T-Pain's Thr33 Ringz a de-facto greatest hits

T-Pain boils himself down to his most accessible and recognizable.

By Jordan Sargent

Published Nov. 10, 2008

For thought: T-Pain has had 11 "Top 10" singles in the past two years. This is just one of the many things that makes him a genius. Others: He has the most distinctive voice in pop music, even though his voice isn't his voice. Every rapper, singer and their bodyguard has swagger-jacked his pitch-fucked robot voice (achieved by pushing Auto-Tune software into the red) and come up with bad Halloween masks (even you, Wayne). And, even though Auto-Tune is threatening to River Phoenix pop music, Pain's reign seems poised to last far into the Obama administration. 

When people try and clown T-Pain, the argument is usually conflated with the idea that "he can't sing." Besides this having nothing to do with whether or not his songs are good, it remarkably shortchanges the landscape-changing decision he made by choosing to always feed his voice through Auto-Tune. T-Pain singing songs normally would've meant that, at the surface, he was going to be just another R&B voice: Raheem DeVaughn, J. Holiday, etc. But instead, now and forever, we know a T-Pain song is a T-Pain song and no one else's song.

Secondly, he knew he was going to change pop music. He knew that his voice would be too omnipresent and too disorienting not to usher him to the front of the parade with everyone else - Beyoncé, Mariah, Akon - following him. He wanted to screw with our minds. He wanted to sell a million albums, singles and ringtones and have a million haters. He has done this.

Thr33 Ringz is his third solo album. It sounds like the radio. It sounds like a NOW compilation. It sounds like every weekend. Obviously it does. All of those things are T-Pain and have been for two years.

On his last album, Epiphany, he was a tad more loose-limbed. There was a menacing dancehall song. "Church," the third single that didn't really do anything, was like fast-forwarding through a disco track. There's a skit where he gets HIV. On the next song he contemplates suicide. On the best song he tries to do crunk but couldn't remove himself fully so it wasn't exactly crunk. It was great, though. The whole album is.

Thr33 Ringz, full of really catchy digitized beats, is more focused on club music and seems, unlike Epiphany, to only have songs that could be released as singles. Not because they are all excellent (though they are) but because they all fit into the radio zeitgeist that T-Pain himself has had a huge hand in shaping. The album is T-Pain boiling himself down to his most accessible and recognizable. For this reason, it's almost like he decided to make a greatest hits album of songs no one has heard.

Thankfully, the album cuts are still as singular and weird as they were on Epiphany. "Reality Show" is ready for a CBS pitchman. On "Therapy Skit" he ditches sex for jerking off, tells the girl it can still work, and then calls in Kanye for the punchlines. On every line in "Superstar Lady" he compares his girl to famous actresses and singers, and it's not corny.

Thr33 Ringz stands not as T-Pain's definitive artistic statement (that will be his actual greatest hits) or as his definitive best album (Epiphany could win that argument). Instead, it's a pop album so effortlessly good that it proves that in case there were any doubts, sometimes it really is that easy.