One high school senior is ending his school year on a note that only T-Pain could hit, thanks to a memorable yearbook quote.
When Gabriel Silvan, a 17-year-old student at Kentwood High School in Covington, Washington, tweeted T-Pain last year for inspiration for his senior yearbook quote, he didn’t think the hip-hop artist would actually respond.
One day after tweeting his request ― “give me a senior quote please:)” ― T-Pain obliged.
Silvan, surprised that T-Pain took the time to answer, sent the singer an excited shoutout ― “YOOOOOO TPAIN!!!!” ― then submitted the suggestion to his yearbook staff.
Six months later, Kentwood High School’s yearbooks came out.
“I’ve been a fan of T-Pain since I got my first MP3 player in 2007,” Silvan told HuffPost. “I never thought he would [respond] but when did I was ecstatic.”
While T-Pain’s suggested quote sounds like something he would croon in Auto-Tune, it’s not actually an original quote. Those words of wisdom were made famous by 1970s Major League Baseball star Oscar Gamble.
The quote was in reference to the “chaos within the New York Yankees clubhouse,” according to the book “Baseball in Montgomery” by Clarence Watkins.
Without context, many people were confused about what T-Pain’s message meant.
Nevertheless, Silvan submitted T-Pain’s quote to the school’s yearbook staff.
This week, it made it to press.
Silvan tweeted T-Pain a picture of the finished product to let the singer know that he is immortalized in the 2016-17 edition of Kentwood High’s yearbook.
In response, T-Pain honored Silvan with a laugh-cry emoji and a slow clap.
“This is the kind of shit I live for,” the singer tweeted to the 17-year-old. He also congratulated him for the major accomplishment ― the tweet, not the whole graduating high school thing.
Still high off of the energy from T-Pain’s reaction, Silvan shared the precious moment on his secondary Twitter account and it quickly went viral.
He called his yearbook quote a product of “a series of very very very very fortunate events.”
While many people thought the T-Pain yearbook quote was great, a lot of Twitter users pointed out that T-Pain ripped off Gamble’s quote.
“Give Oscar Gamble the respect he deserves,” one person wrote to Silvan. Another person defended T-Pain by saying that the singer should “sang it, so he can make it clear.”
Silvan doesn’t mind if T-Pain borrowed the quote from the former ballplayer. He’s just grateful that his favorite hip-hop star reached out to him.
“I don’t care [because] it’s a little unique and [T-Pain] gave it to me over Twitter,” he told HuffPost.
Now Silvan is learning to deal with his 15 minutes of viral fame before he graduates next week.
“It’s wild to go viral. I’m all over Instagram and stuff, but I’m trying to be humble,” he said. “But with all the fame and graduation so close, it’s hard not to show off.”
So far, his plan to stay humble seems to be working ― a little.
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