T-Pain Said He Nearly Had A Song With Michael Jackson And Usher, But One Person Ruined Everything

The music industry is full of stories of near-misses and “almost weres.” It’s the nature of the business — especially for most of its history, when things had to be done without the benefit of advanced computers and high-speed internet — that things get lost, tapes get damaged, calls get missed, and egos clash, resulting in some fascinating projects behing scrapped or forgotten.

In the case of T-Pain missing out on his chance to collaborate with the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, the Tallahassee native had a great story for his fans — although it has a miserable ending for Pain himself. During a recent livestream that he clipped and shared to other social media, T-Pain remembered how his opportunity to work with MJ and Usher on a song during his career peak was derailed by an overzealous collaborator.

Before playing a snippet of the song for his viewers, he prefaced it with the story of why it was never released. “We are about to listen to a song that I wrote and produced that was meant for me, Usher, and Michael Jackson,” he said. “And then the person that was in charge of doing the references and the person that sang it got too excited and was like, ‘N****, I’m on a song with Michael Jackson and Usher and T-Pain!’ And then he released it and then Michael Jackson was like, ‘Nah, never mind. I don’t wanna do it anymore.’ Yeah, that pissed me off. Not gonna lie to ya.”

Talk about “pain.” Fortunately, T-Pain’s got a list of collaborators about a mile long — and that’s before you get to all the people he accidentally ghosted that time — so he still did okay. He’s also experiencing something like his fourth career resurgence thanks to a live performance of his 2023 covers album that keeps going viral and drawing attention from artists like Ozzy Osbourne. While it probably doesn’t completely make up for missing out on working with one legend, T-Pain keeps pumping out hits and becoming one in his own right. Check out the video of T-Pain telling the story below.