Epiphany

Go Hard
written JusHH

I’ve written a lot of posts in 2008, talked about a lot of topics and incited a lot of good conversations. So for my last post of this calendar year, it seems fitting to end it by talking about one of the biggest artists on the planet. He’s given me some Fanatic moments and I’m even seen this guy with Fresh Eyes.

There’s something about success… it always happens to be successful. Successful artists never seem to go away. They put out music that you just can’t deny. The most successful artists put out music that forces you to put your hater-ation on low. I used to despise this dude but I’ve come around. So I’ll stand on my soap box today and proclaim that I’m officially a fan of…

T-f**king-Pain

Whew… that’ felt good getting off my chest. (I kinda feel like one of those guys at an AA meeting) There’s a reason that T-Pain is the hottest artist not named Lil’ Wayne over the last two years. He’s relentless and he knows how to make hit records. His own singles are infectious and the songs that he features on are oftentimes the highlights of that person’s album. And I’m not talking about just catchy songs, I’m talking about Grammy winning, millions of downloads and ringtones kind of catchy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught myself singing the words to his songs in my car or dancing hard at the club only to realize that I probably talked s**t about him an hour before hearing the song. It was like I was in a perpetual state of Fresh Eyes where I’d have to catch myself and then force myself to hate on him.

I recently started to change course surprisingly for one of the main reasons that I hated (on) him. When everyone started with this autotune nonsense and was using the funny voices instead of their own, I was losing my mind. It all culminated when I heard that Kanye was making an entire album with the funny voice. (we all know how that story ended for me so I won’t go back to that) But my hatred for Kanye, Lil’ Wayne, Baby, Ron Browz, Snoop and so many others somehow made me appreciate what T-Pain was doing. For one, it was his style from day one and not some fad that he decided to pick up three albums into his career. And second, he was the best one to use it. You can actually tell a difference in quality when T-Pain “sang” versus everyone else. So much so that I had to put it in my “I Believe Too” post.

When I first heard the song “Go Hard”, I had a fanatic moment. Something about how T-Pain came exploded on to that record… damn! Every time that song comes on I can’t wait for Pain to get on so I can sing along. It then made me listen to more of his songs and I realized that he’s not a bad lyricist. You can tell when he wants to be silly and funny but he says some s**t behind that autotune. Just last night I heard this Ciara song in my homegirl’s car and T-Pain got on it and absolutely killed the track. In a time when it is so difficult to get anyone to listen to your music, T-Pain has managed to get hit after hit without breaking a sweat. He is a true artist and he officially deserves your respect.

The last thing people said was that he’s not Hip-Hop. The way to answer that is to think about R. Kelly in the mid-90’s. Whatever you called him, call T-Pain the same.

But the real answer to that question is, who cares? T-Pain is that dude.

See you in 2009!