T-PAIN AT STONE PONY SUMMER STAGE IN ASBURY PARK

Summer concert season is well underway at the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ. The outdoor stage (part of the iconic venue) is home to many incredible performances during the summer and T-Pain was no exception to this. The Florida native can usually be found nowadays streaming on his Twitch channel, but is taking a break for his “Mansion in Wiscansin Party Tour”, which he brought in a sold out crowd to Asbury Park for. With support from Young Cash, Nando STL, and LaRussell, the crowd was in for a wild night. 

If you grew up at all in the mid to late 2000s, then you are definitely no stranger to T-Pain’s music or his instantly recognizable auto-tuned voice. Your middle school dances and high school proms definitely had, at the minimum, 2-3 T-Pain songs in rotation, all of which will still make you instinctively get up and start dancing the minute that you hear them. That’s exactly what the “Mansion in Wiscansin Party Tour” had everyone in the crowd doing. When T-Pain hit the stage that night, not a single person in that crowd stood still. In between songs, his charismatic and goofy sense of humor came out, acting to the DJ behind his large LED mansion door screen that he didn’t know who any of these people were and he said he was only expecting a couple friends at the party. This was definitely a rager. While on stage he joked about the weather in New Jersey being cold that night, since he’s from Florida and this particular night had a nice breeze from the ocean. He called us a “beach on Antarctica”, which had the crowd laughing. His sparky personality was a great refresher in between songs so you could catch your breath before getting back into dancing and jamming out with your friends, and his infectiously positive energy kept you in the moment, making your other worries melt away and giving you a much needed break from whatever was happening outside of this night. 

Throughout his set, he performed a ton of his own songs, as well as covers or snippets of songs he was featured in. “Booty Wurk”, “Bartender”, and a Jamie Foxx cover of “Blame It” had the crowd and myself dancing in ways that I cannot go into detail here, but I’m sure you can use your imagination if you’ve ever listened to those songs. Even though he’s known for over using auto-tune on purpose, towards the end of his set he showed off his immaculate singing tone with covers of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”, and Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me”. His velvety tone could instantly make you swoon, and his belting high notes and pristine vibrato remind you of why he has the longevity that he does in his career. T-Pain did not come to play tonight, and solidified to everyone in that crowd that behind the auto-tune, there’s an artist directly on par with chart topping singers. 

Something to keep in mind if you see this tour, is that this is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. As expected, the end of the set pulled out the heavy hitters including his part in Pitbull’s “Hey Baby (Drop It to the Floor)”, a cover of Flo Rida’s “Low”, “Buy U A Drank”, and ending of course with his part in DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win”. Watching a sold out crowd throw all of their hands up and scream “Everybody’s hands go up! And they stay there,” is a reminder of the huge impact that T-Pain has made in the music scene. This rager is definitely not one to be missed, however it is ending soon. If you missed out on T-Pain’s headliner, no worries, as you’ll have a chance to catch him as support for Pitbull from August through October (https://tpain.com/tour/), and that is definitely bound to be a ton of fun as well!