T-Pain has a message for the music fans deriding his and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s cover of Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz’s 2003 hit “Get Low“: “Touch grass.” The cover, which Zuck and Pain released as “Z-Pain” on DSPs earlier this week, has drawn criticism for — among other things — being a painfully corny acoustic rendition of a song from Zuck’s college years. It also features, well, a class of character that many Americans aren’t too enthused about considering Facebook’s role in the last nine utterly terrible years and the ongoing ensh*ttification of the internet as a whole.
It hardly matters that the song was meant as a sweet gift from Zuck to his wife of 12 years, Priscilla Chan; fans who want to see the rich end up on their dinner plates haven’t got anything nice to say about it. On Instagram, T-Pain defended the effort, saying, “It is impossible for some people to have fun. I’ve learned how to not worry about what y’all are talking about. Why y’all hate happiness so much? Y’all don’t like when people do wholesome things, y’all don’t like when people do stuff for their wives.”
In the caption, he advises fans to “go climb a tree” instead of wasting time hating, but I don’t Faheem… seems like Zuck could have used that advice when he suggested this idea. I’m all for serenading your lady love, but why inflict it on the rest of us? The fact it was added to DSPs, where it could potentially turn a profit, would seem to taint the sweet gesture it’s intended to be; that Zuck keeps trying to humanize himself in the face of all the horrible societal effects of his various companies sorta takes the wind out of my sails for this recording. Billionaires, by and large, suck, and the world would be better off with more musicians and fewer self-important businessmen trying to pass themselves off as anything but.