Time surely does fly. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 10 years and counting since T-Pain released his debut album to the masses. Known as Rappa Ternt Sanga, the album spawned records like ‘I’m Spring’ and ‘I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper),’ which could easily be argued for and classified as current classic records in today’s music climate. Standing the test of time and still releasing quality material that old and new fans are enjoying, ‘T-Pain spoke to Billboard about the career milestone. Even more interesting, T-Pain touched on how Kanye West’s highly acclaimed 808s & Heartbreaks serves as a “direct copy” of his Rappa Ternt Sanga debut.
How Rappa Ternt Sanga blurred the lines between rapping and singing: None of this wouldn’t be happening without Rappa Ternt Sanga or me as a whole entity, period. None of this whole sound of music and it’s not even just rap and R&B — it’s going into pop and techno and dubstep and everything. It’s all kinda came from me. I’m seeing cartoons using Auto-Tune. The crazy thing was if this didn’t come from me, then it would’ve been used a lot more before me. I’ve heard Cher use it, Jennifer Lopez use it then after I did it, the whole world came [onboard]. It’s like all these things happened until I did it.
How the sound will remain relevant: I would say as recent as [Kanye West’s] 808s & Heartbreaks, which was a direct copy of Rappa Ternt Sanga. I’m not just being a dick saying that shit sounds a lot like mine. Like literally [Kanye] told me that he listened toRappa Ternt Sanga and he made 808s & Heartbreaks. He even brought me in to make it sound more like Rappa Ternt Sanga. [Laughs.] Something that I did that was directly copied got so many awards — that’s evidence right there. Rappa Ternt Sanga is still relevant because the sound is still prevalent in the whole industry. It’s never gonna stop.
With a reported release date of December 11th for his new studio album, Stoicville: The Phoenix, with no current word or promotion for the record, it would come as no surprise if the release of the album would fall in 2016 some time. Having more than enough previous material under his belt, if a 2016 release is the case, fans already have a plethora of material to revisit until then. You can read the rest of the interview, here.
