T-Pain has covered Black Sabbath and Sam Smith on an upcoming covers album.
The US rapper has tried his hand at various genres for ‘On Top Of The Covers’, which is released on March 17, including heavy metal legends Sabbath’s 1970s classic ‘War Pigs’ and the pop star’s 2014 ballad ‘Stay With Me’.
The ‘I Run This City’ star – whose real name is Faheem Rashad Najm – has also recorded versions of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin” and Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, plus ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ by Chris Stapleton and ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra.
He said in a statement: “This covers album has been years in the making.
“This is something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time. These songs are not what you’d expect when you hear that T-Pain is doing a covers album and that is what I think is cool about it.”
To celebrate the record, T-Pain will play two special concerts at Los Angeles’ The Sun Rose on March 17 and 18.
The covers collection is the follow-up to 2019’s ‘1UP’.
T-Pain showing off his vocal talents comes after he claimed he suffered depression for four years after Usher criticised his use of Auto-Tune.
Speaking on Netflix’s ‘This Is Pop’, the ‘Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)’ hitmaker shared how his friend Usher told him that his reliance on the audio processing technology had “f***** up music”.
According to the 38-year-old rapper-and-singer, the two artists were on the same flight heading to the 2013 BET Awards and, while T-Pain was sleeping, a flight attendant woke him up to tell him that Usher wanted a word.
Looking back on the interaction, T-Pain believes the harsh criticism was the catalyst for his lengthy bout of depression.
T-Pain said: “Usher was my friend. I really respect Usher. And he said, ‘I’m gonna tell you something, man. You kinda f***** up music.’
“And then he was like, ‘Yeah man you really f***ed up music for real singers.’
“I was like, ‘What did I do? I came out and I used Auto-Tune.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, you f***ed it up.’ I’m like, ‘But I used it, I didn’t tell everybody else to start using it.’
“That is the very moment, and I don’t even think I realised this for a long time, but that’s the very moment that started a four-year depression for me.”
Auto-Tune is a pitch-correcting audio processor for vocals that makes any voice sound in tune but can give it a robotic tone.
T-Pain used this effect from the start of his career in 2003 and was later copied by other hip hop artists, such as Snoop Dogg with ‘Sexual Eruption, Lil Wayne with ‘Lollipop’ and by Kanye West on his ‘808s Heartbreak’ album.
Usher was not the only artist who criticised T-Pain’s use of the effect.
Jay-Z on his 2009 single ‘D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)’ mentioned T-Pain by name, rapping: “You n****s singing too much / Get back to rap, you T-Paining too much.”