‘Masked Singer’ winner T-Pain talks being the ‘Monster’
The monster won “The Masked Singer” and at last his identity has been revealed: It was T-Pain.
“I’m feeling good, it feels pretty amazing, like a big weight is lifted off my shoulders,” says T-Pain, a rapper, singer and producer who has won two Grammys and is known for hits such as “Buy U a Drank (Swhawty Snappin).”
Fox’s bizarre singing competition show “The Masked Singer” has been a hit in its first season, regularly raking in upward of 10 million viewers. It’s part performance, part detective show: It follows celebrities with concealed identities as they sing in elaborate costumes such as a giant peacock (revealed to be Donny Osmond) or a bumblebee (revealed to be Gladys Knight).
After each performance, a crowd and panel of judges try to guess who the celeb behind the mask is.
In T-Pain’s case, after the Monster won, nobody guessed his identity except for host Nick Cannon. Judge Robin Thicke guessed that it was Jamie Foxx, Jenny McCarthy made the bewildering guess of disgraced former NFL player Michael Vick, Ken Jeong guessed Darius Rucker, Nicole Scherzinger guessed CeeLo Green, and Kenan Thompson guessed Tyrese Gibson.
“They were way off. They were just picking random black dudes!” says T-Pain. “But it turned out good for me — I loved it.”
T-Pain chose the monster costume because it was the silliest option, he says.
“It seemed fun to wear a costume and sing. I always wondered what it was like to wear a costume at Universal Studios. [The Monster] was just the silliest one — if I didn’t make it, at least I got to wear this f–king stupid thing! It was hard to dance in. It was really hard to move, because I could only move my arms. I didn’t have much peripheral vision.”
T-Pain says that “The Masked Singer” had so much secrecy backstage that he didn’t even know who his fellow competitors were. “It was Fort Knox back there. We weren’t allowed to see anybody or talk to anybody. You [couldn’t] leave your trailers for three hours at a time, because someone else was performing. But I think that made the show a little more fun. We were learning [singers’ identities] with everybody else.”
He says he also might have been nervous if he knew who he was up against. Aside from Donny Osmond and Gladys Knight, fellow competitors included LaToya Jackson and Joey Fatone.
In a savvy marketing move, T-Pain just surprise released a new album, “1UP,” to coincide with the show’s finale.
“Everybody has their preconceived views of what I do and how it works, so [being on the show] gave me a chance to strip away the preconception and really show my talent,” he says, referring to the Auto-Tune vocals his songs have used in the past (leading naysayers to doubt his natural singing ability).
“It felt great just to be able to prove what I can do. It was either swim or sink, that was a whole thing — my whole album was riding on this. I’m basing part of my show and my tour off this. We released [the album] the same night as the finale. So if I didn’t make it to the finale, that would have sucked!”