When even T-Pain admits to being down in the dumps, you know it’s rough out there.
Though T-Pain, 39, has made some of the biggest party anthems of the past two decades, he opened up on Thursday, February 15 about how he had struggled with finding joy in his life, especially when it came to his professional career. “I’ve been sad for a long time, but right now, I’m happy,” he captioned a video via Instagram. In the clip, T-Pain (wearing his Apple Vision Pro goggles) promoted his new single, “Dreaming,” while responding to a question about his mood.
“Am I overall happy? My n—a, absolutely,” he said. “This is about been the happiest I done been in the last — a lot. A lot. I been very, very sad and fucked up for a long time. But my wife has been there for me a lot. But you know, career-wise? If you’re talking about career-wise? Happiest I ever been. I’m actually in control. I’ve got a good team around me. Yeah, I’m happy as s—t.”
“Dreaming,” which arrived on February 9, is T-Pain’s first song since releasing On Top of the Covers in March 2023. The rapper (born Faheem Rashad Najm) said that he had been “sitting on this song for a very long time because I wanted to wait for the right time to release it to the world.”
“For some reason,” he said in the statement accompanying the release, “it just didn’t feel right to just let this get eaten up by all the negative that is the world we live in, but with all this new-found and rekindled T-Pain love all over the place, the time is now.”
T-Pain spoke about some of his professional hardships in a TikTok video posted on January 30. Though he’s known most for his hip-hop and R&B work, T-Pain has contributed music for many other artists, including some in the country world.
“Country music is where I get all my harmonies — country and gospel music. That’s where all my harmonies come from,” he said. T-Pain showed that love with On Top of the Covers, including a cover of David Allan Coe’s “Tennessee Whisky” and Gavin DeGraw’s “I Don’t Want to Be.” The Masked Singer winner also collaborated with Taylor Swift at the 2009 CMT Awards, turning her “Love Story” into a parody titled “Thug Story.”
Though T-Pain said he’s “done wrote [for] a lot of country songs,” he said he had to stop having his name listed amongst the credits because of “racism that comes after it. It is just like, ‘I’ll just take the check, don’t put me on that s–t. I’ll just take the check, bro, never mind.’”
Coincidentally, when Beyoncé released two country songs from her upcoming Renaissance Act II, fans in Oklahoma attempted to get the songs played on radio station KYKC 100.1. The station told the fans that “we do not play Beyoncé … as we are a country music station,” prompting a public backlash.
The station’s general manager later clarified that they “just didn’t know” about Beyoncé’s new country songs. “When we found out about it, we tried to get the song … which we did and we have already played it three times,” the manager said in a statement earlier this month.
