New York Magzine's Best of '08 Declares Autotune a GENRE

Best New Genre: Auto-TuneIf you’re not sure what Auto-Tune—a piece of software originally intended to correct pitch that can also be used to distort a singer’s voice—sounds like, turn on the radio, and within minutes you’ll hear the syrupy cyborg vocals of T-Pain, whose current hit “Can’t Explain It” might be the pinnacle of the sound. T-Pain was once considered a gimmick, but everyone from Kanye West to R. Kelly to North African pop musicians jumped on the software this year, using it to melt their vocals into stranger and stranger shapes. Auto-Tune might turn out to be an entire genre unto itself.