T-Pain has love on his mind. The man who led the auto-tune revolution—and yet can sing like a soulful angel with out it—is premiering his lyric video for “Officially Yours,” which features sweet, emotional footage from fan-submitted wedding clips.

“I didn’t want to pay two actors to act like they’re in love,” T-Pain tells Upvoted. “I wanted to get depictions of real love. There’s a difference. When the bride walks down the aisle, you can see that love in the groom’s eyes. You gotta get that in the real moment, in real time. And a lot of people really delivered.”

For Valentine’s Day, we talked on the phone with the Tallahassee native about first dates, tough breakups, threesomes, and what love looks like today with his wife Amber Najm.

The “Officially Yours” lyric video is an ode to real weddings. What was your own wedding like?

We did City Hall. I borrowed one of my dad’s suits. Amber was pregnant. My mom showed up. My dad came. They had a disposable wind-up Kodak camera. We were never big believers in, “Hey, on the first day of our life together, let’s spend all our money!” We didn’t want to do that. It seemed like the smarter thing to do was to say, “Let’s get to the court house, make this thing official, get you a dope ring and there you go.”

Being married for 13 years and having three children (ages 11, 8 and 6), how do you keep the passion alive?



With school hours and stuff like that, you know, we’re having sex on Australia time [laughs]. We’re doing it in the daytime.

What do your texts to Amber look like?



If I haven’t talked to her during part of the day, I always start off with, “Hey, pretty girl” or “Hello beautiful” or “What’s my sexy woman doing?” I also like to text her, “It’s time for P in the Va-G.” I say that a lot [laughs].

What does she do that makes you laugh?

She does a French accent whenever something is supposedly fancy but it’s not. You know like if you go to a wedding and they’ve got red Solo cups everywhere or if someone drives up in brand new Honda Civic like it’s the most luxurious shit? She’ll do the French “Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh!” and it kills me every time.

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What are your sleeping positions?

Somehow, we always wake up touching butts. I dunno what happens in between when we fall asleep and when we wake up, but somehow our butts end up touching.

Any morning rituals?

As soon as we wake up, she opens a meditation app, cranks up the Apple TV and we meditate for 30 or 40 minutes before do anything else in our day. We get up and be one with each other and the universe. And we feel good and free and happy.

Do you both have any annoying habits that the other one complains about?

I literally wipe my hands on everything. If my hands are dirty and there are no napkins around, I’ll wipe them on whatever’s next to me—the sheets, blankets, the wall, her. I’m not gonna keep that shit on my hands. She always complains about that.

For me with her, she thinks she’s fat. That bothers the hell out of me. She keeps buying the same size clothes and they all fit exactly the same. She’s bigger than she wants to be, I guess. She’s definitely not fat. She’s beautiful as hell to me, the finest motherfucker.

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In past interviews, you’ve talked about enjoying threesomes. Is that still something you’re into as a couple?

No, it was one of those things that we used to want to do for a while and it kinda fizzled away. It was just a phase, I guess. We realized that our sex alone is much better than threesomes. Adding girls wasn’t really making anything spicier. It was actually calming it down. Additions aren’t always improvements.

You’ve called yourself an “expert in relationships,” so for Valentine’s Day, we wanted to ask you for some love advice.

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh! I can try.

How can a person get through a tough breakup?

The first thing people have to realize is breakups are much tougher for men to go through than women. A woman will get over a guy way quicker than a guy will get over a woman. It’s been proven, studied and everything.

Now there’s no way to “get over it.” It’s more of an acceptance that this is what’s going to make that other person happy. If you can’t get over somebody, that means you’re being selfish and you just want that person. You’re not thinking about if you want that person to be happy. If you want that person to be happy and they’ve made that decision to break up, then that’s what makes that person happy and you should be happy for that person. You should be proud of that person for being strong enough to make that decision. If you think about the happiness of that person, that will get you over a breakup very quickly.

What’s your idea of the perfect first date?

The perfect first date. Man, in a perfect world, it would just be both parties being honest with each other. People can find out so much about themselves and the rest of the world if they’re just honest. Like, people can say, “Hey, listen. I fucking love video games. I play them all the time, but not the new ones, the retro games.” And the other person might be like, “Oh my God! I like that, too! I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought you’d think I was weird!” And then you find out that you’ve got that connection.

The perfect first date is just chillin’, walking, Netflix, chill, pizza, normal shit. No fancy this, no fancy that. Don’t waste your money. Go buy an inflatable pool and fill it up with blankets and just lay down outside and watch the stars. My wife and I just did this and it was fucking awesome. If you’ve got an iPhone, pull up one of those constellation apps. It’s super dope. And if it’s snowing, oh it’s great.

If you had to create an online dating profile today, what would you write?

My name would be Awesome Bill from Dawsonville. My profile would read, “Hot, slightly overweight, dark chocolate male looking for the love of his life or the like of the night.”

Perfection.

[Laughs] Nailed it!

“Officially Yours” is off T-Pain’s forthcoming album, Stoicville: The Phoenix, which is out later this year via Nappy Boy Entertainment/Konvict Muzik/RCA Records.