T-Pain is best known for his innovations in Auto-Tune, using the pitch-correction software to manipulate his vocals. The software was introduced in 1997 but was a bit of an industry secret because it was used to compensate for sub-standard singing. In 1999, it started showing up as a vocal effect (done by using an extreme setting), which T-Pain heard on the Dark Child remix of the 1999 Jennifer Lopez hit "If You Had My Love." He went on a quest to find the effect, getting every vocal plug-in he could find. It took him about a year, but he finally figured it out, and when he did, he used Auto-Tune to give him a signature sound.
T-Pain first used Auto-Tune on "I'm Sprung," the lead single from his 2005 solo album Rappa Ternt Sanga. This started the ball rolling: rappers and singers started hitting him up for Auto-Tuned production and guest spots, and soon many hip-hop vocals were laced with the effect.
On the Netflix series This Is Pop, he explained that he went into a four-year depression in 2013, triggered by an unpleasant conversation with Usher. They were on the same flight to the BET Awards when Usher summoned him for a chat and accused him of "ruining music" with Auto-Tune. He took it hard, wondering if Usher was right.
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