He doesn’t have to go home, but he can’t stay here…
[Video][Website]
[4.50]
Thomas Inskeep: Scenes from a marriage. Husband: “Why are you listening to something Auto-Tuned in 2014?” Me: “Because T-Pain had one idea back in 2005, and he’s been flogging it with decreasing returns every since.” This is nothing you haven’t heard before, an incredibly dull song about boozing it up and “tearing it up in the club.”
[2]
Mark Sinker: If Auto-Tune — the device T-Pain more or less attempted to copyright — is one denaturing machine effect, the self-absorbed oddity of trying to associate a technique entirely with yourself is another, not so much to make it your own as to insist on legal ownership. It’s a near-perfect combo move here, the narrator imprisoned, singing to himself, buzzed and happy-drunk inside gleaming intoxicated walls of beer-goggle fantasy-speculation and delusions of, well, association. This outer-limits binge companion just stalked into my blotto eyeline! What amazing pleasures she will show me and know with me! *Sozzled face hits floor*
[8]
Alfred Soto: A chorus of monumental banality that leans on “Maneater”? Why the hell would she drink with you?
[2]
Anthony Easton: I thought T-Pain had a better sense of humour about himself, if the Lonely Island was any indication. I hope the woman in question turns down Pain’s kind offer, because if the Corona is a metaphor for his penis, and he sells that metaphor as well as he does here, she will be deeply disappointed.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: There’s a line in the middle of “Drankin Patna” where T-Pain sings about “screaming YOLO in the lane/swerving,” and it`s a deeply sad moment because it reveals how desperate he’s gotten. Considering that even Drake has apologized for that acronym, T-Pain’s deployment comes off like a painful attempt to be “with it,” like he asked an intern to print out something cool he could say for the kids. It juts out embarrassingly on a song that’s mostly content to be boring, T-Pain boring with details of his drinking (never a good conversation topic) and some sort of alcohol-powered woman. Even his robo-warble is just there, a shadow of what it once was.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Sucks that Relapse got taken. I’m kinda bummed that he’s gone back to the well (I mean, not literally — his partner’s drinking Coronas, after all), but his booze tunes are always poignant. The melody’s programmed like a wave, a constant rise-and-fall pattern that T’s way too content to ride. It doesn’t match the obsessiveness of the text so much as it represents a chirpy obliviousness. We’re in the denial stage.
[7]
David Sheffieck: A good remix with a strong feature could (and probably will) push this a notch higher, but it’s still incredibly smooth, unpredictably sweet, and as dependably quotable as ever. Bring on the T-Painaissance, please.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Dull-blade Auto-Tune swings through lurching percussion and “Maneater” quotes. This is like trying to get a jukebox drunk.
[3]