Auto-Tune is killing hip hop. There, I said it. Okay, so that’s possibly drawing a long bow, but as a trend of US hip hop you get the feeling it’s reached its zenith, and is on a downwards trajectory until it’s mentioned in the same breath as crunk. Yes, dear friends, the day is coming when you will no longer hear T-Pain’s warbling voice robotically guesting over the top of the latest hip-pop, sounding exactly like Cher in her ‘Believe’ era.
Like any other trend, the first few appearances of Auto-Tune scored points for novelty value – house don Romanthony’s vocals sounded mechanically soulful on Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’ back in 2001:
Daft Punk - 'One More Time'
Similarly Snoop Dogg’s recent experiment in ‘80s revivalism,
‘Sexual Seduction’, hit the right notes. While it wasn’t an early example, Snoop managed to incorporate Auto-Tune in a way that was novel and fresh, crooning his way through a tongue-in-cheek message to the laydeez. Certainly a lot of other rappers picked up on this and decided to cash in (T-Pain the most notable).
Now it’s got to the point where you can’t turn on MTV without hearing any jive MC throwing down his latest Mr Roboto impression. Hell, Kanye even announced recently that most of his new album 808’s & Heartbreak will feature Auto-Tune vocals. Well some of us are sitting here and praying for the end, let me tell you.
What exactly is Auto-Tune, I hear you ask. It’s an audio tool, generally used in the pop world to correct the vocals of singers. Think of it as the Photoshop of pitch – it can be employed to remove blemishes or bum notes. However, producers discovered that a certain setting removes any trace of portamento, the slide between notes that naturally occurs in all our voices. This is the effect you’re hearing all over the radio. It first surfaced on Cher’s ‘Believe’ single, although producers claimed it was simply a vocoder at work.
Cher - 'Believe'
Southern rapper T-Pain has been the biggest offender of late, Auto-Tuning his way through several albums and any number of guest spots. Perhaps the most obvious example was on Kanye’s
‘Good Life’ single from last year’s Graduation longplayer. Of course, T-Pain isn’t ashamed to admit his love for the effect. In a recent interview with The New Yorker he compares it to something his father told him while they were selling fish in Tallahassee: “My dad said, ‘They can know what you’re using, but they’ll never know how to use it. They can see that we’re using salt and pepper.’”
Most critics agree that the Auto-Tune backlash has begun, and it’ll eventually disappear from the hip hop landscape. Lil Wayne experienced this when he released
‘Lollipop’ a few months back, setting blogs aflame with condemnation. Of course, he was probably crying into his sizzurp as the single went to number one. That said, in this day and age it’s a lazy way of adding depth to tracks that signals imitation and a lack of creativity. It’ll be gone soon enough, by which time we’ll all be having kittens over the Next Big Thing. Forwards, onwards. .
JimmyJames