T-PAIN OBLIVION

When I first met with Pain to discuss the album, I sat down, took a deep breath, and asked the most generic question I possibly could: "What is this album? What does it mean...to you? Not anybody else. Why now? There was a brief silence, he smiled, then said "I was sort of lost in space for a while, and I guess this album is me finding my way back. It's about growth". "So do you feel like this is a new T-Pain in a way?" I asked. He answered "I recently saw a spiritual guide, or a shaman, I guess that's what they're called, who told me that my aura changed. I used to walk in a room and would glow blue, now I glow red."

T-Painʼs seventh full-length album, entitled “OBLiVION” was inspired by T-Painʼs recent personal and spiritual journey, loneliness, growth, and ultimately understanding. We chose to represent these concepts through
the analogy of a space expedition. Posing T-Pain as a space traveler, our goal was to visually communicate this sense of solitude. We used the framework of “The Voyager Records”, which are a set of golden records containing phonographic information about planet Eart launched into space by NASA in 1977. The records are intended to explain information about Earth and humankind to aliens if ever recieved. We created symbols similar to those etched into the Voyage Records to explain and represent T-Painʼs journey. These symbols were the basis for the visual language carried throughout the album rollout.