The Iron Way

T-Pain has always been misunderstood, from the moment he crooned his way onto America’s airwaves with the sweet, surprising "I’m Sprung" a decade ago. The misunderstandings may have stemmed from his association with Auto-Tune, a program misunderstood by nearly everyone. Some complained and covered their ears, while helpful rockists pointed out that Peter Frampton had a talking guitar in the '70s. Everyone else—almost literally everyone else, at least on the radio—began sounding like him. Through it all T-Pain remained steadfast—a guy who was singing and rapping before marrying the two was something you had to do to be relevant, and whose primary instrument made him a target. But far from being a doormat, he made the best joke about himself with the Lonely Island, and then made devastating observation that the "mockery" of his type of music was nominated for a Grammy, but not his actual music.

And then there was "D.O.A." And then there was The-Dream, the Weeknd, and most importantly, Future and a new wave of Atlanta rap. And you know who wasn’t there? Mr. Tallahassee Pain. He disappeared. He started dressing like a steampunk villain around 2011. A few mixtapes a few years ago didn’t move the needle. There was "Up Down (Do This All Day)", a fantastic collaboration with B.o.B that appeared and disappeared just as quickly. There was Tiny Desk T-Pain, aka, "oh he can really sing!" T-Pain, which despite pandering to the lowest form of pop authenticity-baiting, accomplished the feat of momentarily reminding us: Hey, this is a real human, and this human can sing. It was endearing and impressive. There was sad T-Pain, regaling us with truly heartbreaking stories about his taking all his negative press and industry guff to heart. Finally, there is new T-Pain. T-Pain is back!

For a guy with this career trajectory, the results on The Iron Way, his first slab of new music in a little over two years, are unsurprising. He remains somewhat anonymous in spite of his sound’s ubiquity, and his mixtape is essentially straight down the middle half-killer, half-filler. Where all the weirder, more free-thinking Auto-Tune visionaries in his wake took the sound and spun it into new directions, T-Pain is content to still warble T-Pain songs. The best ones are cavernous slaps about drinking, strip clubs, and heartbreak, and the second best ones are the more upbeat and sprightly slaps about drinking, strip clubs, and heartbreak.

Which is to say: T-Pain is not, and has never really been, a person I want to hear rap. The weakest songs on The Iron Way push that rapping to the forefront, to often-awkward and clumsy results. This includes all the songs with features from Young Cash, Sean Jay, Bun B and Big K.R.I.T., Yo Gotti and Snootie Wild, OG Maco, Migos and K Camp. There is a song called "The King", and it features Bun B and Big K.R.I.T.: Don’t you already know exactly how it sounds?

The best songs on The Iron Way are the ones that establish an appropriate vibe for the subject matter. The sunny weed ode "Need to Be Smokin", the straight up power romance ballad "Heartbeat". T-Pain soars on "Let Ya Hair Down", a seductive track featuring The-Dream, a long-overdue collaboration that is the perfect union between two guys with great voices who love to twist and turn those voices into new shapes. And usually they sing about sex: On "Booty Butt Ass",  T-Pain manages to quote "Oh my God Becky" in a chorus that doesn’t feel corny, and then in the outro, he morphs the mood of the song from "strip club turn up" to "crying in the champagne room." It’s a mesmerizing two minutes, partly because it’s the most outre moment on a pretty straightforward tape. If everyone else is getting emotional in the club, why not the guy who arguably started the trend over a decade ago?

This isn’t to paint T-Pain into a corner, just to say that maybe the reason he's battled anonymity over his long career is because he gave us everything we needed on "I’m Sprung" (and two years later, "Buy U A Drank"). Other guys took his "thing" and made it weirder or sexier or more avant garde. But he’s been content, behind a sheepish smile and many features over the years, to continue to do his thing. The world is currently run by dudes Auto-Tuning their emotions into weird new places. T-Pain did it first. And when he’s playing to his strengths, he’s arguably doing it better than anyone else.