Chub&B: The Dream v. T-Pain

It's kind of strange that I never bothered to find out anything about The Dream until recently. His hit "Shawty is a 10" was ubiquitous during the latter part of '07, and "Falsetto" has been making the rounds on all the hip-hop & r&b stations in the area. But for a while, I mistakenly thought that The Dream referred to an entire group, not just one guy.


And a chubby guy at that. It wasn't until said Dream's debut album came out that I decided to look him up via youtube. The cover picture screams "hidden fatty" and the picture on the album's back cover pretty much indicates that Terius Nash is as chubby as the underage girl who just friended you on Myspace. Luckily for us, he can't hide his zoftig figure behind mirror shots and high contrast - check out the videos.





There are some members of the hip-hop world whose faces are instantly recognizable. We all knew what 50 looked like before Get Rich or Die Trying came out; young girls, mothers, and grandmothers certainly know what Chris Brown's prepubescent face is like. And there are some artists whose faces you may not know, but once you do eventually see that cover, you're like "Yeah, that's about right." When I first saw Sean Kingston, I was kind of weirded out that he was a pudgy teenager, but after a while it began to make sense..."Beautiful Girls" samples "Stand By Me," it's about retarded teenagers killing themselves, etc etc etc.

So why was I so worked up over The Dream's larger-than-life figure? It's more that when you hear an explicit (and cocky) boner jam like "Falsetto," you expect a suaver looking guy. And when you hear such a high pitched and young sounding voice, you expect someone closer to Soulja Boy's age, not Soulja Slim's. But after I got over my initial shock, I started getting a little excited. Perhaps this would be the man to battle T-Pain for the title of "Most Awkward Former Nerd in Hip-Hop That Still Doesn't Quite Fit in and Still Hasn't Quite Lost That Baby (Ph)Fat"?

Not quite. Let's keep this in perspective: The Dream sings about the involuntary vocalizations women make when he fucks; T-Pain sings about his Mini Cooper. We may have a while yet before we find another R&B star as enigmatic and dorky as Teddy Penderazdoun.


Granted, we must give credit where credit is due. The Dream is responsible for the delicious megahit "Umbrella" and the pretty terrible megahit "Bed". But that might be why his solo career seems to ring hollow: it seems as if Mr. Nash is merely attempting to capitalize upon his successful songwriting. And that might be the greatest difference between "Shawty is a 10" and "Shawty" - The Dream is just a regular hip-hopper looking to make money to buy a new car; T-Pain is ubiquitous not because he really needs the money anymore, but you can hear the pleading in his voice on every guest spot as he struggles to remain in the spotlight, to finally get some attention, just a little while longer.