T-Pain

It’s easy to pin the blame for Auto-Tune’s omnipresence on the man who made it popular, but whereas some artists use it as an annoying (and unlikely) means of over-emoting (looking at you, Kanye), at least T-Pain seems to realize that his signature sound is ridiculous. If the man didn’t have a sense of humor, would we have ever heard his silly collaborations with Taylor Swift and The Lonely Island? His most recent album, the long-delayed RevolveR, was finally released in 2011 and features a lineup of more conventional special guests, many of them heavy-hitters like Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, and Lil Wayne.

Updated 02/15/2012