This is going to get ugly
It seems like just yesterday T-Pain was the go to guy if you wanted a hook that was gonna make your song a certified smash hit. Im sure if you’re a hip-hop head, you might remember singing along to one of T-Pain’s infectious hooks while partying in a club, or even jamming in your car.
Songs like, “Buy You a Drink” was a club smash, as well as songs like Flo-rida’s 2009 hit “Low.” I mean, you just couldn’t escape the auto-tuned voice of a T Pain song or any song he was featured on. So whether you was hitting on the “Bartender” or at the strip club falling “In Love With a Stripper,” from 2005 until about 2010 you were certainly jamming to T-Pain.
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History Lesson
Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Around those same years, another iconic artist was blazing the hip-hop scene with his own slew of hit songs and catchy hooks. One-fourth of the legendary New Orleans group the Hot Boys, Lil Wayne was proving he could not only hold his own as a solo artist, but become of the elite names in the game while doing so.
Somewhere along the way, these two hip-hop powerhouses would decide to hit the studio and put their energy together to create some tunes. Auto-tunes to be exact — nah I’m kidding. The songs they did churn out (though heavily auto-tune assisted) turned out to be some powerful tracks you probably still jam to today.
Whether its the smash from Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, “Got Money,” or T-Pain’s single “Can’t Believe It” from his second album, there is no denying when these two come together the music is good. In fact, the music was so good they would eventually come together to do the collaborative album T-Wayne.
While the album was never released commercially — and even became something of a mythical project at one point — it would later be leaked by T-Pain himself earlier this year…
Hmmmmmm… was this? did he? Could all this be connected somehow?
Old Money From Young Money
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When I say all this, I’m talking about a lawsuit recently filed by T-Pain claiming that Lil Wayne and his record company Young Money owe him a bunch of unpaid royalties. Even though Lil Wayne is in his own legal battle with his mentor’s label, Cash Money Records, I don’t think anybody seen this one coming.
Cash Money has become notorious for not paying artists the way they expected, but Young Money? They have had a pretty clean track record thus far.
Unless you count the little issue with Jas Prince and the Drake stuff but thats another story. Other than that, they’re pretty clean, but just recently, there have been multiple reports that T-Pain is fired up and ready to go after Wayne and his company for his owed money.
The Root of Evil
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According to TMZ:
“T-Pain’s company, Nappy Boy Productions, is suing Young Money … saying he produced Wayne’s track, ‘Got Money,’ which also featured T-Pain. Further, TP says one of his artists, Young Fyre, produced ‘How to Hate’ on Tha Carter IV.
The deal, according to docs, was that Young Money would pay T-Pain some royalties. According to the docs, there should be a bundle … because 2008’s Tha Carter III sold more than 3.2 million copies … and that’s in the U.S. alone.”
In the words of Lauryn Hill, “Its funny how money change a situation.”
These guys seemed to be besties only a couple years back, but as we’ve been seeing in that Cash Money camp, they have no problem filing lawsuits against each other. Especially when it comes to that good, old, almighty dollar.
Why would making a collaborative album stop a lawsuit this time when Lil Wayne and Baby made one prior called Like Father, Like Son? Now those two are now heavily engaged in a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
Do you think T-Pain will get his money from Wayne before Lil Wayne gets his money from Baby? If only they could auto tune that litigation and make it all sound better.
We’ll see how this one plays out in the coming months, I guess.
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