Jarrett-Carter.com

If you want a hit record on black radio today, you basically need two ingredients, T-Pain and a talkbox synthesizer.

If you’ve got those two things, at best you’ll sell a million ringtones. At worst, you’ll probably get a BET Music award.

But now that the talkbox is all of the rage in popular music, I rarely hear any mention of Roger Troutman, the dude who started it all waaaay back in the day. I don’t know too many people who came up in the 70’s or 80’s who don’t know most of the words to ‘Computer Love,’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Man,’ or ‘More Bounce to the Ounce.’ Especially the latter, because if you know the words ‘more bounce to the ounce,’ you pretty much know the song.

T-Pain, Kanye West, Ron Brownz and every other synthesized voice on contemporary radio owes a little something to Roger Troutman. Sure, he took his cues from Stevie Wonder, but he was the first one to use voice manipulation as a replacement for actual singing, and he was the first person to make the style more than something freaky to trip out to.

But along with pioneering a new form of vocal entertainment, he also was a gifted producer. He worked with a wide range of pop, soul and funk groups in his time, and his influence on West Coast rap is undeniable.

So the next time you change your radio station three times and hear a T-Pain track on each of them, say a little prayer for Roger Troutman. It’s a shame he couldn’t be around for the whole world talking about the talkbox he made famous.

Now you know how to get under Kanye West’s skin. He can’t stand those pictures in airports.

You would think that Kanye, with his semester or so of college education, would know that paparazzi want nothing more than to catch him or members of his entourage storming towards them. Mouths wide open, nostrils flaring, chains swinging wildly about and hurling profanities in their direction. You think he would know they set up just for that one money shot.

After all, there’s a reason why he hates them more than the Nazis.

Maybe Brother West can take a lesson from the Senator of his home state and realize that everyone falls into a circle of existence when it comes to stardom. The trade off for making millions of dollars and living a life people can’t imagine must be balanced against people that make no money and want to see those millions come their way.

Annoyingly or otherwise.