T-Pain just unleashed a real rap unicorn. T-Wayne — his once-promised collaborative project with Lil Wayne, originally set to drop around 2009 — is finally live on Soundcloud. Also available for free download on the artists' shared website, it's a nostalgic rewind to an era when both T-Pain and Lil Wayne were at the apex of their careers.
In the history of lost and long-mythologized hip-hop albums, the T-Wayne project falls somewhere between Dr. Dre's years-in-the-making Detox (which he finally killed for good with the release of Compton in 2015) and a rumored-but-unconfirmed collaboration between Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole.
Featuring a host of producers, the eight-track project includes a familiar-sounding beat from Bangladesh, the producer whose past work on "A Milli" made it one of Wayne's most successful singles.
T-Wayne comes at an interesting time for T-Pain and Lil Wayne. Wayne's career remains in legal limbo thanks to his drawn-out dispute with Cash Money Records. Meanwhile, T-Pain has been in comeback mode, releasing new music and remixes at a steady clip in recent months (and playing a 2014 Tiny Desk concert that's been viewed on YouTube more than 10 million times).
But for the moment, T-Wayne finds the duo partying like it's 2009.
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