Hometown: Tallahassee, Florida
The lineup: T-Pain (vocals)
The background: T-Pain, who used to be the microphone fiend in a rap group called Nappy Headz, is short for Tallahassee Pain, his name meant to represent his struggle growing up in the Florida state capital. The 21-year-old is also known as Ternt Sanga and was born Faheem Najm. Whatever his name, he's basically this year's Sean Kingston - ie a half-rap, half-R&B, crossover success whose songs have lots of pop-wise hooks and more than a hint of novelty about them. However, his Stateside profile (he's just won a Grammy for best rap song for the hit Good Life with Kanye West, he's huge with the download/ringtone generation and he guests on Flo-Rider which has just spent its umpteenth week at No 1 in the US) - suggests he's got more of a career ahead of him than poor Sean, currently flipping burgers in Neasden. Not even McDonalds, just by the side of the road.
A ubiquitous presence in the States, T-Pain's already had a smash hit with the single Buy You A Drank (Shawty Snappin), while the lushly harmonised Studio Luv finds him in poetic mode, comparing his baybee to a flute and offering to "stroke her body like I do my keyboard", sounding like a junior R Kelly OD'ing on cheese. And he's instantly recognisable at the moment, is T-Pain, because he uses a vocoder a lot like Kingston did, indeed like musicians have been doing since Peter Frampton's Show Me The Way, or, more appropriately in this context, since the late great Roger Troutman of eccentric electro-funkateers Zapp. It's his signature, his tag if you will, and he's scrawling it all over the biggest rappers' tracks right now.
He's not a conventional bitch-disser. Another US hit of his, I'm Sprung, complete with crisp electronic handclaps, sees the pussy-whipped Najm bending over backwards (stop it) and doing unusual things to please a woman he's just enjoyed naked congress with - like being vaguely cordial, sitting on the roof of a house with his legs dangling over the edge, feeding her grapes and what appears (in the video anyway) to be ironing a block of ice, as opposed to, say, treating her like a ho'. Meanwhile, I'm In Love With A Stripper, another catchy ballad with a gratuitously multitracked chorus, has our hapless pop-rap hero mooning over (as opposed to mooning at) a beautiful pole dancer. Come on, it's happened to the best of us.
The buzz: "Playful, pop-wise hooks often filtered through a vocoder, light-stepping funk and clever, horny lyrics."
The truth: Hard to believe he's being hailed as the new Pharrell over there - he's a one-trick pony, not an avant-futurist pop genius.
Most likely to: Use that voice box all of the time, forever.
Least likely to: Be heard in public without his voice box.
What to buy: The single Church is released by Sony/BMG on March 10.
File next to: Sean Kingston, R Kelly, Shabba Ranks, Roger Troutman
Links: www.t-pain.net
Tomorrow's new band: Throw Me The Statue.
