T-Pain Doesn't Forget

This is Humans.

I'm Hank Green.

It's a little weird to say this as a musician, but popular music does not seem to me to be the province of flesh and blood humans.

Popular music is a pantheon of gods.

Even one hit wonders, to my mind, live in a different world and create a thing that feels to me like it's just happening.

It occurs.

I know this isn't universal.

Lots of people go deep and understand the mechanisms of the music industry.

But especially when I was in my teens and 20s, popular music was a thing that came through the radio into your life.

The mechanisms were opaque.

The creative struggle was obscured.

And the stars were stars.

And T-Pain was a star.

I did not think of T-Pain as doing things that no one had ever done before or finding a sound or defining a genre or getting to a height so high that the only thing culture had left to do with him was to try and tear him down.

I was just along for the ride.

That was just a thing that was happening.

And I was unconcerned because T-Pain was T-Pain, not a person.

I was a fan, though.

Even after people started saying T-Pain wasn't cool, I was like, okay, but the music is still, like, very good.

And now, 20 years after being blasted into the top heights of cultural relevancy and success, T-Pain exists in a different world, one where music is fractured and radio plays very little role, and careful storytelling has taken a backseat to authenticity.

It also appears to me that he has flowed through all of that effortlessly.

But I bet it was not effortless.

T-Pain is a multi-platinum, Grammy-winning artist, producer, songwriter, and cultural icon.

He also appears to be a very chill dude and a popular Twitch streamer.

I want to talk to him about music and success and change and being married to the same person since before you were famous.

T-Pain, welcome to Humans.