Last night, bloggers, tastemakers and celebrities gathered at New York’s Jungle City Studios to celebrate the upcoming release of T-Pain’s The Iron Way Mixtape with a private listening event. The mixtape features production from The Dream, All-Star, Don Cannon and many more as well as T-Pain himself.
As guests sipped on Skyy Vodka cocktails, T-Pain sat down with Shaheem Reid and discussed more on the mixtape. “I was watching Game of Thrones, and there was this kind of thing where they ask, ‘Did you get what you have the iron way or the gold way?’ he explained. “The gold way is buying respect and paying for respect, basically just paying for everything you have. The iron way is earning it by killing mofos. The iron way as in swords.” When asked why a mixtape instead of a regular album, T-Pain just simply replied, “I don’t wanna deal with the label shit. I just wanna make music for the fans.”
The 21-track mixtape includes appearances from Kardinal Official, Vantrease, Migos, Lil’ Wayne, and some unreleased vocals from the late singer Aaliyah, which T-Pain delves more about in the interview. “They (Aaliyah’s record company) were doing the Aaliyah X album and they came to me for a feature for it,” he explained. “They had a bunch of sessions of her unused tracks. Instead of just being a dick and charging the shit out of them, I just asked for the of the sessions and they were like ‘Here you go.’ So it was like a swap, I did a song for her album and they gave me one for mines.”
Even though the mixtape has that overall Talahassee feel to it, it also includes some firsts: T-Pain spitting bars and joints with some sweet golden era hip hop beats, which is new for me, considering what his style usually is. With his dreads shed and his top hat retired, he considers The Iron Way as a rebirth for him.
The album drops tomorrow, March 27th and is hosted by DJ Drama and DJ Trendsetter Sense.
