, and how much they both have inspired my work and my fashion. And they’re both extremely androgynous and have a lot of enigmatic imagery. Stuff that is provocative and crosses sexual boundaries. So, for me, it’s a creative decision with my fashion to be androgynous and scary, so I wasn’t really offended by it, as much as everyone thought I would be.

So with all this traveling around the world, you’re in another plane, and you’re going to another country, what are you listening to, how are you relaxing and being able to do all of this?

I’m really into an artist right now named Patrick Wolf. I think you would really love him, really fantastic, amazing, from the UK. I listen to him. I meditate. I have this amazing meditation that I do. I just stay focused, I design clothing on the road, that keeps me sane, on the road, design the show. Every time you see me on tour I’m doing something different, and that’s because on each your I’m designing the next tour.

That’s wonderful. Is there– What is the craziest thing a fan has done for you so far? I mean you must have run into really fanatic fans. What are some of the amazing things that they’ve done? Or sent you or gave you?

One of my fans got a tattoo of me on this arm. I gotta run Arjan, I love you. Give a shout out to all your readers for me, they’re my dear friends.

Thanks, Lady Gaga.

Despite his robotic voice, T-Pain is more human than most of his chiseled, bland, and utterly interchangeable peers in modern r&b. The former rapper from Florida has a mess of black/blond dreads, omnipresent shades, a taste for top hats and gobs of jewelry, and an uncanny knack for making proletariat anthems devoted to the easy escapism of drunkenness, sex, and strip clubs. The ability to repeatedly conjure up such brainless merriment has made him the undeniable king of urban pop radio. Through its title, the intro, and several skits, T-Pain’s third album, Thr33 Ringz, is vaguely built around a circus motif, and its star attraction is a showman who abides by one golden rule: Give the audience what they came to see.

Unconcerned with abstraction or pretentious conceit, T-Pain is a casual literalist who understands that songs intended for moistening dance floors or sending ripples through stripper flesh need not be exercises in art-fuckery. Instead of the generic come-hithers or agonized platitudes of his contemporaries, he jokes about being broke or getting drunk or booting girls out of his house. On the up-tempo, shimmering “Therapy,” a winning track that bends between sweet-hearted and insulting, T-Pain integrates the punchy if un-poetic phrase “I don’t need your sex/I’ll masturbate” into an unlikely hook. His clever friend Kanye West shows up and flaunts his underappreciated ability to flip pop-culture references into effective punch lines: “Show me your Janet Jacksons if you’re nasty/Said you wanted to cut my nuts off like Jesse Jackson—classy.” Wait, why is he singing a whole album with AutoTune again?

West doesn’t use the vocal-enhancing program here, but T-Pain does gripe about his trademark sound being co-opted by everyone from Snoop to R. Kelly to Ron Browz. Over the choral chants and rattling snares of “Karaoke,” he extends sole permission to Kanye and Lil Wayne while presenting himself as the descendant of fellow metal-lunged iconoclasts like Teddy Riley and Roger Troutman. “You just a swagger jacker/Now I’m a certified Lamborghini-ist and Cadillac-er,” he notes. Still, T-Pain is no isolationist. The guest list for Thr33 Ringz reads like the roster of one of those VIP sections he yammers about so incessantly: Wayne, T.I., Ludacris, Mary J. Blige, Diddy, Akon, Chris Brown, etc. A smorgasbord of keyboards, thumping basslines, and blithe odes to various ladies, Thr33 Ringz is both unrepentant and wildly successful in its towering predictability. As the ringmaster, T-Pain doesn’t attempt high-wire aerial stunts, risk swallowing any swords, or stick his head in a yawning lion’s mouth. But he steers a pretty good clown car.

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.