I have just spent a full three hours of my workday reading Literally Unbelievable, the website that tracks the wacky antics of the good people who believe The Onion reports actual, true news stories, so let’s just say I’m more than a little surprised that the headline “T-Pain Sues Auto-Tune Inventor” on Billboard.com is NOT an article from The Onion. ONLY IN T-PAIN’S AMERICA, SHEEPLE.
So, this is a real story. It’s 100% true and it’s totally happening. T-Pain, known in R&B and pop music circles as the Lord of the Auto-Tune, is suing Antares Technologies, the company that developed it back in 1997. What could bring about the tragic dissolution of this seeming match made in heaven, you ask? Was Auto-Tune cheating on T-Pain with Cher? Is T-Pain going to use his ACTUAL VOICE on a recording? Ha ha ha NO DON’T BE RIDICULOUS. It’s all about the benjamins, baby.
Recently T-Pain partnered with Izotope, a new company, to rep his very own voice-manipulation technology, called — wait for it — The T-Pain Effect. THE T-PAIN EFFECT. And therefore, Señor Pain is trying to distance himself from Antares by bringing an injunction against the company. On Monday, T-Pain and associates filed a complaint in the US District Court in California alleging that Antares is still using his likeness in marketing materials, packaging, and advertisements, and that this continued endorsement “will confuse and mislead the public and damage sales for his own new technologies, including the ‘I Am T-Pain Mic.’” Yes, that is a real, purchasable product. The I Am T-Pain Mic. No word yet on whether the I Am T-Pain Mic allows the user to conceive of and spit shitty lyrics like “Oh she made us drinks, to drink/We drunk ‘em, got drunk” or not.
• T-Pain: http://www.t-pain.net
• Izotope: http://www.izotope.com
• Antares: http://www.antarestech.com
