The call didn’t go to T-Pain himself. It went to his management team, and the man on the other end was the singer he looked up to most. Michael Jackson wanted T-Pain to come to his house.
He told that part of the story in October 2015, when he went on ESPN’s “Highly Questionable” to talk about his upcoming album, “Stoicville: The Phoenix.” Before long, the conversation turned to Michael.
“I think that was my most proud moment to see my idol actually call my management team and say he wanted me to come to his house,” he said, as quoted by XXL.
So he went. He sat down with Michael, and Michael told him something about “Bartender,” T-Pain’s 2007 hit with Akon.
“He told me that ‘Bartender’ was the only physical CD he had bought in the last four years,” T-Pain remembered on the same show, according to The FADER.
Coming from the King of Pop, that’s a lot to hear about your own record. T-Pain called it “one of my proud moments.”
Two years later, in November 2017, T-Pain told the story again on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” with Macklemore sitting beside him. A viewer wanted to know the most surreal part of being invited to Michael’s home.
He started with the CD. Michael had told him “Bartender” was the first physical CD he’d purchased in four years, Yahoo Entertainment reported. He also made clear this wasn’t Neverland. “I didn’t hear rides in the back,” he said.
Cohen liked the CD part. But what he really wanted to know, Yahoo noted, was what T-Pain did and ate at the King of Pop’s house.
Listen for the moment Cohen asks about the food, and keep an eye on T-Pain when he gets to what Michael had on.
T-Pain tells Andy Cohen about his visit to Michael Jackson’s house
This is the official clip from “Watch What Happens Live,” and it runs under two minutes. T-Pain brings up the “Bartender” CD at about 0:30 and gets to the snack at about 0:57. He describes how Michael was dressed at about 1:19.
So what did Michael serve?
Plain tortilla chips, with no dip and no toppings. “Nothing on ’em, nothing with ’em,” T-Pain explained. “They were in a bowl. They were in an all white bowl, it was the most amazing bowl you’ve ever seen in your life and those were the most tastiest chips I’ve ever had in my life.”
He’d hinted at it back in 2015, too. The FADER’s write-up of the ESPN interview described the visit as the time Michael invited him over “for dry nachos.”
And Michael didn’t dress down for snack time at home. T-Pain said Michael had on his “Dirty Diana” boots and was fully “concert dressed,” as Yahoo put it. Cohen wrapped up the segment with a joke about Michael in “feety pajamas.”
T-Pain kept his cool the whole time he was in the room with his idol. It was only afterward that it caught up with him.
“I didn’t cry in front of him, ’cause I’m a G,” he told ESPN. “But when I left, there was one or two tears.”