T-Pain: Rappa Ternt Sanga : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

T-pain is a twenty-one-year-old Florida crooner who broke out last fall with "I'm Sprung," a wickedly catchy lament about a woman whose love drove him to extraordinary measures -- like doing her dishes. T-Pain's solo debut banks on the same slinky-smooth pleasures as "I'm Sprung": playful, popwise hooks (often filtered through a vocoder), light-stepping funk and clever, horny lyrics. Rappa Ternt Sanga (the title refers to T-Pain's stint in the Florida rap group Nappy Headz) too often drifts into loverman tedium, but a handful of slower cuts are saved by T-Pain's R. Kelly-worthy gift for not holding back. On the lushly harmonized "Studio Luv," T-Pain compares his woman to a flute and offers to "stroke [her] body like I do my keyboard," and on "I'm N Love (Wit a Stripper)" he lays down a gratuitously multitracked chorus before Mike Jones sums up said stripper's assets. The uptempo cuts are just as smartly constructed and lighter on their feet, with the vaguely Latin "Como Estas" taking the prize as the most jumping showcase for T-Pain's oddly charming come-ons.