T-Pain skips Tallahassee hip-hop concert; organizers blame commissioner's comment from meeting

Tallahassee-born rapper T-Pain was expected to attend the “50 Years of Hip-Hop Celebration Concert" Friday as an honored guest, but after layers of drama unfolded this week, the hip-hop star apparently backed out.

Darius "Doc" Baker, founder of the entertainment ensemble Tallahassee Nights Live and an organizer for the event, announced late Thursday night on Facebook that T-Pain would not be attending the celebration. This followed a barrage of social media promos by the city ahead of the event.

“He was always scheduled to come and be honored," Baker said. "Monday, something took place that changed his mind."

T-Pain, according to Baker, pulled out of the free concert after reading a quote from Leon County Commissioner Christian Caban in a Tallahassee Democrat article that included coverage of a meeting in which county leaders were discussing whether to invest $25,000 in the event.

During the meeting, Caban asked his commission colleagues if the Grammy-winning artist should be considered a role model.

“I think when we talk about role models in our community, I think we’re setting the bar really low,” Caban said during a special commission meeting Oct. 24. “I listened to T-Pain growing up, and I know some of those lyrics and I don’t think some of those lyrics are going to positively influence kids in our community.”

Caban declined to comment for this story.

The Democrat reached out to a representative of T-Pain, who did not respond to an email, explaining his absence.

The show will go on with MC Lyte and Doug E. Fresh

T-Pain was expected to attend, but not perform at the event billed as "50 Years of Hip-Hop Celebration Concert" by the North Florida Community Development Corporation. The group is a newly organized nonprofit focused on nourishing food deserts and supporting youth initiatives.

The free concert, planned for 6 p.m. at the Adderley Amphitheater at Cascades Park, will be the organization’s first public event and will be produced with the help of county and city money or in-kind services.

Other rappers MC Lyte and Doug E. Fresh will still be performing, according to Baker, and they still plan to honor T-Pain at the event. Baker told the Tallahassee Democrat there is a slight chance T-Pain could still show up, however, under the circumstances, there is no certainty.

"We're going to honor T-Pain in a major way," Baker said. "We're going to bring him back to Tallahassee the way that he should have been brought back years ago."

Fans and supporters of the event, which has a focus on deterring young people from gun violence, expressed their support for T-Pain in the wake of the commissioner's comments.

"I get it, and T-Pain I’m sorry that some people in our city is so small minded and heartless," Timothy Mosley, founder of the Less Fortunate Still Matter foundation, said on Facebook.

Others urged T-Pain to stick to the plan and come to Tallahassee to inspire kids.

"T-Pain has seen worse, heard worse, and went through worse, so rather he performed or not he should have stood on his commitment to those kids and spoke," one Facebook commenter said. "So the feeling of being put or let down by the Commissioner, how do you think those kids going to feel by being let down by him."

'This is why': Organizers say T-Pain has been slighted by Tallahassee

Baker said he and Rev. Greg James, another organizer, spoke with the rapper for an hour on the matter and heard how offended he was by Caban's statement.

"How does that look, the week of, you have one of your leading officials ... saying that he is not a role model, and he is coming to speak to kids," Baker said in the video.

Baker and James said the rapper has endured a number of slights from his hometown's leaders.

James noted a short-lived post made Thursday by City Commissioner Jack Porter on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The post, which Porter quickly deleted, was a photo of the commissioner, colleague Curtis Richardson and Mayor John Dailey and others and captioned, "Amazing to meet @TPAIN today at the 31st annual City of Tallahassee Retiree Appreciation Day event!"

The man in the photo donning sunglasses and a black baseball cap was not T-Pain. Porter later commented she knows who T-Pain is and it was briefly posted "erroneously to celebrate the fact that T-Pain is coming to town."

While not commenting on his likely no-show status, T-Pain reposted a screenshot of the tweet to his Instagram story with the writing "This... this is why... this kind of s---."

In 2016, T-Pain was scheduled as one of the headline acts for a Florida A&M University Funk Fest event on campus. His set was cut short, he said, sending the Tallahassee native to social media to point out the negative side of coming home.

"All I do every day of my life is show Tallahassee love and when I come home this is the s--- I get. This is why I haven’t been back in so long because I knew this s--- was going to happen," the rapper said in a video posted on Facebook that same night.

"He loves the city, but there have been a lot of things done over the years, and this was just one of them that made him kind of feel uneasy," Baker said about Caban's comments of the rapper, whose stage name T-Pain, stands for Tallahassee Pain.

More: Tallahassee nonprofit’s goal is to reduce gun violence, one hip-hop beat at a time

Alaijah Brown is with the Tallahassee Democrat and can be reached at [email protected]. Democrat writers Elena Barrera and Mikiyah Everett contributed to this reporting and can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Organizers: 'Uneasy' T-Pain to skip Tallahassee hip-hop concert