Over the years, Black Sabbath have crossed paths with the world of hip-hop far more frequently than one would expect. In 2019, Ozzy Osbourne featured on Post Malone's song Take What You Want, later collaborating again the following year when the rapper featured on The Prince Of Darkness' Ordinary Man track It's A Raid. In 1995, Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi recruited Ice-T to feature on Sabbath's poorly-received album Forbidden, while Busta Rhymes sampled War Pigs and roped in Ozzy for a guest appearance on his 1998 track This Means War!!.
Now, auto-tune-loving rapper T-Pain has exhibited his own kinship for the metal legends via his own cover of War Pigs, and it's, erm, a little head-scratching, to say the least.
Lifted from his newly-released covers album, On Top Of The Covers, the track sees the hip-hop star ditch his heavy reliance on auto-tune for a more soulful approach; with plenty of powerful vocal melodies that show off his impressive range.
Instrumentally, its hazy synth, jarring keys, sloppy drums and strangely distorted guitars makes it a bit of a scramble. You'll either love it, or think it's a bit of a mess. One thing that's hard to dispute, however, is that T-Pain has gone one impressive set of pipes.
Other similarly unlikely covers on his album include takes on Journey's Don't Stop Believing and Frank Sinatra's That's Life, amongst other songs.
Speaking of the project, he says: "This covers album has been years in the making. It got put on hold for a bit, but now that I’m independent, I’m able to do whatever I want to do through Nappy Boy Entertainment and this is something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time. These songs are not what you’d expect when you hear that T-Pain is doing a covers album and that is what I think is cool about it.”
Listen to T-Pain's War Pigs below:
