T-Pain : "On Top of the Covers"

Keep in mind before pressing play that this album has been four years in the making. It became his passion project after being on the show" the Masked Singer". He wanted to prove that he could actually sing and was not just hiding behind "auto-tune" . Not that auto-tune is the first tool the record industry has used to hide singers weakness, it just became the easiest to use. These songs are supposed to show that he is capable of doing more than the type of music expected from him. The album starts off with his take on Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" . Should he have sung it in a lower key? Sure , he is straining for sure, but it also gives his voice some character in order to pay proper tribute to Cooke's version. It is one of the better songs on this album, though closer to his wheel house than the bulk.

He only leaves the auto-tune behind for the first song as it is back for his attempt of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin". He does not try to match Steve Perry and defaults to runs going down the scale, and safely away from any of the songs higher notes. The main problem that becomes noticeable here, is the backing track sounds like something you would here at a bad karaoke bar in the suburbs. The patter of the drum machine is pathetic, the guitars are largely replaced by midi sounding synths. Remember this is an album 4 years in the making. Never in those four years did he stop to think it would be a better quality product if he hired session musicians to sit in. His net worth is 12 million, he could afford it. But no he was ok with just selling his fans inferior product. 

I think the best song on the album is his cover of Dr Hook and the Medicine Show's "Spending the Night Together". It works for his voice and the ghetto rigged instrumentation compliments the cheesy 1978 production value of the original yacht rock classic. There is a pretty pointless instrumental thrown in here. Then comes he rendition of Sam Smith's "Stay With Me". Vocally it works, there are lots of layers of harmonies to bolster him. The only draw back is the piss poor production in terms of the feeble backing track. His cover of Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey" highlight's the problem with this album . If the purpose is to prove you can do other kinds of music, then do country when you cover a country song. Instead he goes gospel with it. Using vocal layering where Chris just belted it out from his diaphragm. T-Pain belts it out too just not in the same place Chris does , so he does not have to measure up to the better singer. He begins veering from the original more liberally by the end of the song. 

His cover of Frank Sinatra's "That's Life" sounds like if Cee-lo Green had covered it. It once again goes more gospel lacking the swing and swagger of the original. The drums sound like a metronome. He does similar with "War Pigs' that closes out the album. When he needs big drums the most, is where he fails the worst. He could have just sampled  drum loops, or isolated tracks, as there are tons of drummers on Youtube, who would have cost little more than a Starbucks order, but no we just the worst programming of drums I have heard by a professional artist. He uses layers of organs to cover up that this is a guitar driven song. No Geezer Butler or really any bass, and heavily effected vocals, that hide his voice as much as auto-tune, I imagine this is similar to how Lenny Kravitz might sing the song. I will give this album a 6.5, it is not all total garbage, as when he is closer to his wheel house it works, there are three strong songs that make up for a great deal of it , but he fails to prove his point, maybe just sticking to what he does best might prove more effective.