Good music is good music no matter what, right? Well, yes, in theory — but R&B and hip-hop producer T-Pain says he’s been shut out of the country genre, despite the fact that he’s written successful country songs.
T-Pain opened up about his history with country music in a recent TikTok video, where he said he’s written some well-known country songs in the past.
“Good music is good music. I don’t give a f–k where it come from or what style it come in,” he affirms.
“Country music is where I get all my harmonies,” T-Pain continues. “Country and gospel music. That’s where all my harmonies come from.”
“I done wrote a lot of country songs. Stopped taking credit for it because as cool as it is to see your name in those credits and s–t like that, the racism that comes after it is just like … I’ll just take the check.
“Nevermind, dude. You know what I mean?” he continues with a laugh.
T-Pain’s country songwriting credits are tough to find anywhere on the internet, though in a resurfaced interview he gave to the Breakfast Club years ago, the singer-songwriter explained that he lived in Nashville for two years. During that time, he “got back up with Taylor Swift, Luke Bryan, Rhett [Akins], Dallas Davidson” — aka some of biggest songwriting A-Listers in town at the time.
“I’ve written for a lot of very important country artists,” T-Pain explained at the time, adding that some of those artists “would rather not have it known that I write for them.”
The landscape of country music has changed somewhat since T-Pain’s stint in Nashville. Though he didn’t specify dates, it’s likely that there were no Black country A-Listers in Nashville (with the possible exception of Darius Rucker, who broke onto the country scene in 2008). Within the past few years, that number has somewhat grown — artists like Kane Brown, Mickey Guyton, Breland and Blanco Brown have found success, either on country radio or in other facets of the industry — but the imbalance of opportunity between white and Black country artists remains undeniably cavernous.
On top of that, the genre has produced multiple racism scandals over the past couple of years. The widest-reaching of those were Morgan Wallen’s N-word scandal in early 2021 and the controversy that surrounded Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” song and video in mid-2023.
While both incidents drew backlash from a sizable cross-section of country listeners, both also galvanized the artists’ core fanbases and stoked the levels of success they saw in the immediate aftermath of the respective incidents.
Though T-Pain might not have much to do with the country genre these days, at least, on paper, he still enjoys cheering on its artists. Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday (Feb. 11), Reba McEntire — who sang the National Anthem at the big game — tweeted a couple photos of herself.
“Boots with the fur,” she wrote in the caption, a nod to a lyric in Flo Rida and T-Pain’s 2007 hit, “Low.”
“The whole club looking at herrrrrrrrr,” T-Pain replied, finishing the lyric as he retweeted McEntire’s post.