After a hiatus to expand his artistic horizons, T-Pain is coming back to the game, and he shared some details on his new joint “Come and Get It”– plus some words for other Auto-Tune friendly artists– with Big Regg at Hot 93.7.

T-Pain has been going strong in the hip-hop game for 8 years now, but he’s taken the past few years to expand his horizons as an artist.  “I went to Nashville doing some Country music, calming down off of hip-hop for a little bit,” he explained.  “I went in on producing some Country music, I’ve been directing videos and directing movies… a lot of stuff going on.”

Working in an entirely different format was an interesting experiment for the rapper.  One of the biggest differences was the money.  “[There's] Much bigger numbers on the Nashville check,” he joked.   Part of that could be the lack of illegal downloads and bootlegs in the Country genre, a problem facing many other corners of the music industry.  “You know what’s weird about them, they don’t know what leaking is,” T-Pain joked. “It sounds like WE need that to happen.”

The Auto-Tune artist has returned to hip-hop now, and he feels like he hasn’t missed a beat.  “Nobody ever falls off,” he said of his comeback. “People just forget. I had to come back and prove myself.”

T-Pain is famous for bringing Auto-Tune back into the game.  The style has been adopted by many current artists, notably Future, but T-Pain doesn’t believe the newcomer is using it as well as he could. “I don’t think Future gets the technology… I don’t think he understands how it actually works,” he said. “He’s writing great songs– he’s a great writer– as far as how he uses Auto-Tune… I think he’s thinking you just turn it on, and it happens.”

“A lot of people don’t sing with it, they just sing and put it on after, which is a terrible mistake,” T-Pain explained.  “There’s a lot of stuff you’ve gotta know about Auto-Tune before you can start using it, because it’s the hot thing to do.  But Future’s still great, he’s doing his thing.”

Since T-Pain is known for Auto-Tune, he does get bothered when other artist’s output is compared to his own work. “When Chris does it… Ne-Yo did it once, Jamie did it… that all sounded great,”  he recalled, noting he was personally involved with those projects. “That’s why it was used right.”

T-Pain’s comeback joint is “Come and Get It,” featuring Busta Rhymes and Ace Hood.  It’s a return to T-Pain’s roots, a new strip club anthem, which is a big part of the rapper’s life (he even books strip club time in his daily schedule).  After this track, T-Pain will continue working on his new album, titled “So It Feels the Phoenix,” which is still in the early phases, but it will be a big project. “I’ve just started.  I’ve only got about 13 or 14 songs right now,” he teased.

–Bill Sencio, Hot 93.7/ Hartford