Epiphany - T-Pain

The best way to describe T-Pain’s Epiphany is the budding of a great artist. I say “budding” because Teddy Benderasover isn’t exactly there yet, he isn’t at R. Kelly’s status (where you can commit atrocious crimes and go platinum in the same year), but the man seems like he’s destined for it.

After scanning the list of tracks one thing that will grab your attention is the variety of themes and subjects that T-Pain covers. He has several club joints (“Bartender” and “Buy U a Drank”), some thug songs (“Shotta”), and considerably more conscious themes (“Suicide,” “Time Machine,” and “Right Hand”) than his previous album, Rappa Ternt Sanga. Which is not to say that his first album was bust, far from it (sold like 800,000 copies). But this album shows the audience progression from T-Pain, real maturity.

This album also will ride while ridin’ with your significant other. T-Pain makes songs the ladies like to dance to, and his sexually charged lyrics only add to the innuendo (“Backseat,” and “Stomach”). Some critics might balk at labeling T-Pain’s album as overly mature, but that’s what makes listening to T-Pain so much fun. He doesn’t take himself overly serious, he makes music that’s really fun to listen to, and striking that balance is sure to make him a lot of money.

T-Pain should probably get away from the synthesizers for a second though, the mainstream could use a reminder that he can actually sing. Almost all of his most popular songs have his voice heavily digitized. But it people like it, so it’s hard to foresee him changing something that works.