T-Pain Takes The Long Way Home At "5 O'Clock"

The auto-tune king T-Pain returns with a mid-tempo groove and wanders the streets alone in the music video for "5 O'clock," the first official single off his upcoming fourth studio installment, the heavily-delayed "rEVOLVEr," which has no release date but is expected to come out later this year. Like Adele's new video for "Someone Like You," the "5 O'Clock" video shows the 26-year-old artist meandering through the streets of a beautiful Amsterdam, including the famed Red Light District.
It's a pensive contemporary R&B ballad, with rumbling beats, pealing organs, and featuring Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa and a vocal sample from British singer Lily Allen's 2009 track "Who'd Have Known," T-Pain's laidback auto-tuned mid-tempo tune, is built around the dreamy, adult lullaby, finds the autotuned rapper king telling the story of a party animal promising his neglected girl he'll return home soon. T-Pain is apparently over the loony nuttiness that defined him five years ago, and is all on his "this song is serious!" tip with a heavy dose of Auto-Tune, and of those stripper windows in Amsterdam.
"The song is basically about me being where I am at a club. I'm just taking too long and Lily wants me to come home right now," T-Pain explained. "And it happens a lot with me in real life, so why not make a song about it? She doesn't care where I am or what I'm doing, she just wants me to come home. But she needs me, she needs her hubby." Directed by Erik White, the video's story is a literal interpretation of the track, T-Pain getting a text strolling on home as his girlfriend awaits.
It's a long, languid clip that matches Allen's musical bed, and features an emotional T-Pain strolling the late night streets solo, looking like he's about to cry, and struggling to get in contact with his music video girlfriend Allen, who isn't in the video and is represented by a close-up of a woman's mouth singing her oft-repeated part, and she looks distraught and worried about her R&B boo, texting T-Pain and glumly singing her sampled vocals as she waits on her love. Khalifa makes a guest appearance, with a confident, sexual verse that shows no qualms about showing up at your girlfriend's place at 5 AM.