Your regularly scheduled program

My apologies for the silence over the past month. Regular posts to Auto-Pain 2.0 will resume within ten days, rest assured!

In the meantime,

My deepest sympathy

Let’s keep an eye on this as it develops, but, if only for the sake of this blog, I find it hard to believe T-Pain has laid Auto-Tune (and that $400,000+ chain!) to rest once and for all.

Responding to a comment…

A reader left the following response to my previous post:

“Dr. Auto-Pain,
Is the flange what is used to make Carl’s voice match the rhythmic profile of the instruments?

Your use of the phrase “entry level” leads me to ask if you are suggesting that the older, more established effects such as flangers, reverb, echo, or even the placement of mics in a studio are less sophisticated than Auto-Tune.”

While not every comment receives such concentrated feedback, here it goes.

Carl Sagan, Auto-Tune & the dilettantes of hip hop

Several weeks ago this remarkable video—featuring an Auto-Tuned version of everyone’s favorite astronomer Carl Sagan and beloved physicist Stephen Hawking—ascended into the blogosphere. Circulating from YouTube to NPR, it is noteworthy on several fronts.

Where’s homegirl’s bra?

This week marks the first official leak (“Take Your Shirt Off”) from T-Pain’s upcoming album RevolveR (what happened to UBER?). And even the hastiest exegesis reveals that homegirl has, for reasons undisclosed, decided not to wear a bra to the club.

REVIEW: Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon: The End of the Day

An album comes along every once in a while that is intriguing, challenging, remarkable or otherwise worthy of comment.

Charity and high stakes: or, is rap the future of rap?

The weekly ‘Web content’ post spotlights Auto-Tune in basements, garages and bedrooms across the web—in other words, tracks using the “I am T-Pain” iPhone app and similar technology. I cast the net wider with this post, however. Last week, Miami rapper C-Ride released the video “Money Round Here” featuring T-Pain.