Jay-Z's Attempt To Kill Autotune: Fail
Autotune, the technology giving guys like T-Pain, Akon, and Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak their trademark sounds, was supposedly murdered by Jay-Z. Not so much: the I AM T-PAIN iPhone app enables ordinary folk to sound just like him.
Yes, for, uh, $2.99, you too can now have the technology that gave rise to one of the most irritating sounds in modern hip hop and made Kanye West waste a bunch of months trying to sing. Rather than just sit down and die, T-Pain decided to cash in and bring autotune to the masses. If you thought the guy listening to music through his phone, sans headphones on the subway was bad, wait until you meet the one singing into his. This is wonderful, and awful, and I can't not promise possibly sometime over the weekend posting a video of me using this in the comments, doing a Gawker Weekend Autotune Rendition of Jennifer Holiday's "And I'm Telling You" verse. Meanwhile, watch and learn: