T-Pain - Epiphany (2007)
After hearing "Rappa Ternt Sanga" I was pretty excited to hear some other T-Pain shit, because it was better than I had expected, but this is just.. I don't know, dude. I'm not gonna bullshit around: Of course you've got some good songs on here like the opening "Tallahassee Love (feat. Jay Lyriq)", and of course the singles, "Church (feat. Teddy Verseti)", "Bartender (feat. Akon)" and "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin') (feat. Yung Joc)", you know, some tunes you probably grew up listening to, maybe even got exposed to too many times via shitty middle/high school dances, I feel it, but.. What's the rest of this, really? Reading the Wikipedia page for the album reveals that T-Pain produced everything, which I never knew he was a producer, but "Rappa Ternt Sanga" had Akon serving as the executive producer, and this one doesn't. Who knows if that actually made much of a difference, but it just seems like the beats on this one just aren't as good overall. Whereas I can turn on "Rappa Ternt Sanga" and listen to it all the way through, not captivated by every track, but have a generally easy time listening to it, I don't really get that with this album. I feel like this album could've been a bit better if it had someone else behind the boards, helping bring the songs to life. But hey.. Let's talk about something fucking ridiculous for a moment:
There's a track on here that's pretty alright called "Time Machine" that sees T-Pain focusing on a more serious subject: Mentally revisiting his life before the fame, and I get that: Sometimes I catch myself reflecting back on my life before I decided to pick up a keyboard, type out some opinions, and have beautiful, naked women flood my mobile home, but on an album full of songs about drinking, going "damn, that bitch BAD" and shit like that, it's out of place, but do you wanna know what's REALLY outta place? "I Got It (skit)" and "Suicide", talking about T-Pain sticking around with a girl after she gets HIV. Let me tell you something: It's fucking hilarious. No, HIV is -NOT- hilarious, it's fucking horrifying, but in WHAT FUCKING WORLD would you EVER imagine T-Pain to sing about the horrors of HIV?! Maybe I'm a bit of a T-Pain virgin and he starts dropping some fucking serious shit on his later releases, but WHAT THE FUCK. It was one of those songs that actually made me think "IS THIS A FUCKING DAVE CHAPPELLE SKIT?" and it's not even a good song! Fuck! I never knew that I wanted T-Pain to sing about other horrors in life, such as stillbirths, cancer, and the sort, but here we fucking go. Holy shit. This album is just.. Huh. This happened, didn't it? And a lot of people bought it, didn't they? Man, 2007 really wasn't as great as I liked to remember it.
6/10
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