Rapper T-Pain is parlaying his success in the hip-hop industry into a second career; streaming video games on Twitch.
T-Pain has become the latest big name to find success building popular Twitch channels, and is discussing his brand new career of streaming games on the popular streaming platform.
“My manager was like, do you know you can do this?” T-Pain said, during an interview with MTV News. “So my manager made a few phone calls, [a couple streamers] came to my hotel room, and they showed me how to get on Twitch. I played Doom online, and I [fell in love with it] immediately.”
“When I’m gaming, and I do some cool shit, [I’ll] come up to my wife, she’ll be like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I’m like, ‘I just did some cool shit and nobody is going to see it!’” T-Pain says. “Nobody was in the room with me! I’m so pissed off!”
T-Pain has put the work in as well, logging over 100 hours of streaming, accumulating over 100,000 followers, and making some solid money en route to becoming one of the best Twitch channels, playing games such as Overwatch and The Sims.
“I’ve got a whole different audience now. I’ve got people on Twitter everyday saying, ‘I didn’t know you played games! I don’t really like your music, but you’ve got a fan in me,'” T-Pain continued. “People that don’t have an interest in my music, or have a preconceived notion of me because of the music they do, they get to see me just living my life on Twitch, and they’re like, ‘Oh, he’s not an asshole!’ That’s pretty cool.”
The streaming platform has helped T-Pain diversify and stay relevant.
“We have more access to the behind-the-scenes, it’s like how artists coming up now are refusing to sign record deals because of the years and years of artists complaining about how record labels work. When people see that there’s money to be made on Twitch, more artists are going to Twitch,” T-Pain added.
“We’re asking, ‘OK, what can I do outside of rap.’ Because people that are diversifying are getting celebrated. You don’t even have to be doing it well, as long as you’re doing something, people are going to be like, ‘Oh man, he’s so smart! He’s putting money everywhere!’ It’s a great argument in the barbershop. With a lot of diverse fans, people are going to bring in revenue from many different streams, and many different walks of life. Liking weird shit is what makes you different.”
