Despite working together several times over the years, T-Pain and DJ Khaled’s relationship has turned sour.
T-Pain recently vented about DJ Khaled during an interview with Shannon Sharpe for Club Shay Shay. While discussing the 20th anniversary of his debut studio album, T-Pain suggested that his former collaborator is not to be trusted, expanding his complaints to cover the broader lack of loyalty within the music industry as a whole.
“Nobody is your brother. Nobody,” he stated. “Everybody’s your brother while they can use you. That is the quickest and most consistent thing that I’ve learned through this whole thing.”
T-Pain continued, generalizing his experience: “I’ve had fcking DJ Khaled and everybody tell me, ‘I’m your brother.’ Do not believe that sht! Like, DJ Khaled knows how to move, he knows how to do things with different people. But it’s not [just] a DJ Khaled thing—that’s just the first person I can think of. You gotta think about how many people I’ve helped throughout their career. Everybody is like, ‘Oh my God, thank you so much. You’re my brother’ … And then none of that sht was reciprocated. None of that sht meant anything.”
T-Pain and DJ Khaled collaborated numerous times over the years, including on the popular tracks “All I Do Is Win,” “I’m So Hood,” and “Go Hard.” Their professional relationship began to decline around 2013 after Khaled increased his collaborations with Future. At the time, T-Pain publicly accused Khaled of replacing him with the other artist during an interview with VIBE.
Years later, T-Pain reflected on the disagreement during an appearance on Drink Champs. He recalled the fallout: “Future didn’t get mad … He ignored the whole thing … And then Khaled hit me like, ‘That’s what you doing?’”
“I was like, ‘Yeah, bro. You said that [Future’s ‘Bugatti’ hook] was his and I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ He was like, ‘Look back at the video.’ I looked back at it and I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t have a rebuttal for this.’ I was like the worst f*cking friend ever. Khaled was like, ‘Take the post down! You used my artist in a smear campaign!’ And I was like, ‘[sighs].’ I kinda still stand by what I said.”
T-Pain released his debut studio album, Rappa Ternt Sanga, in December 2005. Since then, he has released several other iconic projects such as Epiphany and Three Ringz.