T-Pain speaks out about Jay-Z's "Death Of Autotune"

June 8, 10:03 AMNY Hip-Hop Music ExaminerSamantha Greaves

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T-Pain is a fan of "Death Of Autotune", go figure.

Ever since Jay-Z's song "Death Of Autotune" premiered on NYC's own Hot 97 Friday (06.05), everyone can not seem to get enough of it. The song that was played 4 times in one hour both on Friday and on Saturday has been blowing up the radio and has had everyone's gums flapping about the inevitable demise of the equally loved and hated plug-in; but what does T-Pain have to say about it?

T-Pain attended and performed at Hot 97s annual event, Summer Jam on Sunday (06.07), and did some sit down interviews before the show. When asked about his thoughts regarding Jay-Z's track ( who happen to have attended and performed "Death Of Autotune at this years Summer Jam), surprisingly T-Pain replied positively. He said that he actually liked the song and loved the entire idea to slam auto-tunes. He felt honored that Jay-Z would make a song about him and the plug-in that he made popular and see's it as great promotion and inspiration to put out more albums of him using the plug-in in his songs; he sounds delusional. Right after being questioned about the song, for what seemed like the umpteenth time, the DJ decided to spin once again "Death Of Autotunes".

The Internet has been nothing short of on fire after the release of the song; all in all the song did what it set out to do, be controversial and to get people talking. It's funny, a lot of fans have been complaining from day one about the plug-in and everyone brushed them to the side, now that Jay-Z has put out a song about the annoyance of the plug-in, it seems like everyone has finally woken up from their per usual music slumbers.

With the people that have been voicing their thoughts on their discontent with the plug-in, there are the some that are saying that this is the future of music, auto-tunes is here to stay and those that don't like it are the one's who can't let go of old school Hip-Hop. Other's say that it is just discrimination against artists in the South. They argue that their sound is very different from that of the North (that they also say they hate) and feel that this is where the diversity comes from. When did music become based on geographical acceptance? If music is good, it will be universally agreed that it is good because that is what good music does, period.

In personal opinion, the song was made not to totally smash the presence of auto-tunes, but to put out there that it is extremely overused. You know it becomes a problem when the gifted Ms. can't-go-wrong  Mary J. Blige decides to hop on a track with the plug-in, just why?

The great thing about music is the fact that it is diverse. KRS One said a very interesting thing during an interview about he and Buckshot's new song "Robot" (which happens to also poke a little fun and set the record straight about artists imitating other artists); back when Hip-Hop reigned supreme, artists respected other artists for their styles and made it a priority not to copy it, why? Because they knew what worked for that artists worked for that artist and may not work for them, and the best way to succeed in this business is to simply just do you because that is something no one else can do besides you.

To say that T-Pain was the originator of the plug-in would be inaccurate. Before T-Pain was even a prospective offspring, auto-tunes found it's way in countless classic R&B and Hip-Hop songs; T-Pain just made it work for him. Because of the success that T-Pain saw with the plug-in, other artists wanted a piece of the very same pie which was very selfish of them (who told them everyone is interested in auto-tunes?), and it just showed how plain unoriginal and lazy they really are.

With hope, auto-tunes will be heard less on the radio and on artists' future songs. The question now remains, what exactly will Diddy do with his album Last Train To Paris? He did say a good majority of the album will be auto-tunes, will this song be enough to cause Diddy to suffer the doom of the push-back?