Akon is looking back at the time T-Pain tried to outshine with a lavish car purchase.
In a new interview on the Bag Fuel Podcast, Akon was asked if the “Buy U a Drank” singer ever reached out for advice during financial struggles.
“With Pain it was a little different because Pain had got to a certain level of his career where he was competing with me too,” he said at the beginning of the video linked above. “We would have real conversations. I’d be like, ‘Yeah, Pain. I don’t think you need to buy that car.’”
Akon, who once owned over 30 cars, noted how T-Pain often tried to one-up him.
“I noticed that every time I bought a car, Pain would come and try to outdo it. Then he pulled up on me in a Bugatti,” he recalled. “At that time, the car was like 1.7 million [dollars]. Now you get a Bugatti for about 3 million. It’s like double the cost now, but at that time, even that was unheard of.”
He continued, “So I saw that car. I said, ‘Oooh,’ I said, ‘Pain, I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I’m shitting on these n****s.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you are. You shitting on me too, n***a, I gotta give it to you.’ But he was shitting on everybody.”
The episode recalls earlier comments Akon made of his “Bartender” collaborator during a VladTV interview in 2020, where he critiqued T-Pain for staying pigeon-holed as an “urban” artist.
“I think one of the major reasons is that T-Pain never left the hood. He just confined his music to urban music… That was it. I saw T-Pain as another me, to be able to cross outside of urban. Go into pop, go into EDM, go into Latin—I still think ‘til this day he still can do it,” Akon said at the time.
“You and I know better than anybody, urban audiences aren’t loyal,” he added “Every year there’s a new n***a. Every year. So, you gotta take full advantage, maximize your urban presence, and then right as that side n***a come in, you exit… Hip hop, it’s a [stick] and move. It don’t stick around long enough unless you continue to reinvent yourself.”
T-Pain later seemingly addressed these comments on Twitter without mentioning Akon by name, writing, “The very ppl that held me back is tellin y’all how I could’ve been bigger.”
“I’m not angry at all. I’ve grown. I’ve learned how to keep moving forward and not look back. Some ppl don’t and that’s ok. They’ll get there at their pace,” he wrote in a separate tweet. “But I’m no longer gonna to allow my past to determine my future. I’m in control. See y’all on the brighter side. Love y’all.”
On the other hand, T-Pain spoke candidly about his financial missteps during an August 2024 conversation with Free Game Friday.
He revealed that the deal, which he received at 18 years old, had a favorable 15/85 split and was given an advance upwards of $40 million—which he quickly spent and wound up going into the “negative.”
“Like, what do you think I’m going to do with this money? Save it?” he said.
