Travie McCoy Claims T-Pain Had 4 Screens Playing Porn While They Made Music (Exclusive)

Travie McCoy is reminiscing about making music with T-Pain.

The Gym Class Heroes frontman, now 44, previously collaborated with the “Bartender” hitmaker, 41, on a handful of songs including 2010’s “The Manual” and “Tattoo Girl” with Lil Wayne and 2012’s “I’ll Never Be.”

McCoy tells PEOPLE being on the road with T-Pain for the “Lollipop” rapper’s I Am Music Tour between 2008 and 2009 was “one of the dopest tours I’ve ever done,” and it cemented a friendship between him and the “Buy U a Drank” artist, who he ended up signing to his Nappy Boy Entertainment label.

“T-Pain and I became really, really good friends on that tour, and he had a studio on his bus, so I’d go up and listen to beats,” McCoy recalls. “And there was one beat in particular, I think it was a song called ‘That’s Not Cool.’ It didn’t end up on [my 2010 solo] record [Lazarus], but that’s the first song him and I recorded together, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is fun.”

The “Clothes Off” performer also recalled his experience with T-Pain in the studio.

“Pain’s different,” says McCoy. “So when Pain’s in the studio, even on his studio bus, or the studio on his bus, there’s four screens and each one is playing a different porn video.”

He continues: “I was not used to that. I knew he was the strip club king, and I knew he made all the anthems for single mothers and s—, but I wasn’t prepared.”

Reps for T-Pain have not yet responded to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

McCoy recalls the experience being “weird at first,” but he then “just kind of blocked it out.”

“I guess that’s what gets him in his zone to make strip club anthems, you know?” he says. “So we did a song called ‘That’s Not Cool,’ and I just couldn’t stop listening to it. And then we did another one. I think the next one we did was a song called ‘Bad All by Myself,’ and we just kept making songs.”

Then, McCoy realized he wanted to make a record.

“So, that whole tour, as soon as I get off stage, I go back to my bus and write a couple verses. Then when he got off stage, I’d give him his little grace period…and then I’d bang on his bus, ‘You ready? Come on, man,'” he recalls.

“We started cooking up that whole tour,” recalls McCoy.