9 takeaways from T-Pain’s Wiscansin Fest in Milwaukee with Lil Jon, Juvenile, Hannibal Buress and more

"This is (expletive) huge for me," a stunned T-Pain said before about 4,000 people at the Rave's Eagles Ballroom Saturday — and fans watching a livestream on the LiveOne app and the singer and rapper's Twitch page.

Just three years ago, T-Pain reached a low point in his career, he said Saturday, when he had to scrap a planned tour due to poor ticket sales.

So he took a leap, went independent, cut his management and, three years later, put together the Road to Wiscansin Fest tour. It was a sold-out run, culminating in his inaugural Wiscansin Fest, a three-stage, nearly nine-hour event T-Pain personally curated, boasting 18 acts, from fellow hip-hop veterans and friends like Lil Jon and Juvenile, to emerging stars like Bleu and Erica Banks.

"There's nothing else that can describe what I'm feeling in my heart right now other than pure, unmitigated gratitude," T-Pain said from the stage Saturday.

As flabbergasted as T-Pain seemed, the fact that this new milestone was centered around Wisconsin is even more unreal.

In 2008, almost certainly on a whim, T-Pain pronounced Wisconsin "Wiscansin" to make it rhyme with "mansion" on what would become one of his biggest hits, "Can't Believe It."

A decade later, seemingly out of the blue, he launched a fake and funny "Wiscansin University" webpage complete with a new Wiscansin merch line, with Wiscansin Fest expanding his emerging Wiscansin empire.

"This is (expletive) year one," he yelled Saturday during his set. "It's only going up from here."

Here's a look at the highs (and yes, a couple lows) of his inaugural Wiscansin Fest.

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T-Pain reaches a new peak (and gets a day named after him)

Saturday marked a milestone for T-Pain in a career loaded with them — from two Grammys and 13 nominations, to 15 songs that reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, to winning Season 1 of Fox's "The Masked Singer."

But consistently top of mind for the man of the hour were the fans who made his dreams come true. During his set, he literally said "Thank You" 50 times, and in the middle of an electrifying "I'm Sprung," stopped the show when he saw a fan in distress, making sure they got water and that space was cleared up front to get them out of the pit and checked over by medics.

"(Expletive) hydrate everybody," he said. "Make sure you take care of yourself. I give a (expletive) about each and every one of you in this (expletive), and I want to make sure you have a good time."

It's clear his fans had a great time, with T-Pain going above and beyond for his fest finale, staying on stage two hours, a full hour later than initially scheduled.

The nearly nonstop mash-up of hits was head-spinning — "Buy You a Drank (Shawty Snappin'), "Bartender," his Kanye West collaboration "Good Life" — the DJ-backed mix sometimes slipping into instrumental cameos from big rap hits like Travis Scott's "Sicko Mode" and Megan Thee Stallion's "Savage."

Wrongly accused earlier in his career of masking a poor singing voice behind his influential use of Auto-Tune, T-Pain's pretty pipes were clear from behind the filter for songs like "U Up," while a new song, "That's Just Tips," showed how propulsive his flow continues to be.

Of course, "Can't Believe It" with that "Wiscansin" line killed it, and a bunch of inflatable cows bounced around the pit for T-Pain and Flo Rida's joint hit "Low."

Then near the set's end, for the DJ Khaled track "All I Do Is Win," featuring T-Pain, a bunch of other artists from the bill and members of his entourage — including Lil Jon, Mija, and Krizz Kaliko — came on stage to cheer him on. So did T-Pain's wife Amber Najm, who he praised for encouraging him to keep going when he thought about quitting. His parents, sister, niece and nephew were in the crowd, too.

And after a sweet little speech in which Lil Jon praised T-Pain's generosity, the rapper really got his flowers — actually, multiple framed gold and platinum records certifying some of his hits.

And that wasn't all. While on stage, an overwhelmed T-Pain was read and given an official proclamation from Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson declaring June 11 "T-Pain Day" in the city.

Lil Jon brings huge energy

Has any artist ever gotten more mileage from a single four-letter than Lil Jon’s pronunciation of the word “Yeah”? There’s an irresistible power in his phrasing, and when he fired it off like a rocket launcher at the start of his set Saturday, the crowd exploded.

He’s got so much goodwill he easily could coast — and he kind of did during “Get Low,” letting fans tackle the chorus and point to the Rave’s window and its wall. But in front of frantic visuals that recast Jon as a video-game character, the rap vet’s 25-minute set was a breathless, heart-racing, song-blurring medley of signatures — including a nod to his appearance on Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” remix and his “Turn Down For What” shouts for the DJ Snake smash. And, of course, there were those brilliant yeahs for Usher’s “Yeah.”

Juvenile (and his son) get 'em hyped

The 1,000-person capacity basement venue in the Rave was way too small for Juvenile, with fans stretching out beyond the doors. But the rap veteran — with his son serving as hype man, and Milwaukee’s Djay Mando behind the turntables — thrived on the electricity inside that small, packed, sweaty room, delivering rhymes with ferocity, his white shirt swiftly soaked, before closing out his “old-school party” with the explosive one-two punch of “Slow Motion” and “Back That Azz Up.”

Bleu is a big letdown

At about a half-hour each (aside from T-Pain), Wiscansin Fest sets were short to begin with — fair, given all the acts on the bill. But some fans might have felt shortchanged by the brevity of Bleu’s set. Third on the lineup list, Bleu ended up performing for 15 to 20 minutes of his allocated half-hour, with his laid-back energy and the DJ's clumsy, anticlimactic fade-outs between songs extinguishing any energy that a bloated countdown video generated before he took the stage. Bleu recently rebranded himself, dropping the Yung from his moniker, but Saturday’s set suggests his live show is in need of a major overhaul.

Hannibal Buress raps (and jokes around, too)

“If this rap (expletive) don’t work out, I’ll go back to making huge movies,” Hannibal Buress said with a laugh. A stand-up since he was 19, and today one of the biggest names in comedy, the 39-year-old Chicago native released a debut hip-hop EP this spring named after his new rap altar ego — Eshu Tune. Wiscansin Fest was his musical festival debut.

It was rough going at times, with the visuals frequently not lining up with the songs, but comedians like Buress thrive on chaos, and he seemed elated that the set could crash and burn at any moment. He turned the technical snafu into a goofy four-minute freestyle, and watching him scream and sprint in the pit while ballerinas danced gracefully on stage at one point was a surreal, funny sight. The songs, too, had laughs. “1-3 Pocket” was, as Buress proclaimed, “the hardest track about bowling that ever exists,” while during “CMDGT” he called out for increasingly ridiculous samples — from Alex Trebek to Al Roker to Karl Rove — as the song progressed.

O.T. Genasis loses fans, still wins

O.T. Genasis proclaimed his two-step mission statement early in his set: to get “turnt up,” and to get “turnt the (expletive) up, (expletive).” Unfortunately, more than two-thirds of the people in the sweltering basement for the previous Juvenile set fled for fresh air or more spacious stages. But the sparse crowd didn’t phase Genasis, who had a great time riding the rapper’s swagger through “I Look Good” and “Everybody Mad,” a song that applied to absolutely no one in the crowd.

Erica Banks twerks with fans on stage

Erica Banks proclaimed herself the “Flow Queen” during her set Saturday, and while there are a whole lot of women (including Milwaukee native Lakeyah) striving for that crown right now, Banks made a pretty assured case. Beyond her vocal command through sex-positive bangers, she already has great stage command and a transcendent ability to let her self-love aura shine over her largely female fans packing her set. Six women were handpicked by Banks to take the stage for her finale, where they twerked and slapped each other’s butts for Banks’ Nelly-sampling breakout hit “Buss It.”

K Camp comes home

It was a nice gesture for T-Pain to have some Wisconsin representation on the top of the bill for Wiscansin Fest, in the form of Milwaukee native K Camp. But to be honest, Camp’s city ties have never been particularly pronounced — he’s always represented Atlanta — and he seemed to be working overtime boasting about his “hits upon hits upon hits” for a hometown crowd in a largely empty Eagles Ballroom Saturday. But the fans who were there were loyal through and through, carrying much of the weight with singalongs for “Marilyn Monroe” and “Comfortable,” and one fan was invited on stage to sing and rap with Camp through “Friendly.”

Some final thoughts

With 18 acts across seven and a half hours on three stages, the Rave staff and event producers had their work cut out for them. But they pulled it off, giving fans easy access to shows, clear messaging about scheduling, and sets that largely started and ended on time. Even bathroom and beer lines were short, and there were plenty of spots inside and outside the building to get away from the music.

There was one big shortcoming, though. Lines for the three food trucks out front were painfully slow and barely organized. I was in line for an hour and barely moved before giving up, and one of the trucks ran out of food by 5:30 p.m. Maybe next time, they can move the merch stand inside to different spots in the building to free up space for another food truck, or get food options inside the building too.

And I do expect there'll be a next time. T-Pain said so himself.

"The first annual Wiscansin Fest has gone so (expletive) well," he proclaimed during his set. "I have to do this (expletive) every (expletive) year."

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: T-Pain hosts first Wiscansin Fest at the Rave in Milwaukee