T-Pain said he slipped into a prolonged depression after fellow singer Usher ambushed him one day with the opinion that he destroyed music with his use of Auto-Tune.
The 35-year-old rapper and singer, who was born Faheem Rasheed Najmin in Tallahassee, Florida, said his depression lasted for four years after Usher knocked him upside the head with his blunt assessment of how T-Pain allegedly wrecked music.
“Usher was my friend,” T-Pain said in a clip from the new Netflix series “This Is Pop.” “I really respect Usher. And he said, ‘I’m gonna tell you something, man. You kinda f—ed up music.’ ”
T-Pain initially laughed at the insult because he thought it was a joke. But T-Pain’s mood darkened when the Confessions singer doubled down on his statement.
“And then he was like, ‘Yeah man you really f—ed up music for real singers,’ ” T-Pain said in the clip. “I was like, ‘What did I do? I came out and I used Auto-Tune.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, you f—ed it up.’ I’m like, ‘But I used it, I didn’t tell everybody else to start using it.’ ”
T-Pain said the exchange immediately changed the trajectory of his career and life.
“That is the very moment, and I don’t even think I realized this for a long time, but that’s the very moment that started a four-year depression for me,” T-Pain said.
T-Pain’s mental state took more hits as others began speaking out against using of Auto-Tune. Jay-Z also took a swipe at T-Pain with the first single off The Blueprint 3, “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” Soon, others became more industry folks began blaming T-Pain for the excessive use of the voice enhancer.
Check out T-Pain’s confessional on the next page.
