Interview: T-Pain on His ‘Tiny Desk’ Concert, Country Collabs and the Perfect ‘Drankin’ Patna’
By Brian Ives
It’s odd to hear T-Pain speak sans Auto-Tune. It’s like, something’s missing. Of course, it’s a little less weird now than it was just three weeks ago or so. That was before NPR posted their infamous “Tiny Desk” concert with T-Pain, where he performed accompanied by a keyboardist, but without his signature vocal effect.
The video has since been viewed over seven million times, and now the world knows that the guy who debuted in 2005 with an album called Rappa Ternt Sanga, can, in fact, sang.
T-Pain laughs about the reaction to the clip: “It opened people’s eyes, and [it] changes the perception that people have of me. I can put something out and not have people judge me the same way that they used to. Now people are re-thinking the way they used to think of me. I always see comments on the internet, ‘Oh, you’re not a singer,’ ‘You’re an Auto-Tune faker’ and ‘Nothing about your voice is real.’ I don’t know what people expected me to sound like without Auto-Tune. You can never change their minds until you prove them wrong. With a quick little video!”
The performance included his latest song, “Drankin’ Patna,” which he recorded for the recently released T-Pain Presents Happy Hour: The Greatest Hits, and he says he’s a bit ambivalent about putting out a “best of” at this point in his career. “Usually when people put out ‘greatest hits’ album, they’re done making new hits. I’ve got a lot more hits [to come], and I don’t think I’ve made my greatest one yet.”
On the other hand, he’s happy to discuss his new song, which, touchingly, is about his wife.
“‘Drankin’ Patna’ is basically a song about something I have yet to find… outside of my wife. My wife is the only person who can drink and who can hold it down with me, I don’t have to hold her hair back when she’s throwing up, because she doesn’t throw up, because she’s an advanced drinker.”
He goes on to describe the perfect “drankin patna”: “The perfect drankin’ patna can drink as many drinks as you. You don’t necessarily have to deal with them… you know, goin’ to sleep in the club or passing out. You don’t want anybody who gets rude when they get drunk, you don’t want a mean drunk with you. [You don't want] someone who is going to get kicked out [of the club] if you’re not getting kicked out. You don’t want to deal with anybody getting sick. I hate sick drunks! Can’t deal with it! You don’t want to have to pull over every two seconds, so they can throw up outside the car. That gets real annoying! You don’t want anyone [who is] annoying with you when you get drunk!”
Similar rules apply whether you’re going out with a friend. Of course, T-Pain has drinking buddies, but there’s a drawback there: “The biggest problem I have with guys is that they fall asleep a lot, and in the weirdest places! In the bathroom in the club. In the middle of the club, in the V.I.P. section, with people partying, and there’s just one guy out cold on the couch! Just making us look we don’t have a good time, like we’re not strong as a unit, because you’re asleep on the couch!”
In the song, he sings, “You must seen her, I do my thing, girl/I can’t let you drink me under this table.” Which leads to the obvious question: has a woman ever drank him under the table?
“My wife has,” he reveals. “She’s allergic to vodka. Weird, right? So she had to switch to whiskey and bourbon and once she did that, she could drink, like, everything. She can drink a bunch of whiskey and bourbon and I can’t keep up with that because I’m a vodka kind of guy. When I tried to switch with my wife to whiskey and bourbon, it didn’t work out too well.”
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One thing that has worked out well for him is his unlikely collaboration with country musicians, including Luke Bryan, Rhett Atkins and Dallas Davidson: “I have a lot of country co-writes coming up. I’ve got Rhett Atkins, I’m working on some more stuff with Luke Bryan. Dallas Davidson and Rhett Atkins are my primary writing buddies in Nashville. It was very surprising to work with them and have it work. I didn’t think that anybody in Nashville knew who I was, much less wanted to work with me. That surprised me.”
Of course, recording works at a different—and faster—pace in Music City. “I learned a whole new process of recording. You know how they record in movies, and the whole band is recording in the booth at the same time? I thought that that was straight fiction, I’d never seen it happen in real life. Until I went to Nashville, everyone was in the booth at the same time: vocals, drums, guitar, bass, keys, everything happens at the same time and that was weird. And they get everything in one take!”
He says that he has one song from those collaborations that is just about ready to go (and it’s a song that he told Radio.com about a few months back). “We do have a song that I’m thinking of shooting a video to, ‘Thug Addict.’ It’s pretty funny, but it’s also really good. I’m still putting the tweaks on the production.” Another possible upcoming project may be an Auto-Tune-free tour. “NPR did come to us about an ‘unplugged’ tour. I’m fine with that if we do it in a month where I’m not doing anything!”
Related: Auto-Tune Expert T-Pain Says Kanye West Doesn’t Use It Correctly
Not that he’s dropping Auto-Tune, and he has opinions about other artists who use it: to his ear, almost everyone uses it incorrectly: “Jamie Foxx uses it right, Chris Brown when he does use it, uses it right. Kanye West knows how to use it, he just chooses not to. He just has to be different, I guess. And me of course. That’s about it.”
What’s the secret to correct usage? “You have to sing with Auto-Tune activated. A lot of people sing without it first, and then they just slap Auto-Tune on top of what they just did and it creates a lot of wobbles and flairs, and it starts sounding weird. It’s not so much an ‘incorrect’ use, but you won’t get the right results.” Clearly T-Pain knows how to get the “right” results: the proof is all over his new collection. And now, thanks to the Tiny Desk show, we also know that he doesn’t need to.
