AI, Tech Changes Rap Battles in Kendrick-Drake Feud

AI is used in rap feuds, as Drake’s Tupac Deepfake & Kendrick Lamar’s diss tracks dominate the epic battles.

We all believe that Kendrick Lamar prevailed against Drake in one of the most captivating rap feuds of the past ten years. Drake further got himself in legal trouble by deepfaking the late artist Tupac, which only served to exacerbate the situation. 

Although there has been animosity between Lamar and Drake for decades, J. Cole’s song from last autumn labeled Drake, Lamar, and himself the “Big Three” in rap. Finally responding in March, Lamar scornfully criticized Cole’s claim in a lyric that disparaged both Drake and him. Other hip-hop musicians entered the fray when the feud broke out, putting out new songs and siding against Drake.

One of the most fierce rap battles of the digital era emerged from the weeks-long quarrel. White flags were raised (J. Cole withdrew his trash reaction to the rapper and apologized to Kendrick Lamar), and there were side fights (between Quavo and Chris Brown). Social media campaigns and freebies supported diss songs against Drake, and they emerged in everything from Indian traditional dance to Japanese rap. 

In addition to provoking discussion over whether and how AI should be utilized in music, the feud has also brought attention to technology’s growing role in rap feuds. 

A crucial section of the song “Taylor Made” featured Drake’s attempt to diss Lamar using artificial intelligence (AI) samples of Snoop Dogg and Tupac, a legendary rapper who passed away decades ago. Drake was threatened with legal action unless he took down the song, as Tupac’s estate had not permitted him to utilize the late rapper’s vocals. Drake removed it, but his choice to include AI voices sparked conversation among techies and music enthusiasts. 

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

Rap fights have always been conducted online

Tupac, a musician who passed away in 1996, could never have dreamed that artificial intelligence would be able to replicate his voice in such a convincing way that one of the hottest rappers at the time would use it in a song. Additionally, he could not comprehend how the social media landscape will influence music in the future when “every stream is a vote.”

In the early 2000s, rappers had to distribute their diss tracks over the radio, put out physical albums and mixtapes, and conduct interviews during conflicts. Responding to an insult used to take days at most, but now, it only takes a few seconds. 

After Drake dropped his track against Kendrick Lamar, Lamar responded with a diss track almost immediately. Lamar said that Drake’s rapid decline was caused by leaks within his camp, which is a disgrace in and of itself. That speed was only feasible with the internet’s widespread use. 

Drake responded to his battle with Meek Mill almost ten years ago by dropping two songs in four days. During this war, however, Lamar released four songs in five days, including two in a single day. One entrepreneur recalls doing just that during Jay-Z’s notorious rivalry with Nas: no one had to run out to buy CDs or pull over their automobiles to listen to the radio. Instead, songs were swiftly uploaded on YouTube, disseminated via Twitter, and looped through Spotify. 

There are drawbacks to these releases’ rapidity: Another viral incident occurred when Lamar’s lyrics misidentified televangelist Joel Osteen as actor Haley Joel Osment. 

During the rap fight, fans have also referred to Drake as “chronically online” because of the way their in-the-moment posts about the raps appeared to affect him. Some followers claimed he was singing about well-known memes and tweets people had written about him during the feud, passing them off as his opinions. Many individuals on the internet remarked that, instead of responding to Lamar, Drake seemed to be composing his answers just for his followers to hear. The heartfelt attacks on Drake in Kendrick Lamar’s raps starkly contrasted with that almost instantaneous feedback cycle. 

This conflict may also be the first time a major digital platform feud of this kind has arisen. Lamar fans literally vandalized Drake’s estate by calling it “Owned by Kendrick” using Google Maps. To be the first to react to a freshly released song, streamers spend lengthy hours on websites like Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. 

Over the previous two weeks, popular music YouTuber Anthony Fantano has released at least six live reaction videos in response to songs released by Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Because of how well-liked these reaction videos have become, some producers claim that Lamar or his staff has lifted the copyright restrictions on the tracks, allowing them to make money from their videos. This step might give the hip-hop reaction commentator position greater significance. 

AI has joined the conversation

In addition, the Kendrick-Drake dispute is the first famous rap fight to employ AI. 

Artists from all genres are addressing this technology’s dual implications and risks. Some have embraced AI as a business opportunity. Holly Herndon and Grimes have developed tools allowing other musicians to make AI deepfakes using their voices. The art-pop duo Yacht trained an AI on 14 years of their music to create the “Chain Tripping” record in 2019. Other musicians, including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry, have opposed using AI to stifle human innovation. 

Consent is the main issue in artists’ discussions concerning AI-generated music. Since their music may be utilized, without their knowledge, to train an AI model that another artist can use to augment their work, artists are deeply concerned about what their peers are doing regarding AI. 

Herndon is a pioneer in using AI in music, but she also supports giving artists ownership of their creations. In addition to incorporating AI into her artwork, she is the creator of Spawning, a firm that offers tools to artists to let them take their work off the widely used AI training datasets. Meanwhile, Open AI’s Sora text-to-video model—which has not yet been made public—was exclusively used in the contentious music video that chillwave artist Washed Out just released. 

Drake’s estate would contend that Drake went too far in copying the late rapper because he didn’t have permission to do so. However, Rich Fortune—who co-founded Hangtight, an AI-powered social planning app—thought it was clever that Drake was among the first musicians to incorporate AI into a song, particularly on a diss track. “There are no rules in a battle,” says Fortune. 

He added, “If there were ever a time to see the response, it would be now because, in wartime, people don’t pull punches.” Given that one of the top artists in the world, Drake, has essentially approved the usage of AI vocals, he believes that other artists will now try to employ them. 

One of the diss tracks from this battle with Drake was created using artificial intelligence (AI) and has since become a meme criticizing him. Producer Metro Boomin sampled a sound that has become one of the rallying cries against the rapper from the AI song “BBL Drizzy.” 

Meanwhile, well-known performers like Beyoncé have declared their opposition to AI’s growing influence. “The more I see the world evolving, the more I felt a deeper connection to purity,” Beyoncé remarked in one of her few public remarks about her genre-bending album “Cowboy Carter.” I wanted to return to using actual instruments instead of artificial intelligence, digital filters, and programming. 

According to Fortune, obtaining authorization is currently the most significant obstacle for artists wishing to use AI. While the heirs of deceased musicians may be interested in having AI duplicate their work, living artists may not be. The issue is that since AI-generated music was not a technology conceived before their deaths, many classic musicians who have passed away, such as Tupac, cannot consent to being imitated. 

Using the music of deceased performers is a move in the right direction; however, Fortune expressed doubt about its merits. He stated that it provides the estates of the artists who don’t mind their being artificially resurrected with a fresh stream of income, at the absolute least. 

Another aspect of AI that came to light during the Kendrick-Drake conflict was its capacity to mimic musicians with less distinctive styles. According to Luke Bailey, the creator of the fintech Neon Money Club, Drake’s more recent music needs more substance. This raises the possibility that Drake is undertaking work that an AI bot may eventually accomplish, especially in light of the claims that he was purposefully and explicitly taking inspiration from what he observed online. 

According to Bailey, there are two kinds of musicians: those who can perform songs assigned to them and those who can compose unique music entirely on their own. “At this point in its evolution, AI is the former.” 

Bailey is accurate. Most deepfake technologies are powered by large language models (LLMs), a kind of artificial intelligence that naturally lacks creativity. These algorithms combine enormous amounts of data to estimate the most likely response to a user’s prompt. 

However, the most well-known music frequently adopts the opposite strategy: Take a look at Kendrick Lamar, the rapper still the only non-classical/jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize despite his intricate barding. He is well-known for his political and racial criticism and is frequently considered one of the leading minds in the music industry. AI lacks the cultural complexity to develop its own opinions on society, let alone anything as complex as race. 

Bailey remarked, “[AI] can’t copy Kendrick’s depth, only his voice,” but fans have already heard some fairly convincing Drake songs created by AI. “AI still lacks powerful bars.”