T-Pain

In the winter of 2005, southern soulster T-Pain burst on the rhythmic scene with his debut Rappa Ternt Sanga and things just ain't been the same.

As a former microphone fiend who was down with the rap pack known as the Nappy Headz, a five-man group who had moderate success with Robbery in the early 2000s, T-Pain was tired of the borders that divide hip-hop and soul, especially since he was excellent at both. Well on his way to a brilliant career, T-Pain sold a combined five million ring-tones of Stripper and Sprung.

Coming back strong in 2007, T-Pain has been hard at work constructing his sophomore joint Epiphany. "There has been a growth inside of me since I made that first album," states T-Pain, reflecting on the time he spent working on his latest project. "To be blunt, I had to learn to stop being lazy in the studio. On the first album I recorded what I thought people wanted to hear, this time it was about me being an artist."

Travelling throughout the world while on tour with label-mate Chris Brown (and later with Bow Wow), also gave T-Pain a different perspective on life and music. "I loved being in London, because overseas it seemed that people were taking different kinds of risks with their records," T-Pain says.

While T-Pain embraces both the old-school and current R&B, his complete persona on Epiphany shows us an artist who is unafraid of taking chances. "For me, soul music is about love, and it's that kind of warmth that I want to bring back to the music." Forget about the next level, because T-Pain is taking us places that have yet to be defined.