Auto-tune was something of a taboo in rap, for some it may always be, but for the most part, it's been accepted as a common songwriting tool. As prevalent as it may be today, there was only one figure who can really be attributed with popularizing the effect, and that's T-Pain (sorry, Cher).
While Pain has been under-the-radar for some time, it seems that the level of respect for his craft has never been higher. This can likely be attributed to the visible DNA of the singer's repertoire on the new wave of artists, and the high level of nostalgia for his string of 00s hits.
It seems Pain couldn't have picked a better time to release his new mixtape, The Iron Way, which drops March 27th, and in celebration of the auto-tune god's return, we've decided to look at his influence through five waves of rappers. Take a look through our gallery and trace the history of auto-tune over the last decade in rap.
Item #1
Kanye West
Kanye West
Kanye West was one of the earliest adopters of T-Pain's sound, and was actually able to work with Pain directly on much of his music. The first step came with the singer's hook on "Good Life", which became a massive hit for Kanye, peaking at number 7 on the Hot 100.
Following his breakup with Alexis Phipher and the death of his mother, Donda West, Ye decided to follow up his arena rap opus, Graduation, with a more understated, emotionally fragile album, 808s & Heartbreak. To illustrate the pain he was going through at the time, he decided to color his voice with auto-tune, and he brought T-Pain in to the studio to help him write.
While the sessions with Pain were a bit rocky (at one point there was actually a diss track recorded by Ye, where he jokingly told the singer to step his game up), the auto-tuned crooner landed a writing credit on "RoboCop", and his influence can be heard throughout the album.
While Ye has not done another whole project incorporating the synthesized vocal effect, he's never stopped using it, allowing him to perform (what may be) the first auto-tune solo on "Runaway," and to reach the notes on recent melodic records, "Only One" and "FourFiveSeconds".
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne's adoption of auto-tune earned him his biggest single, and sole #1 record, "Lollipop," and once again T-Pain can be directly accredited to the rapper's obsession with vocal tweaking. In fact, Wayne and Pain were very close to releasing a joint effort under the T-Wayne pseudonym, but due to label issues the project never materialized.
Wayne's experiments with pitch correction took things in new directions, rather than using the effect to make his voice sound sweeter or more robotic, the rapper's delivery became more croaky and distorted. That the creative epiphany came at the peak of his lean abuse likely played a role in his more psychedelic take on the style.
This was something of a turning point in influence, where auto-tune's appeal was swayed to those who were looking to venture outside of the means of conventional melody, rather than towards it.
Future
Future is the first rapper on this list who came out the gate using auto-tune, and while he is of a generation of post-Wayne warblers, his similarities to T-Pain can not be discredited. T-Pain made a point of addressing the fact that Future was using the effect "wrong", bringing up the fact that the rapper was simply slapping the effect on after his vocal take, rather than fine-tuning it to his melodies. While this is "wrong" in a sense, it is the foundation of which rappers from Atlanta have been using auto-tune over the last few years, and has thus created a new sound with the pitch-correction software.
Regardless of his technique, Future filled a similar role in 2012-2014 as T-Pain did a few years earlier, being recruited to add his hooks to songs, lending his sound to hits including YC's "Racks," Ace Hood's "Bugatti," and Lil Wayne's "Love Me".
While Fewtch's vocal tone bore the closest resemblance to Wayne's, his robotic love ballads recalled both those of T-Pain and Kanye West, making him the perfect ambassador to bring the effect to a new set of experimentalists.
Item #1
Chief Keef
While the previous artists found some of their greatest successes through their use of auto-tune, Chief Keef's career arc deviates from the pack. Making his name on roided-up street anthems "Don't Like" and "Love Sosa," Keef's later experimentation with auto-tune took him to a weirder and less immediate place.
Keef's new lane was hinted at on Finally Rich moments like "Kay Kay" and "Citgo," but his biggest departures were yet to come. Sosa spent much of 2013 and 2014 rapping and singing with an increasingly garbled delivery, drenching his vocals in auto-tune, and effectively obscuring his melodies into howls and wails.
While casual fans turned their backs on Keef, his following became more of a cult, and despite next to no support from his label, and some thrown together projects, the slippery psych-outs earned Keef millions of YouTube views on each of his releases.
After being dropped by his label late last year, Keef has tightened up his full length output, but auto-tune is still his favorite tool, and by this point, he's turned many fans around on his lean-soaked ramblings. In fact, his city has followed in his footsteps in terms of using the vocal effect, with Lil Durk using it as a means to throw his voice to the sky, where Keef keeps his buried in sludge and gravel.
Young Thug
Young Thug is the final rapper on this list, because he's the most indicative of how auto-tune is being used today. Citing Lil Wayne as his sole influence, he's definitely a descendant of the late 00s skewing of the effect, and as T-Pain might say, mis-use of the pitch correction system.
Whether delivering fluttering triplet flows, or sweet melodies, Thug's gurgling vocal approach always sounds left-field, but it goes hand in hand with the rapper's obsession with tone and melody. Thugger's vocals are always pitched, and his use of auto-tune accentuates the many notes he hits in his flailing runs, and you can trace this insistence on merging melody and rap through Keef, Future, Wayne, Kanye, and eventually back to T-Pain.
Auto-tune has given rappers an ability to use their voice as an instrument better than ever before, and as a result, hooks, tunes, and catchy refrains are more prevalent than ever, and no matter how weird things get, auto-tune will keep those ear-worms in place. It's clear by now that it's not going away anytime soon, and it will further encourage and develop new sounds in rap for years to come.