The Kendrick-Drake feud shows how technology is changing rap battles | TechCrunch

It seems we are Everyone agrees: Kendrick Lamar defeated Drake in one of the most entertaining rap battles of the decade. To add insult to injury, Drake also got himself into legal trouble by deepfaking late rapper Tupac.

The tension between Lamar and Drake goes back decades, but this latest flare-up came last fall after J. started at the time of col dropped a song Referring to Drake, Lamar and himself as the “Big Three” in rap. This March, Lamar finally responded by rejecting Cole’s claim. a sharp poem This insulted him and Drake. The fight began, and soon, a bunch of other hip-hop artists jumped in, releasing music and taking their stand against drake,

The feud, which lasted weeks, turned into one of the most intense rap battles of the digital age. were there side fight (between Chris Brown and Quavo) and White Flag (J. Cole apologized to Lamar and Removed your dissenting response. To the rapper). During this, social media-generated campaigns And gifts against Drake, and support for diss tracks against him appeared in everything japanese rap To Indian classical dance,

The feud has sparked conversations about when and how AI should be used in music, as well as the growing role of technology in rap beefs.

A key moment came on the track “Taylor Made”, where Drake tried to break Lamar is using AI vocals from Snoop Dogg and Tupac, a rap icon who was murdered decades ago. Drake did not receive permission from Tupac’s estate to use the late rapper’s vocals and was threatened with a lawsuit unless he removed the track. Even though Drake pulled it off, his decision to use AI vocals sparked discussion among music fans and tech experts alike.

(Lamar and Drake could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.)

Rap battles have gone online chronologically

An artist like Tupac, who died in 1996, could not have imagined that artificial intelligence could imitate his voice so convincingly that one of the most popular rappers of that time would put it into a song. He also could not understand how the nature of the social Internet would shape the future of music, where “every stream is a vote,

Early on, rappers had to funnel their diss tracks through radio, releasing physical albums and mixtapes while giving interviews during the feud years. Responding to a disagreement could take at most days, whereas today, it can take mere seconds.

Less than 20 minutes after Drake dropped his track against Lamar, Lamar issued a scathing response to Drake. Lamar hinted that there were leaks in Drake’s camp that made it possible for him to fall so quickly, and that in itself is an anomaly. Before the Internet became so ubiquitous, that speed would have been impossible.

He released two songs within four days in response to Drake’s feud with Meek Mill nearly 10 years ago. But Lamar dropped four songs within five days during this feud, including two in one day. No one needed to pull over their car to buy a CD or listen to the radio, as one founder did during Jay-Z’s infamous feud with Nas. Instead, the track was immediately put on YouTube, shared on Twitter, and then streamed on Spotify on a loop.

The speed of these releases has its downside: In another viral moment, Lamar confused actor Haley Joel Osment and televangelist Joel Osteen in his lyrics.

Fans have also referred to Drake as “chronically online” during the rap battle, as his real-time posts about rap seem to influence them. Some fans accused him of referencing popular tweets and memes people made about him during the feud, then presenting them as his own and rapping about them. Many people commented online that it felt like Drake was writing his responses specifically for his fans to listen to rather than responding to Lamar. That almost instantaneous feedback loop was a stark contrast to Lamar’s rap, which was completely poignant in his attacks against Drake.

This fight is perhaps the first time such beef has extended to tech platforms on a wide scale. lamar fans used Google Map To virtually tear down Drake’s mansion, renaming it “Owned by Kendrick.” Streamers worked long hours on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Kik, waiting to see if they could be one of the first to react to the newly dropped song.

Anthony Fantano, a popular music YouTuber, published at least six different live reaction videos over the past two weeks reacting to Drake and Lamar’s songs. of this type reaction video became so popular that the creators Lamar is saying (or his team) removed the copyright restrictions on these songs, meaning they Can benefit from his videos. This move alone could give more meaning to the role of hip-hop reaction pundit.

AI has entered the chat

The Kendrick-Drake feud is also the first mainstream rap battle to use AI.

Artists across genres are considering the co-existing danger and potential of this technology. Some people have embraced AI as an opportunity: art pop duo Yacht trained ai 2019 marked 14 years of his music making the record “Chain Tripping”; holly herndon And grimes The duo have developed tools to generate AI deepfakes of other actors using their voices. Other artists like Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry have protested Against the use of AI to undermine human creativity.

Consent is a primary concern of artists in the debate about AI-generated music. Artists care a lot about what their peers are doing because their use of AI affects them all – unbeknownst to them, their music can be used to train an AI model that another artist can use for their Using to complement the music.

While Herndon is at the forefront of musical experimentation with AI, she also advocates for artists to retain control over their work. She uses AI in her art, but she’s also the founder of The producer, a startup that creates tools for artists that help them get their work off of popular AI training datasets. Meanwhile, chillwave musician Washed Out recently released a controversial music video created entirely using open AI SoraA text-to-video model that has not yet been released to the public.

Tupac’s estate will argue that Drake crossed a line because he did not have consent to emulate the late rapper. But Rich Fortune, co-founder of HangTight, an AI-powered social planning app, said it was creative that Drake was one of the first artists to use AI in a song, especially on a diss track. Fortune says, “There are no rules in battle.”

He added, “If there was a time to see what the reaction would be, it would be now because punches are not thrown in times of war.” He believes more artists will want to use AI vocals after Drake, one of the biggest artists in the world, has effectively approved its use.

In fact, the AI-generated work was used in a diss track against Drake in this feud, and it has since turned into a meme against him. producer metro boomin took An AI song called “BBL Drizzy” and sampled it on a track This has become one of the rallies against the rapper.

Meanwhile, big artists like Beyoncé have taken a stance against the growing presence of AI. One of the few public comments he has made regarding his genre-oriented album “Cowboy Carter”. Beyoncé said: “The more I see the world evolve, the more I feel a deep connection with the sacred. With artificial intelligence and digital filters and programming, I wanted to go back to real instruments.

Fortune said the biggest hurdle now for artists who want to use AI is just getting permission. Living artists may not be so eager to become replicants of AI, but the assets of deceased musicians might. The problem is that many older artists who have died, like Tupac, cannot consent to being copied because AI-generated music was not a technology envisioned before their deaths.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing, but that’s the direction we’re going in,” Fortune said of using the works of deceased composers. At the very least, he said, it opens up a new source of revenue for the estates of artists who don’t mind being artificially reincarnated.

The Kendrick-Drake controversy also revealed another point about AI: its potential ability to imitate artists with less unique styles. Fintech founder Luke Bailey neon money club, said that Drake’s recent music lacks depth. This, coupled with allegations that Drake was taking direct and deliberate inspiration from what he saw on the Internet, raises concerns that he is doing something that an AI bot might one day do.

“There are two types of musicians: those who can play whatever someone asks them to play and those who can create something original from scratch,” Bailey said. “AI is at the forefront at this stage of its development.”

Bailey is right. Large language models (LLM), the type of artificial intelligence that powers most deepfake tools, are inherently non-constructive. These models synthesize large amounts of data and then respond to a user-generated signal by predicting the most likely response.

But the most famous music often takes the opposite approach: Look at Kendrick Lamar, a rapper whose bars are so complex that he remains the only non-classical and jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize. He is often considered one of music’s foremost thinkers and is known for his commentary on race and politics. right now lacks cultural nuances To form your own views on society, not to mention something as subtle as race.

,[AI] Can’t copy Kendrick’s depth, can only copy his voice,” Bailey said, fans have heard AI-generated Drake songs are quite convincing last. “AI doesn’t have any powerful barriers yet.”