T-Pain jumped back into the spotlight this year after proving he didn't need the help of Auto-Tune to sing. He has changed his focus from making hits to making personal music, and with that comes the release of his upcoming album Stoicville: The Phoenix, which is due out in 2015. Although he's been a player in the music industry for some time now, The Boombox sat him down to play a round of Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?
The first "fact" he was asked to confirm was his real name. Right off the bat, he called "fiction." Sorry, Wikipedia, his name is not Faheem Rasheed Najm but rather Faheem Rashad Najm.
Wikipedia also had his birthday wrong. It was Sept. 30, 1984 not 1985
The site finally came through on the next two questions, which were about his birthplace and the origin of his stage name. It is true that he was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and that T-Pain stands for Tallahassee Pain.
"I wasn't really considered an R&B artist yet, also I wasn't that famous so nobody really cared," he said about people's reaction to his name. "But coming out of Tallahassee there aren't really any execs or anyone that's important or prevalent in the music industry. So we just kind of had to make our own way trying to get out of Tallahassee. Not so much getting out of Talahassee but getting heard outside of Tallahassee. It seemed like in order to do that, you had to leave Tallahassee because we never really had any outlets or radio stations trying to reach us. It was just really hard to get heard out of Tallahassee, so the pain and the struggle of having zero money but trying to be heard at the same time, or even record and do songs without power in my house and running the studio off a generator outside with people calling the police for the noise ordinance because we couldn't afford a Honda generator with a quiet motor."
He was then asked whether the following statement was true: "At age ten, Najm turned his bedroom into a music studio, using a keyboard, a beat machine and a four-track recorder."
He clarified that at ten, he had a keyboard, "but I just hooked it up to the radio and that was it."
"Later on when I was 14/15 that's when I got the beat machine and the four-track recorder," he said. "But yeah my dad saw what I was doing on the keyboard and that's how I learned how to play the keys was hooking it up to the radio and playing along with the songs that were on the radio. Once I got good at that, my dad was like, 'Oh you actually kind of sound like you know what you're doing.' Then I played his favorite song, 'Lift Every Voice And Sing,' and he wanted me to play that for everybody that came into the house. He said, 'If you're really serious about this I'll get you equipment to further what you're trying to do here.' So it took some years."
He also talks about recording a remix to Akon's 2003 hit "Locked Up" for his own mixtape, which ultimately got him signed as well as his brief stint as a DJ, and more.
Check out the full interview below, and let us know what you think in the comments section!
