It was only a matter of weeks ago that Faheem Rasheed Najm – better known as T-Pain – shocked an unsuspecting audience at NPR by performing without his infamous Auto-Tune at a Tiny Desk Concert. More than that, he sounded good. Damn good.
Not only did it give listeners a chance to hear the voice behind the mountainous production, it also came in close proximity to the release of Happy Hour, his first greatest hits compilation. This gave us a chance to reconsider and revisit the work of a man who was, if only for a time, one of the most hated men in music. An immediate realisation follows: all the time we spent bemoaning the alleged death of quote-unquote ‘real’ music, we could have spent having fun with tracks like ‘Freeze’, ‘Buy U A Drank’ and Jamie Foxx collab ‘Blame It’.
It’s shiny, unabashedly commercial and often ludicrous – there’s a song called ‘I’m ’N Luv (Wit A Stripper)’,for God’s sake. What’s revealed, however, is how dedicated T-Pain has been to the format, and how he still manages to make it work in his favour. Points off for shunning the anthemic ‘Take Your Shirt Off’, though.
3.5/5.
Happy Hour – The Greatest Hitsis out now throughSony.
