HHDX: You blend rap with R&B in your music. How is your writing different between the two? T-Pain: There’s no writing difference between the two. I will say that you have to concentrate more on the R&B writing. But that’s only because more people know how to rhyme. It’s easier in a sense. Honestly, I prefer writing R&B and singing versus rap. You can put more feeling into it. You don’t have to yell just to get your point across. You can be smooth with it. Hell, everyone is a rapper nowadays, so I’m trying to be and stay different.

HHDX: Did anything in your life happen that influenced the titling of the album?
T-Pain: Man, Kev… everything has been happening in my life. I have had a lot of tragedies to deal with. I lost one of my close friends. People who I’ve known have been getting killed. So, I’ve had two years to think about this album. I’ve poured everything that I could into seventeen tracks on this album.

HHDX: Your boy, Mickey “MeMpHiTz” Wright, was instrumental in your career. What do you think he saw, or what Akon saw in you that other’s may have overlooked?
T-Pain: I don’t know, man. A lot of people were looking at my hair. They were asking me what I was going to do about that. That’s what it was. I came up different than everyone else. I don’t have the same story; the same shit, the same background. That’s how you appear different. So, I took my differences and used that to my advantage.

HHDX: So, given that, how does it feel to be simultaneously slept-on and sought after?
T-Pain: I never felt anything about that. I didn’t know how to succeed, you know? I have never tasted success, so it didn’t phase me none. I couldn’t fail because I never tried.

HHDX: You also branched out and made a song carving into the MySpace craze. How did that come about?
T-Pain: Brandon T. Jackson brought it to me. Nobody would do that song with him. He had brought it to a couple of people, which mainly were a bunch of rappers, and they didn’t want to do it. But he brought the track to me. I heard it and we ended up doing it that night. It was his first time in the booth. So, I’m glad to have been a part of that experience.

HHDX: Aside from getting hits on your page, you making hits on the charts with R. Kelly. After the success of the songs y’all do together – could there be any plans of you two doing a whole album together?
T-Pain: [Laughs] Nah, he got too much time on him; too many years on him.

HHDX: Last question – with more male R&B singers coming out and selling, how does T-Pain continue to standout within the crowd?
T-Pain: I can only do one thing and that’s just be me. I can’t do the same shit that everyone else is doing. I have to be a different kind of artist. So, in order to stay ahead, I can only be just me… that’s all I know.