Watch: T-Pain goes without signature Auto-Tune for NPR concert

In one way, this is totally great. In another, it’s a real bummer.

On Wednesday, NPR posted the latest installment in its so-called Tiny Desk Concert series, in which musicians perform stripped-down sets inside the public radio organization’s offices in Washington, D.C.

The featured act? T-Pain, the pioneering robo-soul singer known for his creative use of Auto-Tune in hits like “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper),” “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” and the gorgeous “Can’t Believe It,” in which he famously rhymes “mansion” and “somewhere in Wisconsin.”

Major respect here to NPR’s Frannie Kelley, who convinced T-Pain to go without his trusty vocal-processing software, a feat of persuasion more or less on par with getting U2’s Edge to leave his delay pedal at home. It must not have been easy. As the singer says at the beginning of the three-song show, “This is weird as hell for me.”

Major respect to T-Pain himself, too. Backed only by a keyboardist, he seriously rips into “Buy U a Drank,” “Up Down (Do This All Day)” and “Drankin’ Patna,” and the result is an impressive reconfiguration of songs that previously seemed pretty well fixed.

But the reaction online to the Tiny Desk Concert -- which by early Thursday had been viewed more than half a million times on YouTube -- troubles me.

“T-Pain Singing Without Auto-Tune Is Actually Really Good,” read a headline on Gawker. “Wait, What? T-Pain Can Actually Sing?” asked another on Celebuzz.

Perhaps most egregiously, an NBC affiliate in the Bay Area proclaimed, “T-Pain Performs Without Auto-Tune for NPR, Shows Off Real Vocals.”

I hate the idea, one that strikes me as deeply naive, that at last we’re seeing the “real” T-Pain here -- that Auto-Tune has somehow obscured him until now. Auto-Tune hasn’t obscured T-Pain; it’s enabled him to reveal what he wanted to reveal.

Trust me when I say that “Default Picture,” a song about falling for a woman based on her Twitter avatar from T-Pain’s underrated 2011 album “Revolver,” would not have the same emotional impact if he hadn’t used Auto-Tune. It’s precisely because he sounds like a melancholy android -- an automated bot just looking for love -- that the song works so well.

Am I glad to have seen the guy present his music in a different light? Of course, and I hope he’ll do it again.

But I also hope he’s not reading these blog posts and thinking he’s finally doing something right.

Twitter: @mikaelwood