T-Pain is a cultural icon bigger than a boat

Goodbye, Paris Hilton. See you later, Jennifer Aniston. The most important cultural icon we’ve got nowadays is none other than T-Pain.

Why? Well, first off, he’s on a boat. He’s on a boat. Take a good, hard look, because he’s sailing on a boat.

In the parallel universe of pop culture that co-exists with the real world in which normal shmoes like you and I exist, T-Pain is the guy that shows up at every party (though no one is sure who invited him). He always has something witty to say, and he probably slept with your sister. And very possibly your mother.

By appearing in just about every popular song to hit the radio, he has become the digitized voice of pop music, the thermometer for what is hot up in da club and what is not.

Seriously, his resume of hits is staggering. Here’s just a sampler: Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss,” Kanye West’s “Good Life,” Flo Rida’s “Low,” Baby Bash’s “Cyclone” and my personal favorite, “I’m ‘n Luv (Wit a Stripper).”

Aren’t we all, Mr. Pain, aren’t we all?

But with T-Pain’s latest guest appearance on the brilliantly dumb “I’m on a Boat,” this big-hatted teddy bear has come full circle in the pop universe, revealing that, yes, he knows what he does is silly and meaningless, but damn it, there is nothing wrong with that.


“I’m on a Boat,” written by the regular-dude trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone as The Lonely Island, is, at first listen, a club track with a colossal, thumping beat about — predictably — how cool it is to be on a boat, motherf****r.


The lyrics are obviously silly, especially when being rhymed by awkward white boys in tuxedos.

“I’m the king of the world, on a boat like Leo / If you’re on the shore, then you’re sure not me, oh,” is not exactly Dylan, but that’s not the point. “I’m on a Boat” is a spot-on parody of the entire genre of bling-tastic, my-grillz-is-shinier-than-yours hip-hop pop music. The bigger the boat, the more garish the display of wealth.

That part’s easy, though. Without T-Pain, the track would be little more than the best song Weird Al never wrote.

By featuring Mr. Pain, the genre king of mechanized, impersonal party jams, the song not only sounds way cooler, but also raises the tune to a whole other level of parody.

In imitating the sound of big-beat hip-hop tracks, “I’m on a Boat” has become one of the best to drop in months. It’s divine irony is anchored by T-Pain’s self-knowingly ridiculous appearance.

Because his trademark vocal addition to any song is sung through an auto-tune machine, thereby making the sounds you hear on the record not his own, T-Pain is the ultimate disposable pop star.

He is every hip-hop dude rapping about booties droppin’ down to the flo’, he is every pop star singing about love or sex or love and sex and he is every recycled chorus that sounds like a song from six months ago.

By appearing in a song that directly makes fun of just how silly club jams are, he is stepping back from his bling-image and saying, “Yup, it’s pretty stupid.” And in admitting so, he immediately becomes the smartest pop star in the business.

You wouldn’t see Akon on this track — dude takes himself way too seriously. And you sure wouldn’t see fellas like Diddy or Young Jeezy or Usher singing lines like “Never thought I’d be on a boat. It’s a big, blue watery road ... Believe me when I say I f****d a mermaid.” Those guys are too caught up in exactly the image that “I’m on a Boat” is making fun of.

And so was T-Pain.

But by jumping around on a boat, he’s winking to every music listener that has trouble swallowing the meaningless, hollow club tracks that seem to be recycled and redone every few months.

He gets it, he’s in on the joke. But you know what? That doesn’t bother him at all. He’s getting paid, and he’s giving us one more silly banger to get us gyrating on the dance floor.

And you really can’t blame him. Because the dude’s on a boat. He’s on a boat. And all we can do is take a good, hard look at the motherf*****g boat.