T-pain Cover

[Brian Scarano]

OnTop of the Covers is the seventh studio album by American singer T-Pain. It was released on March 17, 2023, through Nappy Boy Entertainment and Empire Distribution.[1][2] It is a covers album, and marks the singer's first record in four years, following 2019's 1UP.

T-Pain began working on On Top of the Covers in 2019 following his appearance and win on The Masked Singer. The project features T-Pain showcasing his natural singing voice, deviating from his usual Auto-Tuned style.

The album has had a positive reception.[3][4] The "War Pigs" cover has been highlighted by NME, Consequence and MetalSucks,[5][6][7] with original Black Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler also expressing their approvals of it. Osbourne called the cover the "best cover of War Pigs ever," while Butler referred to the cover as "great" and shared the track on Twitter.[8][9][10][11]

HipHopDX listed it among the best R&B albums of the year, stating that "on an unvarnished and full-throated collection of cover songs, T-Pain flexes his vocal prowess completely without autotune. And the results speak for themselves."[12]

In support of On Top of the Covers, T-Pain performed three sold-out shows at The Sun Rose in Los Angeles, CA from March 17 to March 19. The shows consisted of T-Pain performing tracks from the new record as well as some of his greatest hits.[1]

The Grammy Award-winning singer was seemingly still in shock on Thursday, as he posted, "First thing I said was 'wow' ?? This is an honor and the greatest form of validation. Thank you brother @OzzyOsbourne."

Rock legend Osbourne, who is battling Parkinson's disease, was slated to perform across Europe last year but had to cancel his tour dates because his body was "still physically weak" after undergoing treatments for a 2019 spine injury.

"War Pigs" was one of eight covers T-Pain recorded for his 2023 album, "On Top of the Covers." In December, he released a live recorded version of the song in "On Top of the Covers (Live From Sun Rose)."

In November, T-Pain showcased the biggest hits from his career, including "I'm Sprung" and "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')," during a medley performance at the 2023 BET Soul Train Awards. He was also presented with the Legend Award.

Yesterday I tweeted the above and that shit took OFF. And very unlike Twitter, the response was overwhelmingly positive, like 95/5 ratio of positive to negative. That's when you KNOW something is good. Most of the discussion wasn't around the "is this the best cover of all time" question, because obviously that's subjective. What people were mainly talking about was "Where has this T-Pain been my whole life?!". This is the man that more or less brought auto-tune to the mainstream, meanwhile he has the voice of an angel! I also have learned that T-Pain won season 1 of "The Masked Singer", which when people ask "who watches this stuff?" the answer is "people with 84 followers who pay for blue checkmarks on Twitter", and I don't mean that in a negative way, the overlap is just huge in those two demos lol.

Just in time for 2024's superstar-struck and crossover-appealing Stagecoach Festival, Jelly Roll and T-Pain have joined forces for a sing-a-long-ready cover of recently deceased forthcoming Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Toby Keith's iconic 1993 hit "Should've Been A Cowboy."

Jelly Roll will also perform the song during his April 26 Stagecoach set from 8:10-9 p.m. PT / 10:10-11 p.m. CT. His set and many sets during the weekend in Indio will be broadcast exclusively on Amazon Music channel on Twitch and Prime Video.

The pairing of Jelly Roll and T-Pain on a Toby Keith single also highlights the broad growth of country's appeal. No fewer than five years ago, both artists were far better renowned for their hip-hop exploits than anything remotely related to three chords and the truth.

However, in 2023, T-Pain evolved his talents behind six Grammy awards and 10 all-genre Billboard Hot 100 singles to the realm of releasing a covers album including Chris Stapleton's Tennessee Whiskey" alongside Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," Dr. Hook's "Sharing The Night Together," Sam Smith's "Stay With Me," Frank Sinatra's "That's Life" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."

"Amazon just came to (T-Pain and me) and talked to us about partnering for something cool for Stagecoach and, as I was flipping through the ideas, I had been covering 'Should've Been a Cowboy' for about a year now at most of my shows, just kind of honoring Toby as he was getting sick before he passed away. Then I really started chewing on, man, what better place to honor Toby than Stagecoach? Plus, Toby Keith was one of the artists that from afar, even though he would never have known it, encouraged me to do country music."

Regarding T-Pain, the artist and producer noted that he had met Keith at 2009's CMT Music Awards and appreciated "how awesome Toby was just as a human and how Toby made him feel comfortable and was cracking him up before they went out."

On Top of the Covers, from the hip-hop artist best known for his creative use of Auto-Tune, follows his appearance on TV's The Masked Singer. In 2019, T-Pain, in costume as "Monster," won Masked Singer covering Queen, Lenny Kravitz and others.

"This covers album has been years in the making," T-Pain said of the album last year. "I started recording this right after I won The Masked Singer. It got put on hold for a bit but now that I'm independent, I'm able to do whatever I want."

At the beginning of the 38-year-old rapper's career, he took over the Billboard Hot 100 with his use of the vocal effect. The modulation added to his voice created a texture that was foreign to the industry, and T-Pain's career took off. Multiple platinum rated records, two Grammy wins and a laundry list of other awards, the success and accolades came pouring in.

"They weren't working for me, they were just working me," T-Pain says. "I'm not a really big sports guy, but one time management made me redo the Miami Dolphins fight song just so they can get season tickets. I didn't want to do that."

He was attacked by critics and peers alike for what they perceived as his lack of singing ability. The industry also became saturated with others covering for their singing deficiencies with auto-tune, and T-Pain was singled out as the source of the problem.

On Netflix's This is Pop series, T-Pain revealed an encounter he had with fellow R&B star Usher in 2013, where Usher told T-Pain that he had "f****d up music for real singers." T-Pain marked that moment as the beginning of a 4 year depression.

For many, it wasn't until his performance on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series that they realized that he had a powerful natural singing voice. His stripped-down renditions of some of his biggest hits such as 'Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')' and 'Up Down' went viral, and is still one of the most viewed concerts in the series.

"My family is my main thing now. [Music] is not a demanding thing anymore. It's not like 'I'm not going to be able to survive if I don't keep making hits.' I don't have that pressure anymore. I'm actually in a good place."

During a recent Visiting Artist Series session, the iconic singer and hitmaker T-Pain talked about how he discovered Auto-Tune, and created a singing-rapping hybrid style that he calls "Hard&B" in order to stand out in the hip-hop scene.

The Auto-Tune effect was created by Antares Audio Technologies and commercially released in 1997, but its main intention was to pitch-correct vocal recordings. Notable exceptions showed up in the pop and electronic music genres with Cher's no. 1 hit "Believe" in 1998 and Mirwais Ahmadzai's "Nave Song" two years later, both of which pushed Auto-Tune beyond pitch correction and brought a robotic quality to the vocal performance.

T-Pain's obsessive research and work paid off, shooting his career to mega-stardom. The style he developed has since become a dominant sound across genres, and is now heavily used by artists from Kanye West and the Black Eyed Peas to Travis Scott and Lil Uzi Vert.

The hip-hop star uses the technology to generate distinctive sounds, scoring a number of hits including "I'm Sprung" and "I'm 'n Luv (Wit a Stripper)." However, footage of the 39-year-old singing live is now wowing people online.

T-Pain shared a clip of him covering David Allan Coe's "Tennessee Whiskey" to TikTok on Thursday. His soulful rendition of the country song quickly went viral, receiving over 12 million views and overwhelming praise from followers.

His take on "Tennessee Whiskey" is also featured on the album, although T-Pain is not the first to tackle the track. The song was originally recorded by country star David Allan Coe in 1981 and has been reimagined by several artists since, including George Jones and Chris Stapleton.

In 2019, the VMA nominee proved the doubters wrong by winning season 2 of The Masked Singer. The reality TV show sees celebrities disguised in weird and wonderful costumes as they sing for a panel of judges, with the best vocalist taking home the trophy.

Filmed in 1997, the clip shows a then-38-year-old Jackson performing "In the Closet" during a concert in Munich, Germany. The late star's signature high-pitched singing voice suddenly drops to a deeper, more severe tone, which fans suspect was the King of Pop's true register.

Sophie is a Newsweek Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in Lincoln, UK. Her focus is reporting on film and TV, trending news and the entertainment industry. She has covered pop culture, women's rights and the arts extensively. Sophie joined Newsweek in 2022 from Social Change UK, and has previously written for The Untitled Magazine, The Mary Sue, Ms. Magazine and Screen Rant. She graduated with a BA Honours in Fine Art from Birmingham City University and has an MA in Arts Journalism from the University of Lincoln. Languages: English.

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