Ex Nappy Headz rap singer Faheen Najm, aka T-Pain (short for Tallahassee Pain or Teddy Pain, depending who you believe) has been slowly making a name for himself on the Southern American hip-hop stations with his new R&B genre Hard & B. Rapper Akon signed him up for his label Konvict Muzik after hearing Pain's bootleg remix of I'm Fucked Up. Within months I'm Sprung had its original release. Heavily reliant on the vocoder (the wobbly voice effect Cher once annoyingly championed to mass commercial effect), Pain delivers a soft end R&B (no evidence of Hard & B on this single) vocal groove, that is hard to dislike with a chorus that is difficult to shake off. Perhaps the production should have allowed his natural vocal to breathe and lay off the distortion, but ironically that very gimmick will perhaps make it stand out.
Rob Barnett, Music News