Adam Mishan said

I do think he has a great voice based on this but my God his lyrics are awful and do not even slightly fit the backing music. He basically has light elevator music behind him and he is singing about booty and hoes.....huh?!?!

DeffStarr said
You know what, after messing around with auto-tune in the studio there is times when you have to intentionally sing out of tune for it to correctly tune you back in. For a singer this can be an art in itself. There's a lot of belief that if you just sing into it, it instantly corrects everything. There is some fine tuning to be made.

Hmm I don't agree with your first statement. What I've found autotuning other singers (I've never used it on my own voice) is that you need a very mathematically on-pitch performance to begin with (including taking out some subtleties like slides, etc.) or it will squirm around and sound weird. At least when using it as subtle pitch correction. As an obvious effect, this is less critical because the intent is not to hide the sound of it and mistakes will exaggerate its artifacts. But it still helps to sing in pitch (probably why it works so great for T-Pain) because otherwise the artifacts could get so exaggerated it's almost humorous sounding.

If you are feeling you need to sing out of tune for it to work, its key could be set wrong or you could just be incorrect in your perception of your own pitch accuracy. OR you could be used to the commonly appreciated human subtlety of singing high notes a slight bit sharp because it sounds a bit better (I don't know why, but I remember I saw a video about how this is a legitimate thing) and the autotune is taking that away from you.

OwenKorzec said

Phil Moufarrege said
He's in a good situation because since he's put in the "miles" with all the crappy commercial stuff he could now do more real music and still make it sell cos of his name.

I wonder if he will though.

The other thing is I've heard a bunch of comments that the lyrics are still crap, and that's true...he might to tidy up that area of things if he changed toward this direction

probably not. his records sell very well, he has no reason to try and please us (we are a minority) hahaha.
My point was really that the cool thing is when you get this famous a major record label probably won't complain that you are now suddenly making neo soul music and if they do you already have a major audience base to start your own thing. whereas if he tried to get in with this he may not have had the huge platform he has now.

You know what, after messing around with auto-tune in the studio there is times when you have to intentionally sing out of tune for it to correctly tune you back in. For a singer this can be an art in itself. There's a lot of belief that if you just sing into it, it instantly corrects everything. There is some fine tuning to be made.

I think also every expects T-Pain to sing in auto tune and find it strange when they see he can sing without it. It's something that he made is own and is well known for.
He should do more material outside of auto tune but because he's known for it, I don't think it will please the masses.

Phil Moufarrege said
He's in a good situation because since he's put in the "miles" with all the crappy commercial stuff he could now do more real music and still make it sell cos of his name.

I wonder if he will though.

The other thing is I've heard a bunch of comments that the lyrics are still crap, and that's true...he might to tidy up that area of things if he changed toward this direction