Canadian rap artist Drake was forced to pull a diss track he had produced that used an AI-generated voice of Tupac Shakur.
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The AI train has left the station. Now, guardrails need to be hastily built to keep the technology from running the music industry off the tracks.
Canadian rapper Drake at the Billboard Music Awards in May 2019. Drake’s recent beef with American rapper Kendrick Lamar highlights how Canadian rap is often seen as distant from American hip hop culture.
(Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
Beefs often target Drake’s race, constructing him as a Canadian who is not Black enough to claim an authentic connection to African-American hip hop culture.
Rappers Kendrick Lamar (left) and Drake have released a series of diss tracks attacking each other recently as part of a growing feud.
(AP Photo)
The diss tracks released by rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar raise interesting questions about defamation in music lyrics.
Canadian police and television reporters gather outside the rapper Drake’s Toronto mansion after a shooting there in May 2024.
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Since rap’s emergence, artists have boasted about themselves in ways that were funny and sometimes violent, vulgar and sexist. The popularity of the music and its exploitation can be dangerous.
The temporary boycott led to the removal of music from artists including Harry Styles Adele, Billie Eilish, Drake, Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West.
Numerous rap songs criticize the Reagan administration for its complicity in the illicit drug trade.
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Ronald Reagan may have been known as ‘The Great Communicator,’ but rap artists don’t view his legacy through such rose-colored glasses. A professor of Black studies and history takes a closer look.
DJ Kool Herc is considered the “sonic originator” of hip-hop.
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With Congress designating Aug. 11, 2021, as Hip-Hop Celebration Day, a scholar and performer of the art form makes the case for hip-hop to become more prominent in American academe.
Keorapetse Kgositsile with US author Alice Walker, 1996.
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A study of the late Keorapetse Kgositsile shows how the poet influenced black American culture. It also shows how his mother and his grandmother’s oral traditions in turn influenced him.
Kendrick Lamar performing in Portugal.
Jose Sena Goulao/EPA
Whether it is art or pop, high or low, terms such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness can help us judge a work of music. And Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. brims with these qualities.
Saxophonist Kamasi Washington will be performing at the 2017 Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Something really magical is happening at the intersection between jazz and hip-hop at the moment. Many of the artists involved will be playing at Africa’s foremost jazz festival.
The cover of Childish Gambino’s album ‘Awaken my love’.