What I Learned From T-Pain & The Masked Singer

Spoiler Alert: T-Pain can sing. And I mean really sing.

Truthfully, this shouldn’t be a discovery at all. In his 15-year career, T-Pain has 22 top 10 singles, 3 BET Awards, and 2 Grammy’s to his name. This would imply that people knew what he was capable of and what he excelled at. This thought would be quickly disproved by the hit Fox TV show, The Masked Singer, where celebrities disguised themselves and were judged solely on their voice. It shows off great talent with low stakes, a nice change from most competition shows. Only when the singers were eliminated would they be revealed, the judges guessing who it could possibly be the whole journey.

T-Pain was disguised as The Monster and the judge’s guesses ranged from Jaime Foxx to Michael Vick. (Only Nick Cannon guessed right.) When perusing YouTube comments and various tweets on the reveal, many fans weren’t surprised and some wondered  how the judges could mistake him for someone else. To this I say, how could they not?

Since his rise to fame in the early 2000s, T-Pain’s signature sound was less about the way he innovated the sound of urban R&B/hip-hop and more with his overuse of a certain studio tool: autotune. For those who don’t know, autotune is a program that automatically corrects a singer’s pitch and bad notes and is commonly used when recording. However, when autotune is used very heavily on someone’s voice, the distortion makes their voice sound robotic.

Though it can be easily seen as a joke, it became a way for T-Pain to stand out in the industry. “Everybody in Tallahassee was doing the same thing,” he recalled in a Fuse Interview. “Everybody wanna be a rapper. Everybody wanna rap about the same stuff so I figured I’ll switch it up.” And yet, despite all I knew about him, it took one quirky, surprisingly fun TV show to open my eyes on how little I expected from an artist I really like.

Assumption #1: His singing range is nice but limited.

Nothing about T-Pain’s music catalog would prepare me to hear him sing “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen with his natural voice.

The surprise towards his performances piled on when I considered the types of songs T-Pain releases. A lot of T-Pain’s singles are known for being geared towards the club scene, often talking about drinking and strippers. His top singles include “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” and “Bartender.” It doesn’t make me think his songs have emotional depth.

Assumption #2: T-Pain’s musical taste is…narrow.

Even when knowing that it was T-Pain, it was hard for me to wrap my head around how well his voice fit the song. His choices for the rest of the show would also surprise me considering they came from a wide variety of genres including “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith and “American Woman” by Lenny Kravitz. Never would I ever have believed that T-Pain could reach the high note in “I Don’t Want To Be” by Gavin DeGraw. Nor would I have believed he would have been so comfortable doing so. Not only that but he delivers the songs with a lot of emotion. Judges Nicole Scherzinger and Jenna McCarthy-Wahlberg were crying half the time while he sang, and I don’t blame them.

Assumption #3: T-Pain needs autotune.

T-Pain’s performances on The Mask Singer was a nice surprise and one that I think was needed. While I’ve followed his music from the beginning of his career, my perception of him had always been skewed. I pigeon-holed him in my mind, and it freed me from that prejudice, just like he wanted. “I didn’t have a chance to come into the game with my natural voice,” he said upon winning. “This helped get my voice out there even more and I appreciate it.”

This experience reminded me art is freedom. You never know whom it’s going to affect. Just because people release a certain type of art doesn’t mean that it’ll encompass that person’s full range of talent either. Most importantly, they don’t have to.

Now, will T-Pain start singing without autotune from now on? More than likely, no. “I just wanted to prove my point and move on,” he said in a post-win interview. “Back to your regularly scheduled program.” Even so, it’s good to know that artists can still surprise you every now and then.

(Plus, there are YouTube videos like this for when I want to relive that moment—for just a little longer.)