Motor Mouth

"I've heard [the criticism] since I came out," says T-Pain, who just three years ago was a relatively unknown rapper who sometimes sang the hooks for his group, the Nappy Headz. "People were really hating on it. But I'm being accepted for doing it now. I'm actually being congratulated."

And copied. Success breeds imitation in pop culture, and following T-Pain's breakthrough, there's been a full-fledged Auto-Tune explosion in hip-hop, as heard on Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," Chris Brown's "Forever," Janet Jackson's "Feedback" and G-Unit's 50 Cent showcase, "Rider Pt. 2," not to mention various songs that feature T-Pain himself, such as Ciara's new single, "Go Girl."

"You're talking about bona fide hits by A-list artists, the biggest names in hip-hop," says Dion Summers, a senior programming director for Sirius XM's hip-hop and R&B channels. "The T-Pain technique definitely makes a song stand out. It sounds so cool, and it gives more rise to the record and makes it seem lighter. He really hit on a winning formula. It works; that's why these other artists are doing it."

The chart-topping Auto-Tune converts Lil Wayne and Kanye West are given a pass by T-Pain, having asked their occasional collaborator for his blessing to use the effect. "Wayne would get on the phone with you right now and say I'm the reason he started using Auto-Tune," T-Pain says of the New Orleans rapper, whose lascivious "Lollipop" made him sound something like a futuristic frog. (The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early May.)

"And Kanye said, 'Let me borrow your style for a second.' He would tell you, 'Yeah, I took that from Pain.' " West has taken it and run, straight into the studio: On his upcoming album, "808s & Heartbreak," the erstwhile rapper proffers processed vocals that sound as if they were sung by Stephen Hawking's vocal synthesizer. "If you don't like autotune," West wrote on his blog earlier this year, "too bad cause I love it."

T-Pain still loves it, too. On "Thr33 Ringz," which comes out Tuesday, he continues to embrace the technology. Aside from "Karaoke," which actually does contain a handful of Auto-Tuned notes for added emphasis, there's only one track on which T-Pain doesn't use his signature sound: "Keep Going," a heartfelt ballad about the musician's wife and children.

"I do that on every album, a song without Auto-Tune that has a lot of meaning to me," he says. "Something that important and close doesn't need to be enhanced with a lot of effects. It's already emotional enough; it should be natural. But people don't really pay attention to it, I guess. They always expect Auto-Tune."

Though T-Pain has a knack for crafting sharp hooks and catchy beats that tend to fill dance floors, it's the effervescent vocal effect that defines him. That's why he generated so many laughs when, during his stint as host of the BET Awards last month, he got into an argument with his Auto-Tuner. The man-machine relationship -- which T-Pain also spoofed in a video for the Web site Funny or Die -- rang true.

"People think I have to change my voice in order to sing," he says. "What people don't recognize is that you can't just put Auto-Tune on your voice and have a hit on your hands. You still have to make the song a hit, make the beat hot. Take the Auto-Tune effect off all these songs I've done, they're still going to be hits."

Last year, T-Pain reached No. 1 on the big Billboard chart three times: With his own "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')" and as a guest on (and producer of) Chris Brown's "Kiss Kiss" and Flo Rida's "Low." Notably, "Low" didn't include any Auto-Tuned vocals, which T-Pain offers as evidence that his success isn't dependent on a gimmick.

"He doesn't have to do it -- he's doing it for fun, not because he can't write a good song," says Robin Thicke, an R&B singer who doesn't use the T-Pain effect. But, Thicke says, as a producer, he used Auto-Tune for its original purpose. "I've produced for some people who weren't great singers," Thicke says. "I had to use it on their vocals."

The great irony of the Auto-Tune explosion is that the software that's now being used to distort vocals in an intentionally obvious, attention-getting, over-the-top way was originally created to do something stealthy in the recording studio: correct pitch problems.