T-Pain

CTL-E-5735 · Person · musician · 1984–present

STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-02605 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-0816 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5735. Master record source: Soul Train Awards build 2026-10-16 — sourced from Wikipedia ceremony pages.

T-Pain, born Faheem Rashad Najm on 30 September 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida, is an American singer, rapper and producer whose stage name abbreviates "Tallahassee Pain." After the rap group Nappy Headz and a bedroom studio he built from age ten, he signed to Akon's Konvict Muzik in a joint venture with Jive in 2005 and founded Nappy Boy Entertainment. His debut Rappa Ternt Sanga (2005) opened a run — Epiphany (2007), Thr33 Ringz (2008), RevolveR (2011), Oblivion (2017) — that made him the popularizer of Auto-Tune as a creative vocal effect. Epiphany reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and "Buy U a Drank" topped the Hot 100. He has won two Grammy Awards from twelve nominations, for Kanye West's "Good Life" (2008) and Jamie Foxx's "Blame It" (2010), and his feature on Flo Rida's "Low" is RIAA-certified diamond.

The record

• Also known as: Faheem Rashad Najm, Faheem Najm
• Role(s): recording artist

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 7; first packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no T-Pain entity in the live graph at 3,443 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5735 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 209 (R&B Singers list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black American recording figure. Vital status: LIVING — TP20 20th-anniversary US tour ran June–October 2025. CONFLICTS CARRIED: Older sources listed him as born 30 September 1985 and spelled his middle name "Rasheed." In a 2014 interview he corrected both himself: Rashad, born 1984. The corrected form governs here; the legacy variant is documented, not used. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Two Grammy wins from twelve nominations ("Good Life," 2008; "Blame It," 2010); Epiphany No. 1 Billboard 200 (2007); featured on Flo Rida's "Low," RIAA diamond — Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and label/press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5735-t-pain.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject; the three catalog string-hits for "Ne-Yo" resolve to Nina Simone and John Coltrane rows, not Ne-Yo billings); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio; the subject's recordings are third-party copyrighted material). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )

Relationships

• Kanye West — collaborated with
  T-Pain won the Best Rap Song Grammy as a featured artist and co-writer on Kanye West's "Good Life" (2008).
• Soul Train Music Awards 2023 — honored by
  STRONG EVIDENCE

Referenced by

• Akon — related to → this record

Sources

• Wikipedia, "T-Pain" — born Faheem Rashad Najm, 30 September 1984, Tallahassee; Konvict Muzik signing; Auto-Tune popularization; two Grammy wins from 12 nominations; "Low" diamond — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Pain (build store)
• Music Times (24 December 2014) — the artist's own Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction correction of his name spelling (Rashad) and birth year (1984) — https://www.musictimes.com/articles/21666/20141224/t-pain-wikipedia-fact-fiction-stage-name-origins-real-birth-year-tallahassee-stoicville-watch.htm (primary source · build store)
• Consequence (June 2025) — TP20 20th-anniversary tour dates (vital-status evidence) — https://consequence.net/2025/06/t-pain-2025-tour-20th-anniversary/ (build store)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Soul_Train_Music_Awards (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Won Legend Award at the Soul Train Music Awards 2023 — per the published Soul Train Music Awards winners lists (per-year lists fetched in full during recovery Phase C, 2026-10-17)

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Record CTL-E-5735 · Combined Graph record U-02605 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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