Revolver (T-Pain album)
Revolver (stylized as REVOLVEЯ), is the fourth studio album by American singer T-Pain, released through Konvict Muzik, RCA Records and his own label Nappy Boy Entertainment on December 6, 2011. It is his first album released after the dissolution of his previous label, Jive Records.[3] Recording sessions for the album have taken place from 2009 to 2011. T-Pain stated that the two R's in the word, RevolveЯ have been capitalized so that in the middle, it says "evolve", indicating that T-Pain has evolved as an artist, and as a person in the period from Thr33 Ringz up till RevolveЯ. He later stated that the R's were put to show how people can be deceived, and understand things incorrectly without looking at the inside of things and this is the scheme of the album.
Revolver
December 6, 2011
2009–11
52:53
- Rocco Did It Again! (exec.)
- Michael Blumstein (exec.)
- T-Pain (also exec.)
- Young Fyre
- Detail
- Chuckie
- Greg Kurstin
- John Shanks
- T-Minus
- Billboard
- Tha Bizness
- Dr. Luke
- Cirkut
- Fabian Lenssen
- Catalyst
- Get Cool
- David "Preach" Balfour
T-Pain announced that the album would be released on December 6 in the United States in an interview with Lady Jade on the F.A.M.E. tour bus, coincidentally this is the same release date of his first album, Rappa Ternt Sanga back in 2005. The singles "Take Your Shirt Off", "Reverse Cowgirl" and "Rap Song" (featuring Rick Ross) were released intended for inclusion on the album; however, due to poor chart performance, these songs would instead be re-dubbed as promotional singles.
Background[edit]
Work began on the album, originally titled UBER, during 2009, and the album was initially intended to be released during 2010. However, the album suffered a series of delays; although T-Pain claimed the album had been completed and mastered, he rescheduled the album's release date, to reflect his displeasure at generally falling music sales, which frustrated several fans. Despite this, he has since claimed that he would release the album when his account on the social networking site Twitter reaches a million "followers". T-Pain initially denied that Jay-Z's song "D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)" put him off from using Auto-Tune, the vocal pitch correcting technology he has frequently used throughout his previous work, he later confirmed that there would be a higher presence of Auto-Tune on the album, and later revealed he had stopped using the technology permanently and would rather use his own new version of it, called the T-Pain Effect, after leaving Antares Audio Technologies and signing with iZotope and using his very own "I Am T-Pain" microphone.
In June 2010, T-Pain confirmed that the album had been completed and mastered, but that it will not be released until album sales increase.[4] T-Pain posted on Twitter stating he would release his PrEVOLVEr mixtape when he gets 500,000 followers and release his album RevolveR when he gets 1,000,000 followers.[5] He released his first single for the album "Best Love Song" with Chris Brown on March 22, 2011, after his three singles "Reverse Cowgirl", "Take Your Shirt Off" and "Rap Song" featuring American rapper Rick Ross did not chart well, releasing them as promotional singles instead. T-Pain stated that after Jay-Z released "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)", the first single from The Blueprint 3, his 2009 album, he would still continue using autotune and release his new album UBER.[6]
In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, T-Pain confirmed that he was working on a song with singer Kesha and rapper Pitbull to be featured on the album. T-Pain later renamed the album RevolveR and expected to release his album in 2010. T-Pain stated that he had to cut many guest spots on the album, calling his last album from 2008, Thr33 Ringz, a possible DJ Khaled album because of all the guest appearances.[7] Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, Lily Allen, Pitbull, One Chance, Lil Wayne, Detail and Ne-Yo have all been confirmed features for the album. T-Pain released his highly anticipated prequel to RevolveR on May 4, 2011, with over 30 tracks entitled prEVOLVEr. On October 7, RCA Music Group announced it was disbanding Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, T-Pain would release RevolveЯ on the RCA Records brand.[8][9]
Title[edit]
In terms of the album title, T-Pain has stated: "There's a lotta people who, when they first find out about T-Pain, judge me before they know what I got goin' on or what my music is all ABOUT... So the reason I chose "rEVOLVEr" as the title and spelt it the way I have, is basically to show how people can be deceived and misjudge something before they look at it PROPERLY. Like when people hear the word "revolver" they immediately think "violence" - which is what a lotta people think when they first see ME! Whereas when they look more closely at the title and they see the "r"s are faded out, they'll realise that in the middle it's actually saying "EVOLVE". Which in turn sheds a different light on the whole of the album... Because what it actually represents is how I've evolved as an artist and a person between my last album and THIS one."[10]