T-Pain believes Drake ignored his own advice about overstaying his welcome in the music industry.
In a recent episode of the Crash Dummies podcast, the ‘Buy U a Drank’ singer explained that he was inspired by Drizzy’s idea of finding an opportunity to gracefully bow out of the music industry.
“One thing I learned from Drake, but one thing he hasn’t followed his own words. Drake said, ‘I wanna be one of them people that gracefully bow out and not get kicked out,’” said T-Pain near the 30-minute mark in the video linked above.
“I have ever since said, ‘Thank y’all, I appreciate y’all. I’ll see y’all when I drop—don’t worry about it, I’ll just drop something. Let me know if you heard it,’” he joked. “Drake is like, ‘No, listen, OK, I got another one. Hold on, check this out. Y’all ain’t like that one? OK, real quick, just one more. Let me try one more.’”
T-Pain pointed out that somewhere along the way Drake became the person “he didn’t wanna be.”
“Like, when he said that ‘I wanna gracefully bow out and not get kicked out,’ I was like, ‘You know what? I’m out this bitch.’ I’m out this motherfucker. I’m not trying to impress y’all n****s,” T-Pain explained. “Y’all n****s don’t give a fuck if I live or die. Why the fuck would I keep trying to impress y’all? I’m out. I’m done. I did everything that I’m trying to do. I changed the game. I made a sound. What else?”
T-Pain is referring to a 2023 Drake interview with Lil Yachty where the rapper introduced the idea of “a graceful exit.”
“I’ll still be around to like, you know, work with people or do a show here or there, but I’m not going to like, force myself to compete,” Drake said at the time. “So I guess that’s the one thing that I want for myself really badly.”
“I feel like a lot of people that I’ve watched as the years have gone on, it’s a really addictive, competitive space. And often times you’re like, addicted to the competition itself,” he continued. “Sometimes it’ll baffle you, like why are these people still making attempts at trying to be present in the space? And then you’ll realize they probably, their needs and desires and their soul was probably fed for so long off of being a guy, or the guy, that they can’t let it go.”
“So I guess what’s left for me is just to find a way to gracefully—I’m not ready now—but to gracefully continue making projects that are extremely, like, interesting and hopefully cherished by people. And then to find the right time to say like, ‘I can’t wait to see what the next generation does,’” he concluded.
Earlier in the Crash Dummies podcast, T-Pain was asked if he had plans for a new album.
“I don’t want to,” replied the two-time Grammy winner, before explaining that releasing an album would involve promoting in different cities and “convincing people that my album is good.”
“To put all this work in for months on hand and then have somebody judge everything you’ve done in a year in one day in a Friday is crazy,” he added. “To have everybody say, ‘Yeah all that shit you did? Didn’t do as much as this other person so fuck you. You suck, your album sucks.’ Because not enough people bought your shit in a week.”
“We’ve done years and years and years of this work, and then your album could be shut down by one meme and that’s just what it is,” he said elsewhere in the episode. “And I’m not willing to put my mental health at risk for that.”
Earlier this year, T-Pain suggested that Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR’s recently released collab album, $ome $exy $ongs, is made up of leftover tracks from past recording sessions between the two artists.
“I feel like [Drake] recorded a bunch of shit,” he said in Feburary. “And in order to keep [PARTYNEXTDOOR] around, I feel like you could take 10 or 15 of these songs, put a verse on them bitches PARTY, and that’s our album bro.”
