With 60 hit songs under his belt and two Grammy trophies on his mantle, T-Pain has cemented himself as one of the most influential artists of all time. But even he needed a bit of time to himself to reload. After an eight year run of #1 hits, albums, tours and a plethora of cameo appearances, T-Pain found himself  living a life full of exactly what his name implies.

Upon releasing his 2011 album rEVOLVEr, the “Rappa Ternt Sanga” took an abrupt, but well-deserved, break from the spotlight. But it wasn’t to enjoy his spoils. His non-stop lifestyle was beginning to take a toll on his personal life and it was beginning to affect his creative “I was becoming somebody that I didn’t like,” he says. “I was living an unhappy lifestyle and it started affecting my family. I was hurting and scaring a lot of people.” At the height of his career that included a popular smartphone app and a Super Bowl commercial, T-Pain decided to take a two year hiatus from releasing music. Where that would be a death knell for other artists, it wound up being a second birth for T-Pain. In the fall of 2013 a rejuvenated T-Pain returned with one of his biggest hits to date, the DJ Mustard-produced single “Up Down (We Do This All Day)” featuring B.o.B. After returning to his familiar spot in the top ten of  the charts for 28 straight weeks and counting, he’s continuing the comeback in 2014 going with the club smash “Drankin Patna.”

With many artists in the marketplace building successful careers borrowing from a sound that T-Pain helped create, it’s only right that he return to claim his throne. Only this time, don’t expect him to take another break, he’s going as hard as ever.