With plenty of single potential, this could mean another #1 for Pain and the triumphant return of Miss Harris to the spotlight. The song works on equal parts of both participants- the vocals play off each other impressively, and the chorus is one of the best on the album. The same can be said for Kanye’s exceptional verse in “Therapy”, a disappointingly brief cameo given Pain gets especially repetitious in this track.Įxhibit B: the criminally underrated Ciara reminds listeners why she had several number ones by turning out a catchy, highly pleasing duet on “Blowing Up”. Both simply cruise through the beat, gaining the lead over the main man despite an excellent chorus. The results are split into three groups- either Pain is outperformed, equalled or made to look even better.Įxhibit A: on the syncopated bop of “It Ain’t Me”, the reins are handed over to Senegalese hook-master Akon and the effortlessly cool T.I. These songs are really not the kind to show to sceptics who are firm in the belief that T-Pain cannot make anything worthwhile to convince them otherwise.Īnother interesting note on Thr33 Ringz is the plethora of guests on the record- certainly, T-Pain has evolved into urban pop’s village bicycle, so it seems only fair that his associates return the favour. The most notable miss is the ridiculously boring slow-jam of “Long Lap Dance”, as well as the forgettable “Digital”. So, too, is the minimalist verses of “Blowing Up”, which gets even better when synth arpeggios slide over it come chorus time as well as the Konvicted meets FutureSex/LoveSounds guitar-centric smoothness of “Therapy”. “Reality Show”, which features a full-blown party beat with funky drums and excellent use of piano, organ and guitar, is an example of one of the hits. The environment in which T-Pain finds his voice, provided by the unfortunately named Nappy Boy (having his name shouted in half the songs only makes matters worse), is just as hit and miss. More rapping would also relieve the ears from the vocoder-assisted “ooooohhhhh”s and “yeaaahhhhhh”s that occupy the intro of practically every single song as well as diversify the record’s sound, which is exactly what it needs. His aggressive, cocky and verbose flows recall a Country Grammar-era Nelly, or even his close friend Mr. Still, it seems odd that he would use the effect on nearly every single track, especially since the two songs where he raps (“Welcome to Thr33 Ringz” and “Karaoke”) are two of the album’s best tracks. Sure, it sounds like a lot of fun- “Chopped N Skrewed” sees Pain turn his voice into another instrument in the song, and the thickly layered vocoder harmonies have occasional flashes of robotic pop perfection. It’s hard to fault the man as a vocalist/”sanga”, but this is only because of the ridiculous amount of time he spends pitch correcting, warping and looping it. When analysing the music of T-Pain, it is somewhat of a double-edged sword. Perhaps the greatest surprise of all, then, is that it’s deserving of a little more credit than that. Certainly, it may sound like a run-of-the-mill, superficial club-filler product on paper. Aside from the bombastic merry-go-round of “Ringleader Man” and a handful of mostly unfunny skits, this is business as usual for Pain- for the uninitiated, urban synth-pop which takes the Autotune “Cher effect” to newfound levels of over-usage. Surprisingly (and perhaps thankfully), this has not evolved into a fully-blown concept record. Naturally, Pain didn’t need any further encouragement and thus spawned the theme and concept behind Thr33 Ringz. It is this infiltration of the airwaves that lead some people to compare T-Pain to a circus ringleader, running the show. His snappy, robotic vocals under the guise of T-Pain are more or less everywhere, whether it’s booming out of a club (“Lemme buy you a drank!”), booming out of your set-to-MTV television (“Welcome to the good life!”) or booming out of some moron’s mobile phone (“Shawty got them apple-bottom jeans…”). In the last few years, Faheem Rasheed Najm has less entered the pop music world than formed a nation inside it.
Review Summary: Roll up, roll up - the ringtone king brings the circus together for a patchy third album.