T-Pain is the unofficial father of Auto-Tune, so he took it pretty hard when the fad began going by the wayside in the early part of the decade.
"Around the time when people were hating on me about Auto-Tune, I was drinking as much as I could to get away from my problems, crying to myself," he told VIBE.
Sadly, it gets worse.
"I've almost lost fingers from punching glass and pictures," he said. "I turned into a raging alcoholic. If I could talk to myself then, I would say, 'Stop trying to get approval from these wack n----s that's only gonna take your style.'"
But T-Pain had no such advice to guide him during his time of turmoil. He admitted that his most recent full-length, 2011's RevolveR, was not up to par.
"I f---ed up on my last album because I listened to somebody else," he said. "I wasn't proud of myself. That's not something I want to do anymore. No matter how many times people try to f--- with that Auto-Tune style, nobody's done it better than me. And I'm still gonna be the best at this s--- no matter what."
He also mentioned that an encounter with one of the biz's best affected his outlook.
"I learned something very important from Diddy when I was writing songs for The Last Train to Paris," T-Pain said. "He told me, 'Imagine if you pushed yourself a little further out of your comfort zone. You ain't tried it yet. That means you're scared of yourself.' That changed me."
TP's new album, Stoicville: The Phoenix still doesn't have an official release date, but he gave FUSE some details over the summer.
"Stoicville is a city in my mind that I created. It's basically like my happy place," he explained. "I created it after I found out that my son is autistic. When [autistic people] get frustrated, they cover their ears and close their eyes, and they go to this place. I figured that maybe I need to try that-I get frustrated a lot."
