T-Pain Opens Up About The Time Usher Told Him He ‘F*cked Up Music’

In the forthcoming Netflix series This Is Pop, T-Pain is opening about battling depression after being told he “f*cked up music” with Auto-Tune.

Entertainment Weekly shared an exclusive clip for the upcoming show, and in it, T-Pain shares an exchange with Usher that left the rapper and singer depressed for about four years.

The exchange began innocently enough, with Usher saying to T-Pain, “I’m gonna tell you something, man. You kinda f*cked up music.” 

T-Pain thought Usher was joking at first and nervously laughed it off. But Usher continued. “And then he was like, ‘Yeah man, you really f*cked up music for real singers,'” the singer remembers. “I was like, ‘What did I do? I came out, and I used Auto-Tune.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, you f*cked it up.’ I’m like, ‘But I used it, I didn’t tell everybody else to start using it.'”

He added, “That is the very moment, and I don’t even think I realized this for a long time, but that’s the very moment that started a four-year depression for me.”

The eight-part series will debut in full on June 22. In addition to T-Pain, there will be interviews from Babyface, members of Boys II Men, Backstreet Boys, and others. It aims to explore some of the most significant moments in pop music history.