T-Pain didn’t invent using Auto-Tune, but he definitely made it the inescapable sound of hip-hop for a while in the early 2000s. But maybe don’t ask Usher about that. In a preview of the new Netflix series This Is Pop, T-Pain reveals that his good friend sent him into a four-year funk after he basically blamed Pain for cratering modern music.
In the clip first posted by EW, Pain recalls that he was on a plane trip with Usher on their way to the 2013 BET Awards when they had a discussion that really hurt the “Jerry Sprunger” rapper’s feelings. Taking a deep breath before looking off into the distance for a moment, Pain is asked to describe the flight, and explains that he was asleep in first class when a flight attendant told him Usher wanted to have a word with him in the back.
“I went back and was like, ‘So how is everything going?’” he recalled, describing it as some quick small talk before Mr. Raymond laid down a startling confession. “And he was like, ‘Man, I wanna tell you something, man.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s good?’ I thought he was about to tell me something real … he sounded real concerned,” Pain said.
“And then he was like, ‘Yeah man you kinda f—ed up music,’” Pain remembered. “I didn’t understand. Usher was my friend. He was like, ‘Nah, you really f—ed up music for real singers.” Pain said at that point he couldn’t listen anymore as his mind filled with self-doubt about whether Usher’s claim was true.
“Did I f— this up? Did I f— up music?” Pain said he asked himself, recalling that, yes, he did use Auto-Tune, but it’s not like he told everyone else to do it. “And that is the very moment … that started a four-year depression for me.”
A spokesperson for Usher had not returned requests for comment at press time.
The interview is part of the upcoming eight-part Netflix series that dives into some untold pop stories, featuring interviews with Shania Twain, Chuck D, Babyface, 98 Degrees, MILCK, Hozier, Blur, Orville Peck, Boyz II Men, Benny Andersson (ABBA) and Brandi Carlile, among many others.
Episode titles for the series slated to debut on Tuesday (June 22) include “The Boyz II Men Effect,” “Auto-Tune,” “Stockholm Syndrome,” “When Country Goes Pop,” “Hail Britpop!,” “Festival Rising,” “What Can a Song Do?” and “The Brill Building in 4 Songs.”
Watch the clip and the This is Pop trailer below.
