Tallahassee held a tribute concert to honor T-painin Kleman Plaza. The concert follows public outcry after the Tallahassee born and raised musician expressed frustration with the way his hometown has treated him.
T-pain was expected to travel to Tallahassee during the city’s 50 years of hip hop concert on November 10. But before the show started, news broke that the music artist wouldn’t be making an appearance.
Now Tallahassee residents are expressing concern about the events that have taken place and about the way T-Pain is being treated by the city he grew up in.
Tallahassee barber, Christian Lawrence, says he isn’t shocked by the way the community has treated T-Pain but it “saddens” him.
“T-Pain literally stands for Tallahassee Pain and he even said that he tries to represent Tallahassee to the best of his abilities on a day to day basis," Lawrence says. "I hope that there can at least be a T-Pain day dedicated to T-Pain—or open a youth center dedicated to T-Pain. He is a great role model and great person.”
Lawrence’s comment is a direct contradiction to one made by Leon County Commissioner Christian Caban. During a commission meeting where officials talked about funding for the hip hop concert, Caban questioned whether T-Pain should be held up as a role model.
“I think when we talk about role models in our community I think we are setting the bar really low," Caban said. "I look at Commissioner Procter, I look at you Doc, I look at you Reverend Greg James, I look at you Commissioner Cummings, and I look at you Chairman. You guys are role models especially for kids in the community. But I listened to T-Pain growing up and I know some of those lyrics and I don’t think some of those lyrics are going to positively influence kids in our community.”
That comment is one of the reasons T-Pain pointed to in a series of videos when explaining why he didn’t make the trip to Tallahassee. Many community members, like Aaron Soivilien, say they’ve been looking up to T-pain since they were young. Soivilien grew up in Tallahassee and remembers listening to T-Pain as a kid. He says T-Pain is in an "abusive relationship" with the city and he’d like to see the city take steps to honor the artist.
“ You got other cities like Toronto for Drake and New Orleans for Lil Wayne but when it comes to T Pain, Tallahassee doesn't know how to appreciate him,” Soivilien says.
Another reason T-pain gave for not coming to the November Hip Hop concert is frustration that came after the concert’s organizers invited T-Pain to Tallahassee to be honored by having the street he grew up on named after him and later went back on that promise. According to T-Pain the organizers said it would be a much longer process to have that done so they were just going to put up a temporary sign on another street he didn’t grow up on.
“All the work I did over the last 20 years, I don't want the message to be after you did all that coming from Tallahassee you come back and get a sign. I don’t want that to be the message for the kids,” T-Pain said in a video he posted on Instagram.
The CEO of Tallahassee Nights Live, Darius “Doc D” Baker, was in charge of organizing the November concert. He says during a call with T-Pain, the artist said he was let down by not being able to get a street sign but he was still willing to come until Commissioner Caban’s statement was published in the Tallahassee Democrat.
“We were actually going to tribute him in our set with Tallahassee Nights Live regardless without him even coming but it was brought up with the old board was hey maybe we should invite him to come not to perform but to be honored,"Brown says. "He had already made known his feelings towards the city of Tallahassee.”
Tallahassee Downtown, the downtown improvement authority, helped to organize the event. In an Instagram post, the group nods to T-Pain's lyrics when it said "after an epiphany, we want to show some Tallahassee love for T-Pain." DJ Demp was also part of the tribute to T-Pain today. He said on social media, T-Pain won’t be attending, but he’s excited to honor the artist.
Meanwhile, T-Pain has suggested he might accept an invitation from Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey to attend Tallahassee’s 200 year anniversary next year, but nothing is confirmed yet.