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.

T-Pain as/and Jesus

In the opening entry to this blog (available here), I suggested that T-Pain cultivated a messianic persona. In other words, T-Pain projects himself as the savior of hip hop by aligning himself with Jesus, a slightly better known messiah. A rather presumptuous suggestion, I confess, and yet perhaps there is something here worth considering.

Enough already?

T-Pain’s vigilant watch over Auto-Tune is well known. He teaches his techniques to others, and he rebukes those who emulate him. He has even hinted at a moral code for using the voice-altering software, telling Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker, “I got a song on my album about my kids. I ain’t use it on that.”

Introducing the Ringleader

Hip-hop albums commonly open with a track—occasionally titled ‘introduction’ or, simply, ‘intro’—that is designed to set the stage for the rest of the album. Certain themes, or tropes, recur within these introductions, and the geography trope is among the most common. These proclamations of place affiliate an album, and an artist, with a specific geographic locale.