T-Pain brings you inside startups on new TV show, from weed wine to music instruments

Fuse

• T-Pain’s 
  new Fuse show, “T-Pain’s
  School of Business,” finds the recording artist interviewing
  the founders of successful product startups. 
• T-Pain spoke to Business Insider about the startups
  featured on his series premiere, the influence of his music,
  and his upcoming work.

 

Nearly a decade and a half out from the start of his music
career, T-Pain decided to follow his side interest in startup
culture into the world of reality business shows.

“T-Pain’s School of Business,” which premieres Tuesday on Fuse at
11 pm ET, finds the recording artist interviewing the founders of
a wide range of successful product startups.

Speaking to Business Insider during a phone call from his studio
last week, T-Pain discussed the startups featured on his series
premiere, including a marijuana-infused wine and an all-in-one
instrument for musicians, the popular influence of his music, and
what we can expect from his upcoming work.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for
clarity.

John Lynch: I was relieved to hear you swearing and
joking on the show. I was worried with this type of show that we
might see a PG T-Pain. 

T-Pain: Oh, no [laughs]. I am who I am
on any platform.

Lynch: And Fuse was a good home for it? 

T-Pain: Yeah, they were the only people who
would actually let me do my thing, so yeah, definitely a good
home.

Lynch: What inspired you to do this type of business
show?

T-Pain: Mostly because I was already doing it at
home, going through Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and all the funding
sites. I was just trying to bring something that I already liked
doing to TV. Not much other motivation than that, man. It was
just a great idea. I told Fuse what I was doing on a daily basis,
and they were like, “Man, that’d be a great show.” And here we
are.

Lynch: How did you approach hosting it?

T-Pain: It wasn’t really a hard decision on how
I was going to approach it, because like I said, I was already
doing it, and I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs everyday. You’ve
gotta imagine the number of people that come up to me everyday
saying they have great ideas, or looking for funding. But a lot
of these companies that I talked to on the show were already
successful. I felt like it was more of an opportunity to teach
than anything else, because I didn’t want to have a show where
I’m like, “I know all about making money. Here’s how you do it
— do this,” or you know, I’m not shutting
anybody down. That seemed like a terrible idea.

I just wanted it to be organic, natural, pretty much uplifting,
and very, very informative. That was the most important thing. I
wanted it to be informative and not just showing off how much
money these people have made and how dope their products are. I
wanted information behind the development, information behind the
process, what made you come up with this idea. I wanted to
motivate younger and up-and-coming entrepreneurs as well, so it
helps out a lot to have an informative show, and not just
something that’s super duper fun and you learn nothing.

Fuse

Lynch: One of the products that you seemed to like a lot
was the
Artiphon 1, this all-in-one instrument that raised $1 million
on Kickstarter. What did you think of playing that, and have you
used it at all since then?

T-Pain: Yeah, I’m literally looking at it
right now [laughs]. I’m in my studio, and I’ve got it
hooked up in my studio right now. The Artiphon is such a new take
on something that sort of existed, but there’s been
nothing like it so far that I’ve seen, other than normal Midi
controllers and the keyboards that you can bring in and turn into
Midi controllers. It’s such a different thing, like with the iBow
that you can use your phone and treat it like a violin, and the
guitar aspect of it, you can play a piano like a guitar. So many
different ways you can use it. You can make your own custom pads.
And it’s just one thing that fits into your backpack. Before I
saw this product, using my laptop in my hotel room, I would have
to bring a keyboard, a small guitar, a record device, but all of
that is in that Artiphon, so it helps out a lot. 

Fuse

Lynch: Another product you tried was a weed-infused wine.
That you seemed more skeptical of, which I think was right — it
seemed like a bizarre scenario.

T-Pain: [laughs] Yeah, that was
actually pretty cool, man. I wasn’t chill about it at first
because I’m just not a weed guy. I’m just terrible at weed on any
account. I don’t know how somebody can be bad at weed, but I’m
just real bad at weed. I can’t do edibles, I can’t smoke weed,
but then I drank that, and man, I was actually pretty chill.
Usually I’m freaking losing my mind or something like that, but
there wasn’t a crazy dosage of THC in it, so I bet that helps out
a lot, and also I like drinking. But yeah, it worked fairly
quickly and very effectively. 

Lynch: To go back to music technology, as one of the
modern originators of autotune, what was it like for you to see
that technology and that style really take off in the years after
your first album?

T-Pain: It was pretty cool, man, to be an
innovator. Not that I invented autotune or was the first person
to use it or anything like that. A lot of people have complained
that they did it before me, and I’m grateful for that and, hey,
maybe they motivated me, I don’t know, but it didn’t take off
like it did after I did it. To see myself as somebody
that brought it to the forefront and made it popular, I’m really
glad I did it. That’s something under my belt that I can keep
going and tell my grandkids about. 

Lynch: And you’re still — you haven’t
exhausted it, you still like using autotune as a tool?

T-Pain: Oh, absolutely. I can’t stop doing
something that I started. It’s a pretty cool thing for me, and
it’s part of my sound. So I don’t want to change too much. If it
ain’t broke don’t fix it, you know. It’s one of those things.

Lynch: You had
a recent back-and-forth on Twitter with Delta airlines about
your distaste for their runway music, and they ended up playing
“Buy
U a Drank” on one of your flights. Is that the strangest
place you’ve heard one of your songs?

T-Pain: Probably in a church
[laughs]. That was weird.

Lynch: You said “in a
church”? [laughs]

T-Pain: Yeah, I didn’t think they would be doing
that, but hey, they used it, flipped the words around to talk
about God and Jesus, and yeah, I’m all about it. I have no
problem with that.

Lynch: Which song was it?

T-Pain: It was “Bartender,”
which was weird. They flipped that around and made it about “the
word.” So that was pretty cool.

Lynch: Prepping for this call, I had a sharp flashback to
being an emotional white kid listening to “I’m
Sprung” on like a CD player, back in the day
[laughs]. I’m wondering, is there an era of your career
that you’re particularly nostalgic for or proud of?

T-Pain: I think the “THR33 RINGZ” era. I
feel like I got more creative in that time, and I took more risks
with the style of clothing I was wearing, and coming out with all
these props at my shows. And that’s another thing that really
brought me to doing this TV show was taking risks, and just
seeing how difficult it is to really believe in yourself when
nobody else knows what the hell is going on. Because if I would
have listened to people when I came up with the whole circus
theme [for “THR33 RINGZ”], that whole album would have never
happened. It helped to believe in myself and get to a point where
I could channel my inner entrepreneur and just go for it, and do
things on the road that nobody had seen before, and it worked
out.

Lynch: You just dropped a second volume of “Everything
Must Go.” Why release free collections of your songs at this
time — why must everything go?

T-Pain: Well, for one, I don’t feel like
buying any more hard drives, and I’m running out of room on all
the ones my music is on. So if I’m running out of space on a four
terabyte drive, then I just need to either delete all the music I
got on there or just release it. I’m not using it for anything or
making money off it sitting in the ol’ hard drive, then why not
just give it to the people? It’s just something to bring
awareness that I’m still here, same type of music. It was music I
made in my leisure. I mean, the only way I would capitalize off
of it is if one of the songs becomes a hit and I go touring off
of that song for some reason, I don’t know why, but it’s not
really a priority of mine at this present time.

Lynch: How are you thinking about your next official
release — I’m assuming you’re in the studio for
it?

T-Pain: Yeah, it’s actually coming pretty
soon, like really really soon. Like less than two
months soon. So I’m just in the studio getting it done. We got
the final tracks. I just sent in all the sessions for mixing.
It’s pretty much like, not so much a surprise, but basically like
I’m doing everything on the go. The game isn’t really big on
promoting anymore anyways, so it’s just like a thing I’m doing.
I’m not seeing it as a big, life-changing thing I’m doing, but
it’s definitely something I want to put out in the world.

Lynch: How are you conceptualizing it musically?

T-Pain: I don’t think I’m coming at it with
any particular concept or anything like that. Conceptually, it’s
just me enjoying music again. It’s just a vast array of things
that I’ve had on my mind recently. There was a point where music
didn’t really mean as much to me as it used to for me, so just
getting back in the groove and really enjoying it again is what
you would get out from it. If I had to lay a concept to it, I
think it’s just me having fun [laughs]. That’s all it
boils down to. 

 

“T-Pain’s School of Business” premieres Tuesday night on Fuse
at 11 pm ET.