This Week for Happy Hour: Death by Autotune

Come down to Rhino Bar for half-price drinks today for Happy Hour, 5-9pm, to celebrate the 26^th birthday of none other than T-Pain.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  I said T-Pain.  The autotune rapper guy.

 

This isn’t your average birthday party.  Most birthday partys exist to celebrate and honor the aging individual.  This birthday party, on the other hand, is really more to celebrate that the individual is aging.

Here’s the thing about T-Pain: he is a Grammy wining vocalist, and nobody knows what his voice sounds like.  That’s just tedious and annoying.  Plus, one time he came by Rhino with his entourage, but they were like, “Whey de club?” and then they went to Modern, next door, for the thumpy music.  Not a fan, my friends.  Perhaps they were thinking of the well-known Oscar Wilde quote, “If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it with one’s own conversation.”  Perhaps.

I know what you’re thinking: who are you to be so critical of the esteemed and highly decorated T-Pain?  After all, it’s like Jack Handy said, “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I shouldn’t criticize the guy. 

Nope, you’re wrong.  I should.

First of all, the whole autotune thing is just embarrassing for hip hop in general, because that shit is soft.  Imagine Busta Rhymes or, even better, the late great Tupac or Biggie using autotune.  If they were still alive, either one would have the other shot for making shameful, sissy, autotuned music.

The only good thing to ever come from autotune is the Gregory Brothers and the would-be Lincoln Park rapist:

So never mind whether T-Pain can sing or not.  The autotune is the problem, airbrushing the music scene into a fraudulent, mechanized formula, and that dum-dum is promoting it.  All I’m asking for is some art that came from a person.  And for T-Pain and the Black Eyed Peas to be electrocuted by an autotune microphone malfunction.  Not to death.  But, you know, a good zinger. 

Anyhow, Captain Autotune is another year older.  And another year closer to retirement.  That calls for a zinger, which, by the way, are half-price for happy hour!  Come keep it real at the Rhino tonight.  Party continues upstairs until 2:30!

See you there!