The Jordan Harbinger Show - 551: T-Pain | You Can't Auto-Tune Your Way to Happiness

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

T-Pain (@TPAIN) is a rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer known for popularizing auto-tune in modern music, and host of the Nappy Boy Radio podcast. What We Discuss with T-Pain: Why T-Pain will wear a Fitbit over a Rolex, and why there's no shame in wearing fake jewelry in public. T-Pain's tattoo goals and the meaning behind the ones he already has. What T-Pain learned after avoiding time with his own family pursuing the ambition to be #1. How T-Pain went from having $90 million in the bank to $0, and how he climbed his way back. How a musician's life really changes once they earn a Grammy award (let alone two). And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/551 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Manufacturing is never simple, but Epicure makes it easier. Our industry-built ERP and AI tools help you increase throughput, reduce downtime and improve cash flow without adding complexity. If you're ready to run a smarter, more efficient factory, visit epicor.com. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. There was literally a point my homeboys came in the studio with a plaque

saying that my album had just went double platinum. And I was like, oh, my album went double flattened them? That's cool as hell. I was working on these harmonies, though. I need to finish that. Because I felt like I needed to work harder to stay there. Everything else was a distraction. So I didn't want to have my wife around.

I didn't want to have kids around me because my wife is doing the work with the kids. I do the work to make the money. That's the dynamic. And that shit was so stupid. And I realize that now, being around my family more and actually becoming a family, man, This is the most important thing. This music shit doesn't mean anything. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional journalist-turned poker champion

Russian chess grandmaster or former jihadi. Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we've got these episodes starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics to help new listeners

get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us. Of course, I always appreciate it when you do that. Today on the show, hip-hop legend, love him or hate him, T-Pain. He helped define a subgenre. I don't say genre, but subgenre, to be fair. Many of us associate him pretty much exclusively with AutoTune,

and today a very candid conversation about success, creativity, making an absolute ton of money, and then losing all of it in, well, ways you'll hear about today, and then almost losing his life as a result before coming out the other side. Lots in here, even if you can't stand hip-hop or Auto-Tune. So don't write this episode off if you're not a lot of, T-Pain fan because I think you will change your mind after you take a listen to this episode. And if you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing authors, thinkers, and

creators every single week, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. By the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here we go with T-Pain. So first, I got to say, man, some of my research on you was surprising. So first of all, who gets in a golf cart accident? That's not something you hear every day. Golf cart accident, that was, and you know what the stupid thing was? I had just gotten the governor taken off of the golf cart.

Oh. So in order to make it faster. Right. I don't know why I needed my golf cart to go faster, but I was young, I guess. Well, yeah, you still are. I mean, are you 36? 36. 36.

Yeah, yeah. Like going 37 in September, not excited, super not excited at all. Try 41. It's less exciting. Spoiler alert, it's definitely less exciting every single year now. Yeah, my wife just hit 40 and she's reminding me every day. Yeah, she's like, at least you're not 40. Right, she's making sure I know that.

But no, I had this golf cart. It had hydraulics on it, 22-inch spinners, speakers everywhere. I don't even know where that golf cart is. I do know where it is. To the bottom of the lake you tipped it into. or whatever. No, I sent it to get fixed at a golf cart repair shop here in Atlanta, and they were just like, they don't make anything for this golf cart anymore.

This is really old. And I was like, you know what? Just keep the goddamn golf cart. So now there's somebody else who's like, this is T. Payne's old golf cart. Absolutely. No question. Balance it up and down. Absolutely.

Yeah. Hydraulics is running. Everything is good. They got 12 batteries in that. It's too much. It's too much. But, yeah, it worked out for somebody. I'm glad my purchase actually helped somebody

to get some kind of bragging rights but yeah, I got my teeth knocked out I had to go to an emergency dentist I didn't know that existed. Yeah. I guess it has to but that's scary especially you're a singer and a rapper so it's scarier for a guy like you or a guy like me to have something happen with their mouth.

Like if someone's like you're going to lose one eye, I'm like, okay but if they're like you're going to lose your tongue or all your teeth I'm like oh shit, what am I going to do? On tour. I was on tour when this happened. Oh, my. Man. I was on tour with Lil Wayne.

I skipped one show. I went to the emergency dentist that night. He gave me a new set of chomper. See, here's the good thing about having grills. Because I had my grill with me because they couldn't figure out what my teeth look like before it all got busted out. So I was like, guys, guess what? I had a perfect mold of my teeth in my pocket right now. Right.

So here's this. It's made out of gold and diamonds and shit, but it's still the same shape. The inside is exactly how my teeth were. So they took that, made a mole of my grill, and then made my teeth exactly how they were before the accident. And it was one advantage of that. Imagine having that come in handy. And then you go to your mom, you're like, remember when you made fun of me for this? It turns out it came in handy.

Came in friggin' handy. Great investment. Very envious. And then I skipped one show, and then I was back on the road the next day. That's a lot of work. I mean, I assume that hurt for more than just the one show you skipped. You just dealt with the pain while on stage. It actually didn't. It didn't hurt a lot.

It didn't. Yeah, I had a hole in my lip and I kept putting my pinky through it. Ooh, that's not a small hole. It was no, oh, no, it was not because. Like a tooth went through it. Yeah, my mouth was closed and it's like I got curb stumped because the golf car flipped over. My mouth hit the curb and my mouth was closed and my tooth went through my mouth and then it broke off on the outside of my bottom lip. Oh, my gosh. So my tooth, like, went through my lip and was on it.

I have my broken teeth somewhere. It's in like a box. Yeah, it's like in a box and like a drawer somewhere. It's weird. Yeah, so you got rid of the golf cart, but you kept a broken, cracked, and a half tooth. I don't know. I probably make the same decision, actually. I have the shoes that I wore that day.

I have the shoes with all scuffed up shoes. And it was crazy because it was in an arena. And in order to test out just how fast my golf cart was, I was going down like one of those loading bays like where the trucks would go down and it was steep. It was not something

and the brakes of a golf cart aren't meant for 22 inch rims. For 40 miles an hour or whatever you were going, right? They're like for 15 miles and hour, seven miles and hour. Barely, 12 probably. Yeah.

Like, you know, so that was an eventful day but I do have a lot of memorabilia from the accident. It's pretty goddamn cool actually. Slash scars, yeah. The other thing I got to say that was really bizarre that I was like, I got to ask him about this, is this is 2007, so it's been a while, but T. Payne refused to shorten his performance at Radio One Springfest concert in Miami, which

caused police presence to become escalated backstage. Oh, yeah. I went to jail that night. So who gets arrested for performing too much? Like, I can imagine they're like, suspect is a black male, mid-30s wearing a 34-pound gold chain, requesting backup. So they couldn't press charges because the whole situation was, they say, if I let Uncle Luke come out and let a couple of people from Miami come out on my set because I was closing. And they wanted to, you know, they wanted the show to be as big as possible. They said, let these people come out. It won't count towards your time on stage.

Cool. Absolutely. You tell me, I can still perform my show. Let these people come out. I look like I'm the big guy on campus bringing out the legends. Absolutely. They come out. Obviously, it counted towards my time.

The police came on stage while I was performing and started unplugging my DJ stuff. What? So the only thing that's still going is the microphone. I'm pissed off because not only are they running behind, they're telling me that everything's going to be fine. I can do my whole show. Can you bring out these extra people and we'll add more time to your show? They didn't do that.

They didn't honor their word. I said, they can't arrest all of us. Famous last words. And then I threw the microphone into the crowd. because it was just so much going on. And I wasn't the most sober person in the building. So I threw the microphone in the crowd. So they called that inciting a riot.

Oh, okay. And as I was going backstage, I was just screaming. I was talking. I was like, these people suck, blah, blah, blah. And then right, I don't know what made me pick these words right when I saw a police officer. But I looked a very tall, like a. seven-foot-tall police officer right in the windows of his soul. And I looked right up and I said,

fuck the police. I just kept walking. And I just kept walking. And then that is what started the whole thing. We walked a little faster. And then I heard somebody behind me, the police coming. The police coming. The police coming.

And then we just started running. Everybody's running. We don't know why we're running. We don't know why the police are coming, but we're running. So they gather everybody. up, they take my homeboys. One of them slam my homeboy on the ground and put his face in the exhaust of the van

we were trying to leave in. Oh, that's dangerous. So, yeah, yeah, super, super safe. But we did get in the van, and we told the driver to take off, and the driver was so afraid that he didn't move, and they got in the car. But I had actually gotten the look at the driver once we were saying, go, go,

go, go, go. And he looked like he had the goddamn measles. There were so many red dots on his face. And they were like, if you put this van and drive, you're going to get a face full of tasers. So I understand why he didn't leave. Oh, like red laser dots on his face. Yeah, yeah. Oh, there were laser dots everywhere.

They're like, you're going to get a face full of taser if you put this thing in it. Right, if you're lucky. A sniper rifle. Yeah, the nation asses out of the van. They couldn't charge us with anything. So we stayed in a hold and sale. All the inmates knew who I was and they were like handing me sandwiches and shit. It was fucking crazy.

So I would say that was a good time. I got a free munch. That is, that's so ready. Well, was the taxpayers cost, Steve? Free photo shoot for me. You should put that on like the cover of your next album. It should just be that. Just be that.

Yeah. I was skinnier. So that, that's a plus. You got that going for you. Yeah. In 2007, we were all skinnyer back then. One of as many vegans in 2007. I feel like that was a feat.

That was a goal to be had. I've heard sometimes that you wear fake jewelry, like costume jewelry, which to me, that's probably the most sensible thing I've heard in a long time. Absolutely. And I think, because you've got to be pretty secure with yourself to be open about this. I've heard you talk about it. Yeah. It makes sense, especially because I see some of these guys and I'm like, there's no way that

that thing you're wearing is less than like $300 or $400,000 or $400,000. Yeah. Some people don't, some people actually don't wear a fake jewelry. It baffles me because there's nothing else you can do with that afterwards. You know, it's good for pictures, good to be seen and stuff. like that, but, you know, I'm not going into a crowd of thirsty people with a million dollars of jury on. Yeah.

And plus, I've gotten robbed a lot. Yeah. So, yeah, I've gotten robbed a lot with real jury on. I've had my real jury taken. So I'm like, okay, maybe it won't feel as bad if this chain was like $70. Yeah. Instead of $70,000. So, you know, when I'm going into crowds and I just need pictures and stuff like that, it's probably

going to be fake jury. Now, if I got beefed off security or anything like that and it's like an event, yeah, I go with my real jury there. If I'm going to Target, real jury. At Target. Nobody's going to rob me in Target. We're going to rob me in Target. I guess that's true, yeah.

Just Rob Target. Like what this is so much better stuff. Just Rob Target. What are you doing? If you're that, if you're that hungry for something, just take stuff out of here. The thing that you're trying to do with my jewelry, you're just going to end up coming to to Target and buying their stuff. Like, you're going to go sell my jury.

to somebody and he's going to go to Target and buy snacks. Just go take the snacks. Skip the process. Cut out the middle man, yeah. You're cutting out the middleman. But no, it's situational. You know what I'm saying? It's definitely situational what I want to do.

If I'm just like going to a studio or going to somebody else's a studio, I don't know who's going to be there. I don't know who I'm going to encounter on the way into the studio. I don't know if they have a gate around the studio. I'm driving one of my cheap cars. Like, you know what I'm saying? I'm driving a Honda accord to your studio. I'm not coming in the Rolls-Royce.

I don't know what neighborhood of your studio is there. then it's definitely situational. But if it's an event and I got security, the event has security, and the security aren't friends with the crowd, then, yeah, I can wear real jury at that point. Studios are never in a good neighborhood, though, I feel like. Ever, ever, ever.

Because if you want a good price, you're going to have to take a loss on the location. I think, yeah, that's probably it. Also, there's like a street cred thing, right? Like, if you're with, like, I don't even know, who did I mean, like, too short or something? He's not like, oh, yeah, come to my Beverly Hill studio. He's like, drive to the airport,

and then go down this, like, dirt road. And then there's a building with a satellite dish. Why is it always by the airport? It's always. How do you get anything done? Nothing's insulated in this place. You bought a warehouse and put speakers in here and a microphone. This is not a studio.

Why is it by the airport? I can hear planes in the background of my song. Yep. Yeah. Why am I recording here? It's always by the airport. I don't know. I don't know.

That's a very not super desirable area, I guess. Yeah. Like you said, you're parking next to their car, and it's like, oh, they drove a really nice car. Or you're like, why are they driving a Ford Fiesta? What do I not know? Maybe I shouldn't park this Tesla right here. You got to park a decoy parking lot. You need a secondary parking lot to get robbed and you're broken into, and I can drive my Honda

according to the primary, and it would be good. What about when you're wearing jewelry for like a video, I heard that it's not good to have real jewelry in videos because it doesn't look as good as fake jewelry does in videos. Is that true? No, no, it's the opposite. It's the opposite. Real jewelry, actually, we call it dancing. It dances more.

Oh. You know, like, when you go into like a K-Juelers or Jared or something like that, the lights they have in there make the diamonds shine a very different way. Oh. Because the second you take it out of that store, it looks like shit. So it's the lights that they use, the presentation, you know, nobody wants to touch it. That's why they could easily take a ring out of the thing and just hand it to you. But that's why they bring out that little tray, the little velvet tray.

They place the ring on it and all nice and it's just holding itself up. And it's presentation plus lighting that makes real jury dance a lot more than fake jury. That makes sense. Sometimes fake jury can dance, though. But more than, yes. That makes sense. When you go to a watch store and you're like, oh, that one's cool. And they're like, hold on.

And they put on like white glow. slowly in front of you, and they're, like, looking you directly in the eye while they do it, right? And they open up the vault. Yeah. Like a little, like, seam comes in, like, it's like an airline. It's like cryogenic. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, bro, I just want to see the chronout. Like, I thought I had a map on it. Yeah. We just got this this morning from Iceland. Right. What the hell? I just, I saw you bring. There's a swatch.

Yeah. I just saw you bring this in here. Yeah. It's something you can get on Amazon for at the price. But yeah, it's like, oh, this has an emergency alarm on it. So anywhere in the world, if you activate it, this rescue team will come and get you. And I'm like, wow, is that real? Like, I saw a watch with that.

It's a huge. And I go, wait a minute. Why would anybody who's like a mountaineer wear a watch that has like diamond and crown? You're not wearing this on anything where you could get lost and have to be rescued by Navy SEALs. Absolutely. They're going to take it. First of all, because there's one, you're dead. That's one.

And they're going to take that. But no, yeah, it's. I mean, I've seen like million-dollar watches that look like total pieces of shit. Like, no dance, no kind of, no showbook. Like, if I buy a watch, it's got to be something. You know what I'm saying? It's got to have some kind of characteristic that's going to make it like, oh, that's cool if I can watch. Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, if I'm going to spend more than $30 on a watch, yeah, it's got a, I don't even know. It's just, remember when those Nike Flicks bands came out? Like, I wore that more than Rolex because it did something. You know what I'm saying? Like when people were like, I don't know, you get your steps in the day? I'm like,

yeah, boop, boop, like, you know, Fitbits. Yeah. If I go Fitbits, I'll wear a Fitbit over a Rolex. Like if it does something,

if it does something cool, like they start coming out with holographic shit, I'm all the way in the business. Yeah, I think, I'm with you, man. I'm like,

if I need to tell time, I got that on my phone. I don't need to just tell time. I need, there needs to be maps on here. I need weather reports. Not one watch in my entire household is on the correct time.

None of them. They're never said, not, this can't be, what time is it? Right now, 126 p.m. Pacific? Nope. No. This is wrong. Purely decoration and pedometer. Yeah, it's just like, come on, man.

And this is safe. All this is real. Yeah, well, you're in your house. I'm in my house. So this is safe. Unless, you're not going to rob me, are you? You're not going to rob me. Okay, cool.

We're good. Yeah. My assistant's not going to rob me. Yeah, no. She already did. She already did. The job's done. The job's done.

Oh, you thought you had Bitcoin. You don't have any Bitcoin. Shouldn't put me in charge of your wallet, you stupid idiot. I noticed that you don't take yourself too seriously, which I think is great. I think there's something cool and endearing about that. I mean, you're in like the Lonely Island video. I'm on a boat, right? It seems like most of your tracks are about love or partying as opposed to, like, murdering people or whatever.

So far, anyway? So far. So far. I think we can, yeah, safely say that. Mostly. And your tats are meme tattoos, I heard. I haven't seen them, but I assume they say they're meme tats. I do have some.

This one says you don't have to like me because Facebook. I got. Got it. I got Jackie Chan there. Oh, nice. Why Jackie Chan? I do this a lot when I don't want to hear what people are saying. And it's kind of like a message to like stop talking.

Like, what the fuck are you saying? What are you even saying? Nice. Like a Russian. shower reference. Right. It's just like, what the fuck are you doing?

Pan Pan from We Bear Bears. It's a cartoon. My wife is mixed with black and white and I call her my panda. Nice. Cute. Yeah, so that's for her. I guess that's my label.

Happy boy right there. Oh, yeah. Remember fucking famous? Remember the famous F? No. No. Wait, it was it Travis Barker? That F, that famous,

it was like a clothing brand. It was called Famous. Vaguely, I vaguely remember it. You remember it well because it's on your forearm. Right, but my real name is Fahim, and I use the famous F to, I don't know about that. That was fucking stupid. There's a lot more. I got a clown lady on my side.

I got a lot of stupid fucking time. So my goal was to get a tattoo from every continent that I went to. I didn't have any ideas for the tattoos. I just wanted to get a tattoo. in every continent. So you show up and they're like, all right, I'm just, I'm in the mood to draw like this mood.

Exactly. All right, cool, man. They're like, let us, let us, tell us a little bit about yourself. And I'm like, well, I'm drunk, so let's just, let's get, let's get to it. This buzz is going to wear off eventually. We don't have that kind of time.

We don't have that kind of time. So let's go ahead and get to it now. I think we can just go. It's semi worked out, I guess. Yeah. Well, so far, so good. I heard you didn't live with your wife for like three years because you were working,

me, I was like, is it because you're working or is it like I'm having too much fun? No one's keeping me in check. No, it was, um, I didn't want the responsibility of being married because I think it was a little John that told me that like if people find out when you're married, like, it's going to be bad. I'm like, I don't think that's really? Yeah, I mean, that's like the sentiment of all, of every industry, like make yourself available, make people feel like they have a chance and you'll be better off. I didn't believe that, but at the same time, it was, I didn't want the responsibility of marriage and children because it would have taken me off the path of being number one. I just wanted to be number one.

I wanted to have all the hits. And if I would have had to change a diaper in the middle of recording a song, I feel like I wouldn't have did that. But I realize now how fucking unimportant that was. You know, when I actually go back to, you know, realizing how much I could have been involved with my family and thinking about my kids or my wife and really being involved. Yeah, that was stupid as hell. It felt like if I would have had the married life and having the kids' life that I wouldn't be able to be an artist. Because that's just what was portrayed to us at a young age. And if you want to be successful, you can't be tied down to anything.

And that's just what I thought was the solution. So I had my wife and my kids living with my mom. And then I'm in a house in Atlanta by myself and my hype men and my, my, artists that I was signed on my label and stuff like that. And we were having parties, of course, but I mean, I was still working. I was just work, work, work, work, and everybody would be having a party upstairs. And I'd be in the studio. Like, there was literally a point my homeboys came in the studio with a plaque saying that my

album had just went double platinum. And I was like, oh, that's cool as shit. I'm trying to finish this thing though. Like finish work. My album went double platinum? That's cool as hell. I was working on these harmonies, though. I need to finish that.

I was so focused on doing more of that that when it actually happened, I didn't care. You know what I'm saying? I was so focused on being number one. I always used to say the hardest thing about being number one is staying number one. And that stuck with me so much that I didn't even care when I became number one

because I felt like I needed to work harder to stay there and everything else was a distraction. So I didn't want to have my wife around. I didn't want to have kids around me because my wife is doing the work with the kids. I do the work to make the money. That's the dynamic. That's our family dynamic. And that shit was so obscure.

And it was just so stupid. And I realize it now, being around my family more and actually becoming a family, man, this is the most important thing. Yeah, yeah. This music shit doesn't mean anything. When I saw Mike Tyson lay down his belt on his pool table and said, this means nothing to me. You know, my family is more important.

And when I saw that, I was like, oh, shit, maybe I need to, I might need to rethink some shit. Mike Tyson is laying down his belts because that was, that was the most important thing to him at one point. Yeah. That was the moment. When I saw that interview with him, he was just like, this is nothing.

What does this mean to anybody? What does it actually mean? And the interviewer was like, well, it means you've done something in your life. Like, so for who? I was like, yeah, that makes sense. to your kids now? Man, I'm about to have an 18-year-old. Wow. Okay. Not excited. No. Right now we got 17, 15, 13. Okay, yeah. So the rest, one is legally outside your control about to be, and the other ones are just de facto outside your control because they, yeah. My son is 15. He's just,

he's on a date right now. That's got to be kind of a head trip. I got a two-year-old, so I'm not there yet. It's going to fuck you up. It's going to fuck you up. It's going to fuck you up. I didn't think it was a date at first until he asked for Cologne. Oh, yeah. And then it's like, oh, man, I know what you're doing. I know what's going on. So it's weird. It's going to fuck you up.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited about it. I mean, I got a little girl on the way, too, so I'm a little bit more nervous about that. Oh, you're about, oh, geez. Yeah, so my oldest is my daughter. Yeah. So she's 17. She's about to be 18.

she doesn't do dates. She's a gamer. She's just like, but my son... That's fortunate, I think. My son is like, I'm going to go finger something right now. Oh, Jesus. I just don't know what to think. I don't know what he's thinking, but, you know,

just seeing my son go on a date, and I know how I used to date and I'm fucking awkward as hell. So I don't know if he's like, I at least want him to do a good job, man. Yeah, you know, like, get it done, brother. Get it done. It's got to be kind of weird for your. kids to, like, be in their friend's car and they're turning on, like, the bartender. Right.

Because my kids, my kids don't tell their friends who their dad is. Really? Yeah. Like, they go to school. Like, nobody in their school knows. Because they just don't want to be. People find out. But when they do find out, my kids are like, dude, I get it that you know, but chill the

fuck out. Yeah, chill out. Nobody comes over and is like, yo, you know your dad looks a lot like people. You ever, you ever hear that? It looks a lot like you. They don't come here. Oh, okay. My kids have like Stockholm syndrome.

So we, this pandemic really did not do a good number on them. So they go to other people's houses. They, you know, they got to show pictures and stuff like that and they'd see. But we don't get a lot of visitors because people just don't know what's happening here. So there's no interest. Right, right. Like if the kids knew who their dad was, they would be like, oh, I'm just coming to your house. Right.

But, you know, being that they don't know, it's like, who's best? with those rims that spinners are in the driveway. Oh, is Acon over again? Acon's having dinner. Exactly. So they don't know. But, you know, we just let them go to other people's houses and let them explore that way instead of having people over here touching my shit.

Yeah, exactly. I know. I'm like, God, lock them out of my studio. I only have some things I care about. Don't let your stupid friends touch it. Back about 15 years ago now, I know you had some ups and downs financially, right? So you, I believe the PC. term is you went broke.

The technical term. Exactly. Yep, that's how they said it back then, yep, for sure. But how broke is broke? Because a lot of people are like, I'm broke. I only have $3 million. I had $30, you know, like. No, broke was Wells Fargo sending me email saying your account has reached $0.

Oh, wow. Like broke was me asking my manager, can he buy food for my kids? Oh, shit. And this is from like upwards of $90 million. Like, wow. Yeah. I mean, having it be the most money I've ever had in my life at one time was like 90 million. Right.

And then going to pure zero. Wow. So there's always a combination of factors, but I'm wondering, is that like, there's got to be like a stack of irresponsible purchases, right? Oh, yeah. Bad investments, listening to would-be realtors. Yeah. You know, people are like, this is going to be a great buy. You should buy this house over here.

Nobody's bought it yet, but that's an opportunity. We can flip it. We can do all this. And we did that to like four or five houses in Miami, but I had never seen, I still to this day had never seen the houses. I don't know what they looked like. I kept pouring money into rebuilding the houses, knock them down, rebuilding them. I bought my childhood home that I had to sell, you know, once I got rid of the money.

Oh, man. I had 43 cars at one time. How many? 43? 43 cars. Where do you even put 43 cars? You don't. You don't.

You just don't. They're just a round. It's just a round. And all the gas goes bad and all of them. The Ferraris don't crank up if they're not driven every day. They're fucking, the Bugatti is stuck in between two Chevys. You can't get it out. It's just like, you know, you just don't.

No, there was a lot of, I mean, because I was young, like, what am I supposed to do? Yeah. Like right at the beginning, you signed me as a 19-year-old and just hand me $40 million. What do I? I don't know what to do with this. could grow up with like two parents that are financial managers and you would still screw up that money at that age. There's no way to not do that.

No. I mean, obviously it was a lesson learned, but, you know, learning how to get it back. That was a task. I'm sure that it was. In fact, I'm curious about that, but I am curious also what was like the first so wildly irresponsible purchase where you still think about and you're like, why did I buy that? Yeah, there's houses and stuff. But like, there's got to be one thing where you were like, okay, that was definitely.

Definitely like top five dumbest things I've ever spent money on. There's two. There's two of them. One was a chain. The big ass chain. Oh, the one that you see in a bunch of photos and stuff? The big ass chain. That was literally done on a dare. The chain was?

From a stranger. Oh, God. I was at a show chilling on the side of the stage. I don't even know who the guy was. I've never seen him again. Never talked to him. Never seen him before that. This guy walks up to me and he says, T. Payne, I bet you won't.

get a chain that says big ass check. And $400,000 later, I went and got that shit just to show him. I don't know who it is. Right. Still don't know to this day. Have no idea who the guy was. Never seen him before. Still to this day, just to impress a stranger, I spent $400,000 on a chain that said big

ass check. What happened to the chain? Well, I melted it down to make other chains. Okay. It like gave birth to other chains. Then I melted those chains down to make the big ass chain again. That's even more ridiculous. So you melted the big-ass chain.

It's worse. Yeah, it's a plot sick. It's. So I melted down the chains I made out of the big-ass chain to make the big-ass chain again. I won't say why, because I think we know where this is going, right? Well, now it's a staple. You know what I'm saying? Now it's like a moment in time that kind of reminds me to not do stupid shit.

So you still have it somewhere? Oh, yeah. It's up in the closet right now, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So it's like whenever you're like, oh, man, that house looks so nice. You're like, let me go to my... I just need to take a peek at something real quick.

Big ass chain? Should I buy that house in Miami again? It's like a magic eight ball. Not unless you want another one of these. Staring at you every time you put on your socks. It's like a goddamn magic eight ball. Oh, man. So it's up there, man.

It's up there in the closet right now. The second thing is the thing that I thought I was going to buy and how I found out I didn't have money. Okay, what was that? A house. Okay, just one of the houses. Second house. So the house that I live in now, we're like really back far in the woods.

So like, let's say if you're on the street. So there's a house here, a house here. My house is in between those houses, but behind them. Gotcha, okay. The person on the right moved out of their house, and there's a path that goes from my house to the front house. I wanted to buy that house just to have as another house. Okay.

As one does. That's sound logic. Babe, if you need me, I'll be in the second house. Right. Up the hill a little bit. Watching TV. Same thing we're watching now. Same thing we're doing in here.

Just in a different house. I'll be doing that. But I was going to move, like, my artist in there. Yeah. You know, I was going to, like, have that as like a nappy boy entertainment house. And then I hit my accountant and he was like, oh, no, you can't do that. And I was like, what, what do you mean? I'm super rich.

And he was like, no, you are not. Not anymore. Oh, man. No, you are not. And that was like the moment I was like, what, okay, you got to run me down some, some P&L here. I need to see a spreadsheet. I need to see a spreadsheet right now. I need to see a quick book immediately.

So he ran that down. And yeah, I could not do that. And I was like, oh, shit, what does that mean for the house I'm in? He was like, oh, yeah, I was going to call you about it. Oh, no. And he was like, you need to start doing something real different, real quick. And, yeah, I started looking at it to myself and figured out how to fucking get all my shit back and get rid of some cars. I only have nine cars now.

Only nine, yeah. Only nine. Two per each member of the family. Something like that. I got to get more soon. My kids don't want to drive. They think they're going to be able to take Uber everywhere. Yeah, that doesn't really, I mean, technically possible.

I keep trying to teach them how to drive. Oh, they don't even know how to drive at age 18, 17? I keep trying to teach, I mean, granted, the shit I'm trying to teach them to drive in. Like, you don't want to learn how to drive in Rollsworth. No. Like, that's the only, and I'm damn so not going to teach them how to drive a manual shift right now. Uh-uh. And that's all my race cars.

So I have a driving simulator in the other room, and I'm trying to. They're kind of teach them on that. That way they can wreck. They can do anything they want to. The shit moves around. Yeah. You know, when you hit something, they actually charge for it, it's cool.

So they still don't want to do that. They're like, no, we're just going to just Uber, everything. You got to get like a Volvo from like 2013. And you're like, just if this thing gets wrecked, whatever, right? My daughter, my oldest, doesn't want to drive, but she wants a Mustang, like a old one, like a 70s Mustang. No, that makes sense.

And I'm like, you can, what? Can you make it self-driving? You just want to look at it. Oh my God, a self-driving fastback? Like a cobra GT, except it just drives itself. You might have just did something. It's possible. Let me know if you want to invest in one of my ideas, D-Pain.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Yeah. Damn, Joe. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, T-Pain. We'll be right back. Now back to T-Pain. on the Jordan Harbinger show.

You mentioned you found out that you were going broke or that you went broke when you talked to your accountant, but did you just not, you like never logged, I don't even know how you check up, obviously it's not all in some checking account, but you just never checked any of that. At the time, my accountant was also my manager. Ooh, that doesn't sound probably like a good idea.

Wasn't. Okay. It was not. It was the worst idea. But he made me feel good. It made me feel good. It was very, uh, fair persuasive.

Anytime we would talk about business, like, you know, managerial stuff, he would be very confident about it, talking loud and shit. Anytime there was numbers that come up, he would whisper. He was like, okay. So we're doing this thing for the Super Bowl.

We're going to be out there. It's going to be the 23rd, and we're going to do this thing, and they're offering you $75,000. And it was like, oh, this guy knows what he's fucking doing. He knows when to do it and when not to do it. So, no, but it was very convincing.

He was super Jewish, so that helped a lot. Street cred-wise. Yeah, like, you know, like, why not? Like, that's the thing. If you're a black rapper or a black singer, get a Jewish accountant. That's like the thing. That's just what you do. It's like having 42 cars.

He let me do that. He let me do that. So obviously this guy knows what he's doing. That sounds like, yeah, sound investment logic. Car number 43. Now, hold on. You may have too many vehicles. It was all based on what he let me do.

Right. No, it was, I was like, you know this is your money, right? This guy knows of shit. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you when you don't have any more money, yeah. It's your money. I'll just tell you when you run out of it. Oh, my God. Yeah, but now it was, I mean, it was a good relationship, and it seemed like it was going well.

And, you know, at that age, I'm thinking, I'm going to make money forever. Right. All I got to do is fucking sing what's on my mind and seeing what's in my heart. And I get money for that? Oh, my God. I'm never going broke. And then, yeah. So.

Yeah, I mean, did they just kind of tell you like, all right, your first album was a success, you're successful now. Yeah. Now it's just strippers and swimming pools for the rest of your life. That's it. I mean, they didn't say that, but it was like, this is very easy. Nobody's losing here. This is great. And I think they were on the same wave as me and, you know, the same euphoria of, like, he just shits hits.

Like, it's as easy as hell. This is good. We got it. We got a great client. We ought to worry about shit. We can just do this. So we just kept going on that wave, and then that wave ended, as all waves do. And we didn't prepare.

Right. I mean, it was bad decision-making and desperation, you know, and stuff like that. That was really fueling what we did for the next year and a half of trying to figure out how to get it back. And then I came to the conclusion that it was just a bunch of bad decision-making. I can do this better myself. I'll go find my own team. I go do this. once I figured out my own habits, I figured out my own wrongdoings, and, you know, just the bad things that I was getting into my brain and really getting accustomed to.

Once I figured that out, I was able to really get back in like two years. It took me nine years to lose all that money, and it took me two years to get it back. That's amazing. So you lost like 90 million, whatever, give or take, in nine years. And then you got, you basically made it back in two years. I mean, that's actually incredible. The main thing that made me lose it was my attentiveness. It wasn't, just wasn't, I didn't care.

I wasn't paying attention to anything. And, you know, me looking back and just seeing where I went wrong and where I was actually putting my attention to, I can see now that those things were distractions and diversions and things like that. So now that I look into myself and I see where I need to be paying attention to and actually keeping an eye on everything and watching what I do, I mean, it's child's play at this point now. It's just like, if I would have just taken this approach at the beginning,

that whole era, that whole point in my life would have never happened. Yeah, so it was out of sight out of mind kind of thing, right? Just like, forget it. And I had a guy. I had a guy. I was like, he would take care of that. I'm not going to run out of money. He's not going to let me run out of money.

It's crazy. I got a guy. I am surprised that he'd let you run on it. It wasn't like, hey, man, seeing this happen a bunch. You're going to regret it. You should really invest a bunch of this. Getting's not always good. You'd think he would be like, let me manage the investments for you, then we'll all make money for 50 years.

Well, most of the investments was his. What do you mean? I mean, it's embarrassing to say it, but most of the shit. That's okay. Yeah, I mean, no one's judging you for this. Like, you're 36 now, I'm 41. Right. Most of the city he had me investing in was like secretly his companies.

Oh, that's crooked as hell. He's like, yo, you know what you should do. You should buy this property in Miami. And secretly, he owned the property already. So I was buying it from him. Right, like an inflate. It's a good deal. Look, it's a great deal.

Right, it's a great deal. Like, so it was like, just kind of secretly getting double paid. Yeah. You know, because the money I paid for the property goes to him. And then the money I make from selling the property to somebody else, he gets 20% of it because he's my manager also. Right. So, you know, it's like, yeah, it's a little double debit. But it's stuff like, oh, man.

You start to realize little things every now and then. And you look back at it like, man, I was fucking. I was stupid. It still sucks to get robbed by somebody, though. That sucks. That's somebody that you really trust and really see as a friend and not just like a business partner. You know what I'm saying? Did you think you could make it back at the time?

Or were you like, okay, I'm screwed. I'm never going to be successful again. I thought I was going to die. Really? I thought I was going to be homeless. I was like really being prepared to be working at Subway and somebody's being like, aren't you fucking TV? And you're like, nope.

Nope. Pickles? You want some more? You want some more Chipotle Ranch? Yeah. I was like ready. I was like preparing myself to do that. Because I was so crazy on like alcohol back then

that I didn't think I was ever going to be like okay enough to function alone. You know, I looked at myself. I didn't remember. It was like four years of my life. I don't even remember. Like I was just so crazy on alcohol. And that was the part where I didn't have money. I was like, well, if I'm going to die.

I'm going to die drunk as shit. Like, I was just, I was prepared to just be out. I was prepared to just be like, this is it. But I'm going to have fun doing it. Every night, I'm just going to go crazy every night. And that just turned it to depression, turns to a bunch of shit. And after that, I was like, wait a minute, I can probably do this if I just stopped going crazy every night.

Yeah. I'm fine in the daytime. I can just do stuff then. And then I just started coming up with routines and ways to really look at my money. and I started, you know, asking different accountants, like, how do you do this? You know, just really soaking up game. And then I came to a point where I was like, somebody tell me how I keep all my fucking money. Yeah, yeah.

And then I got the game from a bunch of different accountants. And I was like, okay, I think I got it. Can I do this and drink? Yes, great. Okay. You can make your own drink and then people will pay you. And then boom. Yeah, we made a, and now I have a drink book.

I saw that, yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I'm wondering about Grammys, right? I know you won a Grammy and, like, I'm wondering if, how does that change things for you? Or is, you mentioned before you got the plaque and you were like, all right, whatever. I'm wondering, does it change your career a bunch or is it kind of just like? Prices go up for sure. Prices go up for you to perform.

Just anything at this point. Yeah, because once you put Grammy Award winning in front of your name, yeah. Yeah. Especially if you got multiple because now I got six. Yeah, you got, you're stacked up now. I just wondered if the first one must have been like crazy. The first one was surreal? Mm-hmm.

Is a word I can use? Oh, yeah. I didn't really believe it. I didn't know where it came from. I didn't know what I did to deserve it because I got a Grammy off of doing shit that I was just doing every day. It was just like, this is normal. And if this normal thing had me win a Grammy-wide, I didn't my other stuff win.

I was very negative on myself at the time. So I didn't have like a positive view of winning a Grammy. I'm like, why didn't my other regular shit win it? Why did you guys wait until I got with somebody else to do the shit? So I was very negative about it. But I mean, prices went up and things started happening a little bit more. I got noticed a lot more. And yeah, then I went on to win a bunch more.

And then it kept happening. But the first one, I was very negative about it. It's amazing how our view of ourselves can color. anything. Like, people think that they can get something external that will help fix it. And they're like, no, if I get more money, whatever, I'll be happy. And you're like, I literally have a Grammy and a double platinum plaque and everyone knows who I am. And I'm still like, this sucks, right? It sucks. The shit sucks. Why the hell, didn't you give me 13 of these? Because when I won my first Grammy, I had already been nominated for five of them. Oh, okay. In one year.

In one year, I had five Grammy nominations. Wow. Because all the five Grammy nominations were just me on my own. And the one I won was with somebody else. And I'm like, y'all didn't give me a Grammy for my shit. But when I get on a song with somebody that you know who they are and they fucking, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, how is he so famous? I was just so negative about everything.

And it didn't help my mindset at the time. But it worked. I did get more money for stuff. So that was cool. I heard that you didn't get paid for featuring. in songs, like those, like, I don't, cameo type situation, I guess, if it were a movie. I didn't want to.

I didn't want to get paid for those. But it was like two years, you were just like, nah, I'm good. I'm just going to show up. I was so honored to be in the presence of people that I looked up to. I was like, you're going to pay me for this? No, I was, I'm like happy to be here. You're right to pay me.

I'm fine. And I wasn't fun. But no, I was, I mean, I did get a lot of reciprocation for a lot of things I did. get, you know, features on my album. I mean, my Three Rings album was packed with features, and most of those were returned favors. Not only was a super popular at the time, but, you know, a lot of the people on that album were just returned favors. That's amazing.

And a lot of them wasn't even swaps. Like, you know, like, T.I was charging 200 grand for a verse at the time, and I had to hook for him earlier. Yeah. And that's not even. On Chopped and Screwed, Ludacris was charging 250. Wow. perverse. But also, I had just started charging 250 perverse. So I was like, how about we just

don't pay each other? And I'll do one for you. And that's when I did one more drink for Ludacris, and then he did chopper's group for me. So we were just like, you can give me 250 grand, and then I'll give you your money back, or we can just not do this at all and just do the song, and we'll be fine. So it worked out a lot of different ways. And I think that generosity I had for a lot of artists actually worked out in my favor. Definitely. Yeah, on this show, we talk a lot about like dig the well before you get thirsty. You know, help other people.

Don't expect anything in return. Don't be attached to getting anything in return. And then usually when you do that, like 50 times, you know, 40 or 30 of those people are going to go, all right, I can help you back. 20, you never hear from again, but maybe they can't do anything for you and you don't even need anything. You don't even need it. If you don't think about what's in it for you, then later on, you're like, hey, I got a new album coming out when you do it.

Boom. They look like a real a hole if they were like, Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were some A-Holes, but, you know, whatever. I'm sure.

They're always A-Holes. Yes, it's not going to be 100% every time. So, yeah, I definitely went that route, and it actually worked out for me. I heard the bartender song that everybody knows, the one I was just butchering earlier, was you made that at a crazy resort in Jamaica called hedonism. Heedonism, three. Yeah. The third one.

The third one, right. The first two just weren't hedonistic enough. Hedonism 3. That shit was fire, except for that one thing. Yeah, so tell me about that, because this is a weird story, like by all accounts, right? So, I was at hedonism. I don't know why I was there. So tell us what this place is, because it's not like a usual vacate.

It's not sandals. So this place, Hedon is not sandals. It's like sandals. Let's just say it's a nudist sandals. It's a nudist resort. Like, I mean, you look out your window, your ass naked, looking at it. your window with a cup of coffee, people fucking by the pool.

Just everything's happening all at this one hotel. And you're just like, this is nice. This is nice. You just ass-necked at your window with your hand or your hip, cup of coffee, window wide open. And you're like,

this is a cool place. What are those animals sounds like here outside? Ah, I see. Bob from accounting. It's usually very old people. Really? That shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Super old couples that want to,

rekindle something or just like put some more flare into their shit. Yeah, so it's just everybody's in this big resort, everybody's ass naked. I set up a studio in my hotel room. And when I set it up, I figured out that I forgot my microphone cable. So I couldn't do that. And the DJ, that was DJ in the entire resort every night, he was there every night, I was like, dude, you've got to have a microphone cable. There's no way you don't.

And he was like, I'll give you a microphone cable if you record a dub plate for me. Now, if you don't know what a dub plate is, that's when basically, like let's say I would redo all I do is when for this DJ and put his name in the song. And he wanted me to record that at the resort. And I'm like, well, I'm trying to record this one song. I just need your microphone cable. It's not that serious to where you need a dub play for me. I feel like it's kind of unnecessary, a little bit unprofessional. It's a little bit of a, it's like asking somebody for like a $50,000 thing to get a ride to the airport. You're like, bro.

Yeah, like, come on, man. Like, it's kind of unprofessional. So he did give me the microphone cable, but he did also threaten me with a butter knife. And he was like, I'm very disappointed. And he was like twirling the butter knife in his hand. I'm really disappointed you didn't record my dub plate. I'm like, dude, give me it. Whatever.

I'll email it to you. Right. I'm done with the song. You can have your mic cable back. So, no, but I recorded barred sender in a hotel room of a nudist resort. Wow. And it came out good. Yeah.

It paid for a new microphone cable. It was absolutely a new microphone cable worth of song. Wow. But then something kind of weird happened, and the only reason I'm trying to get the story is it's so bizarre. Bob! So after I recorded that song, I was cool. We went to the bar, and there's police tape everywhere. And there's one little area right by the bar.

I go to the bar. I go to the bar. I'm with my security, a buggy. We go to the bar. Everything's all inclusive, so we're not paying for anything. There's this one guy at the bar.

He's looking pretty down. You know, I'm like, dude, everybody's ass naked, man. Pep up. What the fuck are you doing? Are you crying at the bar? You're crying at the bar at a nudist resort? The fuck's wrong with you, dude?

Get up. Come on. Let's have a drink. Get this man to drink. And I'm just getting him drinks. I'm getting him drunk and blah, blah. You know, he introduces himself. My name's Bob, Everland.

I'm so glad you guys. came into my life, I was at this bar having my last drink, because I don't know if you see all this police tape. It was very obvious, a lot of police tape. But my wife just died in our hotel room. Oh, man. So he says, I was at the bar having my last drink. This was going to be it.

I was going to go kill myself, but you guys came into my life and kept me alive. And I'm just glad to see that there are good people still in the world. I'm very sad of my wife to have a man, you guys put a spark in my life, and I want to stay here. If there's going to be more people like you guys, I want to stay here. And I still talk to him to this day. Wow.

He actually texted me while we've been talking. Really? So, yeah. Good for him. I mean, that's, and good for you. That's an amazing thing to do. I think a lot of people might have been like, this is kind of a drag.

Like, I'll leave this guy alone. It's awkward. But you had been, at this point, is this post depression where you were like, I know what you're feeling right now? I went to this place to try to get out. out of my depression. I went to this place.

I'm like, oh, my God. See a bunch of titties? A bunch of old titties? Everybody cool. Everybody cool. They dig swinging out. This got to be a cool place. This has to cure some kind of depression.

I was like, cool, let's go. And we went, it wasn't as glorious as the pictures made. No. The models are slightly younger than the actual clientele. Hot 30 on the pictures. But, no, I mean, but it was still a fun place. We did a lot of activity. he still had a lot of shit going on.

So I'm like, nobody should be sad in this place. And I saw Bob being sad, and I'm like, dude, there's no way you're sad here. Like, I was actually, I thought I was cured at one point. I was like, this is a fucking great place. Everybody's happy. Everybody's doing what the fuck they want to do. Everybody's got literally rocking out with their cock's out. Everybody's fine.

This is great. What is fucking going on? And he was the only sad person. And I felt my responsibility was to make sure he felt better than we found out all that. and now we still talk. He lives in Orlando. He works at like universal, like, resorts and shit like that. And, yeah, I had a show in Orlando, like, a couple years ago.

And it was the first time I had seen him since the trip. And, man, I think it was like 11 years had passed since I actually seen him face-to-face. And he was like, yo, I'm Bob. And I'm like, oh, shit. And we embraced a lot went on. He cried. I cried more than him. It was just a lot, man, but yeah, we still talk today.

And he's literally texting me right now. It's crazy. I'm glad to hear that. That is kind of a cute story and kind of fine. I mean, it's a bummer. Of course, it's awful that his wife passed away, but you were there, like, right in time. Yeah, man. For that.

Because who knows what he was going to do? Did he tell you how he was going to plan to kill himself after his last drink? No, he was just like, this was my last drink. I was here having my last drink. And he doesn't drink like that. He drinks beers. He's like a beer guy. Yeah, he's a bob from Orlando.

He's not like a hard. He's a Bob from Orlando. So he's a beer guy, and he was drinking, like, straight rum, like Jamaican rum. Like, he was like, if I'm the same thing I was doing, if I'm going to go out and go out drunk. Like, he was doing the same thing I was doing, and I kind of saw it. I guess I kind of identified with it. And, you know, unconsciously, I kind of, subconsciously, I kind of identified with it. And I think I saw what was happening and was like, I think this guy needs some lifting.

Yeah, like you were in a very unique mental or emotional place to spot that, like, right away. And the crazy thing was nobody else was sitting around him. Like, it was literally, it was me and my security, and there were two chairs empty next to him. It was like person, empty chair, Bob, empty chair, person. So it was like set for us to surround him with his love. And man, you know, we love Bob, man. Bob is Bob. Shout out to Bob in Orlando. And his beers. In his beers. Craft beer obsession, most likely. Yeah. And IPA. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. His cores lights. Right. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, T.Pain. We'll be right back. And now for the rest of my conversation with T. Payne. So you seem happier now, and by all accounts, you've kind of got to be. I mean, unless you're really good at covering it up, it's hard to tell from a conversation.

But your kids are growing up. Sometimes. That's why I'm not friends with any actors. Why is that? What do you mean? Oh, because they cover their feelings? Yeah, of course. Like, they're just really good at it. That's great. Oh, I'm doing great. Love it. Yeah. Go home, take like seven. No, I am so much more happier now that I'm not chasing anything. Because you've got to be so serious when you're chasing shit and when you're trying to have a certain level of money and you got to portray this level of success.

Like, for who? Yeah. That's the same way I stopped smoking cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes. I used to change smoke. cigarettes. Like, really changed smokes. I used to change smoke cigarettes to the point of I used to light up cigarettes with other cigarettes. Like, I was going crazy. And when I started wanting to stop

smoking cigarettes, I would pick up a cigarette and think to myself, why do you want to smoke this? And if I couldn't come up with a good excuse, I would just put it back. And it's the same thing. It's the same approach I take now. Why do you need people to know what you're doing? I don't. Are you satisfied with where you are? Do you have enough money to keep your family going?

Do you, yeah, I'm good. Oh, okay, cool. You don't need to do more than what you're doing that. These are the internal conversations I have with myself. You don't need people to think you're on top of anything. Do you need that you? Like, why would you need people to know? I guess I'll make more money.

Are you not making enough money? Do you need more money? I did want that jet ski. Yeah, that daughter, she wants a Mustang. Dang. Those things are expensive. I do say dump shit, like I didn't want a jet ski or like a boat or something. And it's like, do you live around water? In the woods.

I mean a jet ski in the woods. Can't rent these. It's impossible. They fucking Mobius over here. God damn. Why do you need a jet ski so goddamn bad? So, yeah, no, I mean, but I have these internal conversations that help me make better decisions. And it's so much more fun.

when you're doing it for yourself as opposed to making sure everybody knows you're doing it at all. It really helps to just be content with where you are and how you're doing. Because the thing that people get misconstru

when people say, don't forget where you came from. I will never forget where I came from. But I will die on the hill of saying, I'm going to do everything in my power to not go back there. Yeah, yeah. So it's not the fact that I'm forgetting where I came from.

I don't want to be there. I know where I came from. And that shit was horrible. Yeah, I can never forget it. Like, I can't forget it. This isn't like a goal for me because it's a big thing in the rap community and the black community. Oh, you can't come back to the hood. Thank God.

What the fuck? Oh, my God. Hell yeah. Really? Am I not allowed back in there? Because that's great. You don't want to be there. everybody says,

yo, when I get some money, I'm going to get my mom out of the hood. Okay, so you don't want to be there, and you know you don't want your mom to be there, but I'm supposed to make sure I stay there all the time. No, what the fuck? Yeah. That's not, yeah, okay, that's fair.

I didn't want to be there. You don't want to be there now. I'm okay with not being able to come back. Yeah. And I'm not going to forget it. I'm not going to forget it. I respect it. And everything that happens within it,

I get it. I understand it. but it's not my goal to go back. It was my goal to leave. It's everybody's goal to leave. Everybody's goal to leave. Yeah. What's the analogy?

People call it like the crab bucket, right? Where the crabs are crawling out and then the other ones are reaching up. And they're obviously just trying to get out, but they by way of that. Pulling all the rest of the crabs back down trying to get to the top. And ultimately, nobody gets to the top. Right. You just end up in fucking boiling hot water. Yeah.

Nobody gets out. Exactly. Unless you're that one that gets on the floor and nobody wants to touch you because... This analogy went off the rails. This metaphor went... Oh, you've never dropped the crab on the floor? No. Uh-uh.

Okay, so when we cook crabs, you got to dump them out of the actual bucket. But sometimes one of them doesn't go in the bucket. Like swings away, yeah. And then it gets on the floor and it's just fucking... What's up, bitch? What's up, bitch? It's like fighting. Back up, bitch.

It's just like, you can't put it in the pot now? Because one made it out. One made it out. And it's going to clamp your fucking fish. if you try to put it back in. So then you got to take drastic measures and fucking kill it on the floor. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, now we went off the rails. Okay. Yeah. So.

And that is why people don't make it out of the hood. Yeah. We'll make it. It's a 360. It's a 360. You'll figure out. Oh, man. I've read in the news lately, and this is, I don't want to dwell on this too much.

But I'm curious, this thing with Usher, where he, like, woke you up on, yeah, can you tell us what out? Because I read the articles, and I'm like, is this bullshit? Is this real? No, no, no, that's real. I just woke me up to tell me that I ruined music. So you're like sleeping on an airplane, right? Sleeping on an airplane, sleeping off a fucking hangover because I was an alcoholic at that point.

His kids were running all over the plane or jumping all over my chair. And I had a window seat, and his kids apparently wanted to see out the window. So they jumped in my lap and fucking just looking out of the window just across me. But the flight attendant woke me up and told me that I should want to talked to me and he was like, you ruined music and boom. I mean, small talk before, it wasn't so cut and dry. At one point, yeah, the sentence he said out of his mouth was, you ruined music. Wow.

Oh, no, you fucked up music is what he said. Like, he didn't say ruined. I'm trying to keep it clean, but he said you fucked up music. Yeah. That's awful, though. Like, to wake someone up and then say that, I mean, to say that at all. I mean, I could have been fully awake. Yeah.

I could have been on fucking five-hour energy. And that still would have been pretty fucked up. Yeah. That's weird. But I understand what he was saying. I think he just chose his words. Poorly. Very poorly.

Super poorly. He was saying that I shifted the industry to a standard that didn't fit what he was really good at. Yeah, it almost seems like it's a threat because he can sing and he's like, well, crap, now everybody not everybody can sing. Right. That's exactly what he said. He was like, I was special because I could sing better than everybody.

And Usher has perfect pitch. You can literally call out a fucking note and he'll just sing it. Like you can, before you even play it on a piano or you can play a note on a piano and he'll tell you what note that is. Wow. He has perfect fucking pitch.

This man has never needed auto tune in the studio. I've worked with him multiple times. Usher is one of the greatest fucking singers of our generation. And he was basically saying, I was special because I had that ability and now everybody has that ability. You made me normal.

Did he say that to share? He's the one who popularized Autotune in the beginning and the 90s. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. But the thing is, she popularized it, but nobody copied her. Right. Nobody else did it after her. Nobody else was like, it's the new share sound.

I need to do that on my record, too. It was frowned upon in the music industry if you sounded like anybody else at that time. You couldn't have, I think the only time that it was okay to sound like anybody else was like the disco era. Like all disco sounded the same. That's true. I'm working on a project right now called Disco Sucks because of that whole campaign that was happening. And I feel like that's what happened to me. And I'm not dwelling on it, but that was a major part of my life that, you know, I feel like the whole Disco Sucks movement was kind of like the anti-autotune movement.

Having people copy, even when Roger Trubman did the talk box, nobody else was doing it. But even if they tried to do it, like Eric Clapton, he did it with a guitar. He put a spin on it. He did something different. But it was not widespread that nobody changed an industry with it. Even Kanye did it before me. Kanye did auto tune before me, but nobody copied him. And nobody wanted to sound like him.

Nobody was making hits with it. It didn't change the industry. When I did it, it changed the industry. It birthed a whole new genre of music. So I understand being the face of it. Like, when mumble rap happened, Oh, yeah, good God. Louis Yadi was the face of mumble rap.

Little Yaddy was a fan. Little Yaddy was by far the least mumbly rapper at the time, but he was the face of it. And he got the brunt of mumble rap. He got the brunt of the hate of it. So I understand that the person that's the most sought after for doing a thing and as seen as the originator would get the most hate for that. I understand that.

but to say that you made me not special anymore was, that's not my fault. No, but it's good that you realize that because it's almost like he blamed you for a thing that was his own insecurity at the time, like you said, and he chose his words poorly, but it's also like, it's like shame on you for shifting this industry. Now I'm having a harder time. I might have a hard time. It's like he didn't say you don't have any talent.

He didn't say your stuff sucks and I like it. He didn't say he didn't like it. He didn't say he didn't like it. He didn't say he didn't like it. It's a good thing. And like I said, I still respect Usher. He's one of the greatest singers of our fucking generation. But he chose his words poorly.

It goes back to me running out of money because I was shitting out hits. Anytime I open my fucking mouth, I got a million dollars. But once that got normal to people and it stopped making that money, I had to figure out how to do something different. Yeah. Usher was not ready to do that. because every time we got an usher release, it was a smash. But if you're not keeping up

how the industry is changing, it's not going to work anymore. And, oh, fuck, it's not going to be easy? Damn it, you made this not easy anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Almost then in a way, running out of money was like a really good way to teach you agility

in the market and teach you how to survive. Absolutely. No question. No question. For sure. Yeah. I had the fucking agility. acrobatics. I had to flip everything, man. And the thing that I realized very early on was nobody saw, nobody had seen my personality.

Nobody had seen that I was actually an okay guy. I did meet and greets a lot in my early stages, and I would always hear two things. One, I thought you'd be taller. are you? I'm fucking 5'10, I think. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I thought you'd be taller than that, too. I'm 5'7. My wife is fucking 4.11. This works out. Really nice. Yeah, my wife's 5 feet tall, so we look fine. Everyone's like, oh, wow. Your husband and you are so much taller than you, but I'm like, yeah, don't stand

next to me with shoes. That's how that works. So, I always heard, I thought you would be taller, and I thought you'd be an asshole. Oh, really? You seem super nice in, like, the boat. Everybody, like, you're like, a good-natured guy. Because that's when I started showing my actual personality. Oh, okay.

You know, when I would do interviews or when I would, you know, do videos or I would put on this act that I thought we had to put on. I would talk differently because I thought if you didn't sound stupid, you weren't cool. Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. You know, just the fact that I enunciate my words now, like the way I do interviews differently and the things that I decide to say, the things that I actually. know, I actually show my intelligence and I don't know if this was even a part of your culture, but in our culture, in the hip-hop culture,

like you get made fun of for going to college. Oh, yeah. Like, if you come out as a rapper and you went to college, like, that's a bad thing for something. What the fuck is that? That's interesting. The crab bucket, man. You don't mean college.

You went to college. For educated people. You're not from the streets. You're not from the streets. You went to college. No. No, no. What?

So I've never actually understood it. I just participated in it. You know, seeing that people can actually see my personality and I can get on Twitch and actually show people that I'm a good person. Haven't been that person that everybody thought was going to be an asshole and I'm more approachable than other artists. I mean, I've been in the airport with multiple artists and people come to me and they're like, can I get a picture?

And I'm like, you don't see, you don't see. you don't see all these big-ass artists around me? And I literally have people tell me, yeah, but you seem like the only one that actually would take a picture with him. And it's just like the demeanor on people, you know, the demeanor and the expression on people's faces just make them unapproachable and very off-putting

that it's like, I'm just happy now. I'm just so happy that it's like, yeah, come on. Yeah. Pictures are going to take probably two and a half seconds if you don't ought to work your phone. Yeah. Usually they don't know how to work their phone. That's the problem.

Yeah. You know who Bill Nye, the science guy is? I definitely know who Bill Nye, the science guy, yeah. So when people come up to him for selfies, he's like, okay, make it fast. But if they're like, okay, hang on, he's like, you need to learn how to walk and take a selfie. It's like his pet peeve. He's a very nice guy, but he gets like so. So what I do, when people are like, I want to take a picture, I take the phone.

I've seen every phone in existence. I know how to work all of them. Everybody takes pictures with different problems, especially when you, like, take pictures in Japan and you see all these. weird-ass phones and shit and stuff like that. I've seen every phone in existence. That's really funny. Just give me the phone. Give me the phone.

I'll take it. Boom. It's literally one button. Two, maybe. Two, to get on the camera app and then one, bam. That's funny. Because there are a lot of weird-ass phones, like in Asia, like, Shao-Me Red Note 3.

Like, how do you use this? What's a Shao-Me Red Note 3? Yeah, I had to take a picture on a phone that was like a teardrop shape. That's cool. Yeah, it was crazy. The camera was at the top of. of the tear. It was...

You know what? I'm just gonna keep this phone. I'll text you a phone. I'll text you from this. Text me when you get a new phone. Yeah. You know the number, right? Yeah.

That's funny. Yeah, so it comes down to knowing where you are and being content with that. And knowing that you're okay, because I could be a lot richer. I could be going to space right now. Yeah.

I could be going to space in a giant dick. With Jeff Bezos. Or, yeah. I could be stuffing my nose and my ears and we're toilet paper to make sure roaches don't get in it. I think I'm fine where I am. This seems okay. Hey, man.

That's a great way to look at it. I think that's a good place to... On that note, let's wrap it up. Thank you so much, man, for your time and your candor and your vulnerability, man. Absolutely. This is a real pleasure. I think it's important to be honest about all this stuff that you were honest about. Absolutely.

And don't forget to text Bob back. Yeah, I got to fucking call Bob. Jesus me. Call Bob. Don't let Bob linger. Absolutely, man. I really appreciate this, dude. This is great. This is kind of free therapy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really enjoyed it. We've got a preview trailer of our interview with poker star Annie Duke on how we can learn to make better decisions by thinking in bets instead of trying so hard to be certain all the time.

The quality of your life is determined by the sum of two things, the quality of your decisions and less. When something bad happens to us, we act as a skill wasn't involved at all. We just sort of pawned off to the luck elements. But when good things happen, we sort of ignore the luck element and we say that it was because of our great skill. A self-driving Uber just hit and killed a pedestrian. But what I thought was really interesting was that the reaction

was to suspend the testing and just to take the cars off the road, not just the Uber cars, but other self-driving vehicles. And what I didn't see were any comparisons to how self-driving vehicles did per thousand miles traveled versus the technology that we already have on the road, which is cars that are driven by humans. We know that 6,000 pedestrians die per year by regular driven car. Let's say that you're on the side of the road and you've got a flat tire. And of course, what everybody's thinking in that moment is I have the worst life ever.

Like, why do these things always happen to me? I'm so unlucky. I'm so miserable. What's really interesting to me about it is, like, you could have gotten a promotion, like the biggest promotion of your life three days before. And you're not standing on the side of the road going, my life's great because I just got the biggest promotion I could ever imagine. So imagine that you had this flat tire a year ago.

And now I'm asking you today, a year later, how much do you think that that flat tire would have affected your overall happiness over the year. For more with any Duke, including some common mistakes we make when evaluating decisions, check out episode 40 here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Really a lot of unexpected twists in this conversation. You know, between 2011 and 2014, T. Payne told me he attempted suicide three times. You know, that hit hard because most people would assume that being a hip-hop superstar like T-Pain

is just nonstop awesomeness. But, you know, that depression kicked in that we talked about. and he mentioned that the most successful people that he knows are often the most depressed. We also talked a little bit after the show about being a shitty friend, candidly. He said every night, during his performances, thousands of people are clamoring to be your friend. Everybody wants to talk to you. They're climbing over each other to touch your hand or something. But then once the show ends, the people you really want to hang out with, they don't want

anything to do with you because you know, you let success go to your head or you're a bad person or you're drunk all the time. And some of his depression was actually the people around him trying to control. If you're familiar at all with like Dave Chappelle and some of these other guys that have just sort of bugged out from being famous, it later comes out often that the people around you who are always trying to milk you for something is bad for your mental health. Go figure. And it sounds like that's what happened here, especially when you hear earlier in the show about how his manager was ripping them off on all these house sales and all this other, just kind of horrible stuff that should not be done to you

by people who have a duty to help you succeed in business. Now he mentioned that he makes more money on Twitch playing video games than he does in his regular music, which I think is amazing. It's just a testament to streaming as a platform. Imagine you're playing video games. It's all you're doing, and you get paid as much or more than a lot of your music royalties. Now, of course, some of his hits and stuff, it's a different story, but really wild that you can even make money doing that.

I guess that's what people think about podcasting, too, which I agree. Weird way to make money. It's kind of a surprise. I don't want to question it too much. Speaking of money, when T. Payne first started making it, I asked him offline if people started coming after him for money. And yeah, his dad actually came after him for money. They had a major falling out.

And his dad, this is so awful. I wish we'd included this in the show. But his dad said, give me $200,000 and you don't even need to acknowledge that I'm alive. So that obviously triggered some depression as well. He had to cancel his show after hearing that. because we think these people who are famous and rich, they just haven't made, but it's just a different set of problems. He's also dropped contact with his younger brother

because he kept asking for money, and then his younger brother passed away. So there's a lot of regret in there, too. So this isn't just a look at how amazing I am kind of story. This is a guy with actual deep stuff going on here, and I think it's important to highlight all of that because we want to give a balanced view of fame and wealth and some of the baggage that comes with that stuff

that maybe you don't really want, And maybe you're not really counting on when you go for it and you're trying to make it in a creative pursuit or in any pursuit for that matter, business or otherwise. I asked him what he does now to help manage his mental health. And of course he's got therapy and things like that. But he also leans on his wife a lot, especially early on when he wanted to give up. He said he told his wife on countless occasions that he didn't want to do this anymore. And he would text her and she would essentially talk him off the ledge, so to speak. And finally, I think it's pretty sort of cute and funny that there's a guy named Bob and Orlando taking tickets at Universal Studios.

or whatever, and he's like best friends with T-Pain. And you know that basically nobody believes him, right, when he says anything? Right, they just think he's this delusional old guy and that he is an imaginary friend or something like that. And I can just see them all like, oh, yeah, Bob just hasn't been the same since his wife passed. He pretends he's on the phone and that he's friends with some rapper named T-Pain. Everyone just feels so bad for him.

You know, why on earth, Bob? If you're going to pick an imaginary friend, why would you pick T-Pain? Why would you pick T-Pain? Poor old Bob. But good on T-Pain for shepherding Bob. through a tough time, though. That really says a lot about somebody, and it says that he not only thinks about himself, that all those mental health challenges and the stress that he was under, maybe it just made him a better person. Links to all things T-Pain, including his podcast, will be linked

up in our show notes. Please use our website links if you buy books from guests. That always helps support the show. Worksheets for episodes are also in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes, and there's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel, jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. We've also got our brand new clips channel, cuts that don't make it to the show, highlights from interviews, you can't see anywhere else. Jordan Harbinger.com slash clips is where you can find it. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm also teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course at

course is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. And most of the guests you hear on the show, they subscribe to the course. They can tribute to the course, come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. So if you know somebody who's a T-Pain fan or is just interested in the behind the scenes of somebody who's this well-known, share this

episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of this show. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask,

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