Truth about T-Pain’s career: How the industry SHUNNED him (beef w/ Jay-Z, DJ Khaled, Future, Usher) 

T-Pain Rises Above The Haters

Faheem Najim’s contribution to our Tiny Desk Concert series from earlier this year has already reached over six million views on YouTube. The 30-year-old singer, better known as T-Pain, performed a stripped-down version of his 2007 classic “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” as well as material from his next album, Stoicville: The Phoenix.

Najim — originally from Tallahassee, Fla. — started his career 10 years ago, first as a rapper, then a singer. T-Pain has released four full-length albums and many, many collaborations, with musicians ranging from Kanye West to Lil Wayne, Lily Allen to R. Kelly. And though his most popular songs take partying as their subject, the musician’s name represents the less upbeat side of his story.

“The pain in T-Pain, basically, is about getting out of Tallahassee and being a better person, a better artist, a more well-known entity,” Najim says. “It was very painful trying to get out of that city and do better things.”

Hear the radio version at the audio link and read more of T-Pain’s conversation with NPR’s Monika Evstatieva below.

Alright, let’s talk about this. You said it’s T-Pain for Tallahassee Pain because growing up wasn’t easy and you tried to get out of it. Just tell me a little bit about you growing up.

Me growing up. I think it was — it wasn’t hard, per se. I think the things that — the endeavors I was trying to embark were difficult. In that city. In that certain city. If you’re not — if you’re trying to get into cheese and you’re not from Wisconsin, I don’t think it would a real easy thing to do. I was trying to do music in Tallahassee and there’s really not a lot of avenues to get out Tallahassee, musically. There’s not a lot of record execs, not a lot of record companies. And, you know, if there are record companies, it’s like, owned by some guy down the road. Like, it’s not really a big deal. So just the struggle of trying to come from a not-so-well-established-musically city. I think that it just kinda slowed my process a little bit. But I wouldn’t change it for the world because I think something would be different and I wouldn’t be here right now.

I’ve always thought that the pain comes from your challenges with your family. Is that anything to do with it?

Not really the challenges with my family. I think the challenges that I’ve had with my family were exactly the same as anybody else, you know what I’m saying? Any family that’s not super-duper close, I think we had the same challenges. But, you know, it’s very normal but seems to be more interesting when you’re famous. So, I don’t know.

It’s exacerbated.

Yeah, people seem to take more of an interest in it when you’re famous.

What was the reaction of your mom and dad when you tell them you want to be a singer?

I didn’t really have to tell my mom and dad that I wanted to be a singer. They kinda just knew. I just kinda started, you know, taking an interest in music. And my dad started buying me studio equipment and stuff like that. And it really just came naturally. My dad was already in a lot of bands and stuff like that so of course he wanted me to follow his footsteps. But it wasn’t necessarily going in that way until maybe, like, 1999. And he started buying me equipment and stuff like that. I started getting better and better at it. And the better I got at it, the more equipment he would buy me. And, you know, at that point, I became T-Pain, once he started helping. So it really wasn’t a big step for them. They already knew I was gonna go towards that. But they didn’t know it was gonna get this.

What kind of musician was your dad?

He was a singer. My dad was a singer. He was in a lot of groups that didn’t really do anything. It was, you know — it was the ’80s. So not much success with all that. But he was good at what he did. He just wasn’t good enough to really make it out there like that.

Are any of your siblings into music, too?

My older brother is into music. But he’s pretty much — he was in a group with me when I was still in Tallahassee when I was doing the whole rapper thing. And my brother Rasheed just pretty much — he kept going with it and he wants to keep the group going and just that lifestyle of Tallahassee is still in him. So, you know, it’s not really going too far. But he’s getting a lot of knowledge from me because — just from experience. I can tell him how to do things from first-hand experience. Not necessarily gonna listen to me because he’s my bigger brother. You know how that goes.