How do certain artists get recording and publishing deals ?

while out in the car last week I had the miss-fortune to hear a rapper called “T-Pain”‘s record called “5 o’clock”. The song starts with Lilly Allens song 5 o’clock, and when I saw starts with I mean he’s pressed play on her cd, it then fades to him rapping some terrible lyrics with a vocoder on as he can’t even “talk” in tune, to him singing the same chorus line as Lilly Allens recorded with so much auto tune it makes him sound like a robot. Now that I’ve finished that mini rant I’ll get to the posts point.

I know of bands who have had real talent, but not been able to get record or publishing deals due to minor and major things, look not right, time not right for that style of music, not enough quality songs for an album, too old, too young, not good enough live. That said most of these situations could have been corrected, %90 was done and %10 needed to be worked on, eg: your drummer needs to be tightened up, your look needs altering, we need to work on songs with you etc.

Now using T-Pain as an example (sorry T-Pain if you read this) as a musician I can’t picture how this guy can not only get recorded, but published and major air time.

This is the conversation I picture.

Record Producer/Exec “So T-Pain, lets summarize, you can’t sing in tune, hell you can’t even talk in tune, you can’t play any musical instruments and have no capabilities to write music, your music is pretty much pressing play on someone else’s song and removing parts of the vocal track, while you rap the worst most cliche’ words over the top.”

Rapper “Yup, that about sums it up”

Record Producer/Exec  “well, I’d love to work with you, sign you and promote you”

Rapper “aight”

 

I cannot imagine how this situation happens, clearly there is something there as this guy and type of music is shifting sales, but it just seems mental and does not come together in my head as a concept.

Discuss