It had been a year since T-Pain last visited NPR’s Washington headquarters, and this time he got dressed up. Dark blazer. Speckled dress shirt. A necktie that appeared to be made of scales plucked from a golden dragon. He knew people would be watching and he wanted to look sharp.
For good reason. On his last visit, the R&B hit-maker performed a Tiny Desk Concert, one of those signature lunchtime gigs that NPR films in its office space and posts online. The fact that T-Pain sang without using Auto-Tune — the digital vocal effect that’s made him one the most influential singers alive — helped his Tiny Desk Concert generate more than 8 million views on YouTube. So on Thursday night, he was hoping to do it again, this time with a live online broadcast in front of a 200-ish fans gathered inside NPR’s main auditorium.
Obviously, the aura of a room can alter the music being produced onstage, and if NPR’s webcams failed to transmit those vibes, here’s how they felt: The seated audience was acutely aware that this concert was being filmed, and that awareness thickened the air with a too-polite energy, which T-Pain surely detected, (especially when the cheers failed to eclipse infomercial studio audience applause levels), and yet this tentative mood appeared to bring something out in the singer, a timidity that he didn’t intend to reveal, which made the entire exchange feel intimate and true.
It felt casual, like a rehearsal, but also awkward, like an audition — and it might have been both. He has made brash anthems for clubland, and dizzying hits for the radio, but here, he was trying his hand at something much more delicate, as if hoping to figure out what the next iteration of T-Pain could sound like.
The set included just seven songs, and two were covers — Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 hit “Crazy” and Sam Cooke’s 1964 classic “A Change Is Gonna Come.” He threw all of his voice into the elongated vowels of each — big vocal swells that don’t appear too often in the music he writes.
As for his own songs, they were a different kind of great, presented in pared-down arrangements that allowed the plushness of his melodies to glow. Joined by a keyboardist, a bassist and three back-up vocalists, he sang them like he was in church — which made the dirty stuff feel especially funny.
Other times, T-Pain generated laughter with his sheer, playful musicality — like during the opening verse of “Can’t Believe It” when he bent the word “Wisconsin” to rhyme with “mansion.” Wonderful.
He looked good, he sounded good, but T-Pain was still nervous. Between songs, he shooed his butterflies away with skittish jokes and goofy little dances. If he came here trying to plant his sneakers more firmly into the greater continuum of American soul music, then that Sam Cooke cover felt a little too on the nose — especially when those jitters were doing plenty to prove that he belongs in the lineage.
Here’s why: For a half a century now, soul music has provided a platform for human beings to perform their vulnerability. This was a man performing through his.
