T-Pain has opted to show off his real singing voice for his latest project, On Top Of The Covers, breaking away from his signature Auto-Tune sound.
The Florida crooner announced in February that he would be releasing a cover album. The seven-song project, fittingly titled On Top of the Covers, dropped on Friday (March 17).
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Among the many artists T-Pain covered on the project are Sam Cooke, Sam Smith, Journey, Chris Stapleton, and Black Sabbath. In addition, he got his artist NandoSTL to duet with him on the Frank Sinatra song “That’s Life.”
“You’ve been asking for it and here ya go bro,” he wrote in an Instagram post last month. “A T-Pain cover album to end all cover albums…..from T-Pain. ‘On Top Of The Covers’ dropping March 17th alongside an intimate set of shows. More on that later tho … so stay tuned for more updates.”
Listen to On Top of the Covers below:
The singer recently revealed to Rolling Stone that the covers project has been years in the making, dating back to when T-Pain won The Masked Singer in early 2019 where he covered songs from the likes of Montell Jordan, Joan Jett, and Sam Smith.
“This covers album has been years in the making. I started recording this right after I won The Masked Singer,” he said. “It got put on hold for a bit but now that I’m independent, I’m able to do whatever I want to do through Nappy Boy Entertainment and this is something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time.”
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Although he plans to switch up his style temporarily, T-Pain acknowledges that Auto-Tune has always been a big money maker for him. Earlier this month, he admitted that he used to earn money every time an artist used Auto-Tune, calling those early days of his career “crazy.”
The comments were made alongside DJ Drama on T-Pain’s Nappy Boy Radio podcast, where the former shouted out JAY-Z’s 2009 track “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” as one of his best songs.
T-Pain obviously had a lot to say about Drama’s pick, considering he’d previously admitted he took the song personally due to his own heavy reliance on Auto-Tune at the time. However, the singer admitted that the use of Auto-Tune in music has since “resuscitated” in full force.
“That shit came out of everywhere after that,” T-Pain said. “I don’t think it worked out the way he thought it was gonna work out.”
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“Is it true that there was a point and time where you got paid off of anytime anyone would use Auto-Tune?” Drama interjected.
“Yeah,” T-Pain said. “Absolutely. It was nuts, it was real crazy. Some people volunteered and some people didn’t know, so that was great. Diddy volunteered. Diddy gave me points on Last Train To Paris ’cause he used Auto-Tune.
