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Music

Listen to T-Pain Black Out Rapping for Six Minutes Straight on "Stoicville"

It's basically a Drake song, and it's better than whatever your favorite rapper is probably doing right now.

The world is suddenly on T-Pain's side for perhaps the first time ever after his recent Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, in which he sang without Auto-Tune and proved that (no duh) he had some serious fucking music chops. But of course T-Pain has always been great and talented and, quite frankly, one of the most important musical innovators of the last decade. Dude basically ushered in the current era of rap by turning Auto-Tune into an effect rather than a tool. And T-Pain is an astute observer of the human condition, as you might be reminded of by reading his Noisey advice column (side note: share your questions with T-Pain by emailing and get some real, Auto-Tune-free advice).

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All of this is to say that you should pay attention to T-Pain's new song, "Stoicville," because T-Pain just dropped one of the rawest six-minute rap verses you will hear all year. "Stoicville" is basically T-Pain making a Drake song: Its beat is minimal, with an ethereal female voice floating around over piano for the last minute or so, and T-Pain blacks out reminiscing about the early days of his career. He pulls no punches—T-Pain is not concerned with posturing as cool, which is part of his charm—and goes in rapping about how lame he was, how much people doubted him, and how he's proved his doubters wrong.

The song may be called "Stoicville," but T-Pain is anything but stoic:

"coming home from school I had tears in my eyes / they was picking on me and wouldn't give me my hat back / now I've got enough hats to give away / it's better days, I refuse to have flashbacks"

"and my daddy proud of me / but he got too much pride to say it out loud for me / got that keyboard off the road / brought it in the house for me / he coming to my shows, hanging in the crowd for me"

"I realized I can make an impression / but good lord this is fucking depressing"

"my last album ain't do numbers like I wanted it to"

"and like motherfucker do you just not recall? / I needed help and you just left me sitting on my balls"

This is basically pure, unfiltered emotion and storytelling—once again, let's reiterate that T-Pain is a great songwriter—and, despite your instinct to make a lazy Auto-Tune joke, this is better rapping than whatever loose freestyle your favorite rapper is probably dropping. Don't believe me? Check it out below. And once again, submit questions to our T-Pain advice column here.