Thanks to the good people at SonyBMG Pyroradio.com was recently invited to a listening session of T-Pain’s upcoming album Thr33 Ringz with the man him self! Freshly dressed in a giant green circus hat and matching trainers T-Pain presented us with his highly anticipated 3^rd album and Interview. Thr33 Ringz is due for release on his birthday September 30th

Last year T-pain gained five Grammy Nominations and has dominated the airwaves for the last year with his own solo tracks including ‘Church’ and ‘Buy U A Drink’ and countless collaborations with artists such Kanye West, Rick Ross, Flo Rida, R Kelly and Plies amongst a whole host of others. To date T Pain is also the biggest selling ringtone artist of all times with over 15 million downloads (excluding collaborations).

‘I named the album Thr33 Ringz because it’s my third album and I think I’m the ring leader of the circus now. The albums crazy it’s a mixture of three T-Pain’s, the classic T-Pain, new T-Pain and the don’t give a damn T-Pain. I’ve recorded about 48 tunes for it so far, it’s still not completely finished but near enough, I wanna end up with around 18 tracks. All the tracks are written and produced by myself so I’m getting all the cheques (Laughs)! The Artwork is gonna be crazy it’s gonna be like a pop up book with the circus theme to it!

‘I just go into the studio and whatever comes out, comes out, I don’t have a formula, whatever happens, happens. I don’t intend to make tracks just for clubs or ringtones. I don’t go in intentionally thinking this is for that.’

‘This summer I’m touring with Keyshia Cole, Danity Kane and Lil Wayne I’m looking forward to that, that should be sweet! I’m also doing a best of both worlds sort of album with Lil Wayne which we’re starting in October, we’ve done a few bits already though. Timbaland is gonna be getting involved with that, I think he’s gonna be executive producing it. It’s gonna be called ‘He Rap He Sing’ cos we both rap and sing. The name of the group is T-Wayne which is self explanatory (laughs). I’ve got loads more features coming up as well, but I’m shutting that down soon.’

‘The Dj will never die, I’d say they’ve become less useful now though because a couple years ago the only time you’d here a new tune was when the DJ played it in a club or on radio. Now you’ve got Limewire, Itunes and all these places where everything is so assessable now. I started out as a Dj. The Dj will never die though I can’t imagine being in a club dancing to an Ipod (laughs)’

‘T-Pain Is Dead will be full of songs people wouldn’t expect from me. There will be no autotune, there will be rock songs, I’ll be collaborating with Country and Western artists and things like that.’

Tracks played (not a final tracklist!)

Thr33 Rings Intro - Big intro to the album, serious beat and T-Pain rapping hard

Ring Leader Man - Slow Banger

Long Lap Dance Song - Stripper song

Keep Going - T-Pain says this is one of the three tunes on my album without autotuner. Very simple production with acoustic guitar, definitely one of the highlights it’s a tribute to his children, got the best reception from the room. Show’s his reflective side

Badside - Another highlight talking about wanting to see a girls badside, club banger

Silver and Gold - The 1^st single, T-Pain says it wasn’t meant to be the first single but because of it’s response when it got leaked it’s too big to stop!

Snap Yo Fingers - Buy U A Drink pt 2, big tune

Superstar Lady - Another Highlight, talks about creating a super lady (stomach of Ciara…..). T-Pain says he wanted Kanye West on this but jokingly says Kanye’s being a jerk cos he likes another track

Therapy - Track Kanye West likes and might be on, another big tune!

Ecstasy - slow sexual song very big!

Fucking Sweat - track about having a great time with a girl, another highlight

It Aint Me feat Bow Wow - Bashment sort of dance song

Karaoke feat Dj Khaled - definite highlight, T-Pain add’s this is probably his favourite track says it’s gonna be the last track on the album, strong diss track where he’s rapping about people biting his style, he says the only people that can do it are Lil Wayne and Kanye West , shows respect to Roger Troutman too. The song starts of with him apologising to Akon and his management, he add’s this is due to them not wanting him to air people out.

Can’t Believe It feat Lil Wayne - 2^nd single, very summery melodic track. Another highlight

Chopped And Screwed feat Ludacris (he’s currently recording his verse) - THIS IS A BANGER! Needs to be a single, the beat is crazy, heavy basslined chopped and screwed beat with chopped up chorus, the track is massive!

Also played That’s Not Cool which will be off his re-release of Thr33 Rings which he says will be entirely new album called T-Pain Is Dead, very rocky track

The album sounds like it’s definitely gonna be a hit! It’s a definite step up from his last two albums, near enough every track sounds like it could be a single. The albums got a very melodic summery vibe to it, it sounded a lot more musical as well than his last two efforts. There were a lot of highlights on the album and I’m very looking forward to the final album!

Words: Matthew Power