Unless you’re an astute T-Pain follower, you may not have realized he hasn’t released an album since May 2007. That’s because he’s been nearly as ubiquitous as Lil Wayne in the guest appearance department since then, adding his Autotune-d voice to tracks from Wayne, Ciara and Ludacris, among many others.
So what’s the difference between T-Pain the guest and T-Pain the featured artist on “Thr33 Ringz?” Not much, but that’s OK, thanks to a winning mix of humor and sincerity. “I don’t need your sex/I’ll masturbate,” he sniffs on the Kanye West-featuring “Therapy,” while “Chopped & Skrewed” is a comic tale of being hoodwinked by a woman.
But there’s more substance here than on past albums, particularly on the Eric Clapton-sampling “Change,” and T-Pain seems comfortable leaning in a poppier direction on tracks like “Can’t Believe It” featuring Wayne.
“Thr33 Ringz” follows 2007’s “Epiphany,” which has sold 843,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
