The Student Programming Board (SPB) announced that T-Pain will be replaced by Roy Woods at WILD in an email sent to the student body Wednesday night.

“SPB had no reason to believe this would happen until we received notification late Monday night and we recognize that this is disappointing news for many students, a sentiment that we echo,” SPB’s executive board wrote in the email.

Courtesy of Dragan Andic

Rapper Roy Woods will replace former headliner T-Pain at WILD Friday. The Student Programming Board announced the change in an email to the student body Wednesday night. Woods is best-known for his song “Drama.”

According to SPB president sophomore Adin Ehrlich, T-Pain cancelled due to “mandatory vocal rest as prescribed by his doctor.” He also cancelled on “another university and a concert as well” according to Ehrlich.

T-Pain finished a 21-day, 14 stop tour April 9, before embarking on a university swing; he’s performed at three colleges at least since the end of his tour.

After receiving news of the cancellation Monday night, SPB combed through a “very limited list of options” before booking Roy Woods Wednesday morning.

“Based off price and availability…Roy Woods was the only one we could end up bringing,” Ehrlich said. “I’m glad that someone was available, because if not that would not have been the best situation.”

Ehrlich attributes the delay between the booking and email to SPB shoring up details of the performance before it was made official.

“We were just trying to prep our statement to make sure everything was ready to go before we put out any public announcement,” Ehrlich said.

Ehrlich says T-Pain’s cancellation won’t interfere with the production of WILD, noting that “all production elements and everything are ready to go.”

“We notified our staging company, and they should be able to take care of it,” Ehrlich said. “WILD will go on as normal except without T-Pain.”

Sophomore Noor Bekhiet is decidedly unhappy about the artist swap.

“T-Pain is my favorite ever,” Bekhiet wrote in a statement to Student Life. “He’s the Picasso of the modern day. This is legitimately my worst nightmare. My sister was coming from Wisconsin for T-Pain and now she has to be utterly disappointed. I already emailed his manager, his press team, and his video game design team and I dm’d him from all of my Instagram accounts. I don’t know what else to do. Please Mr. T-Pain, if you are reading this, please reconsider.”