T-Pain - 1Up


T-Pain
1Up
2019
Spotify

It seems like T-pain always has to remind us how good his voice is. It started with a few bootlegs floating around the internet with the autotune stripped from his voice and all that was left was the Florida singer's vocal. Usually when this happens people laugh at the results, but T-Pain keeps proving how strong his voice is. Most recently as "The Monster" on the hit Fox show "The Masked Singer" T-Pain took over the show and wowed everyone with how great He can sing. The autotune then is no longer a crutch, but a choice. That's why it's weird when his albums end up sounding so awkward sometimes. It's hard to understand why an artist of this caliber would make choices like this. Why would T-Pain mask his wonderful voice when the one He chooses is lampooned so often. This is clearly the music T-Pain wants to make, this is his aesthetic, but it doesn't feel like anyone else's. There are some other R&B-esque singers on this record like Troy Lanez and Boosie Badass, but none of their trap mentalities make it on to this record. The production sounds clean, but it also sounds sort of weird. T-Pain is not going after the trap audience and trying to remind them who was here first, instead He is just really trying something all his own. It doesn't totally work, but at least He is making something that is completely his.

There is also this way too oversexed aspect of T-Pain that I can't stand. "Getcha Roll On" is one of those where it is so sexually explicit that I just feels icky. "Be Your X" however works because He flips the script and instead of asking to be with someone He is ready to be their ex. Sometimes He also writes songs that are so out in left field. "It's My Dog Birthday" a song about celebrating a friend's Birthday also takes dives into sexing up all the honeys and partying late into the night. It's not a strange idea to have, it's just a strange idea to center a whole song on. There are many moments like this that make you sit and scratch your head. "A Million Times" is the one time on the record that it all comes together. It has heart and a gentle style that works far better than the oversexed over-partying version of T-Pain. 1Up was a surprise record and probably due to T-Pain's sudden resurgence due to "The Masked Singer", strike while the iron is hot right? As a whole however the album is quite clunky and never really engages into anything significant. 2bad.

6.0 out of 10

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