Canadian rap artist Drake was forced to pull a diss track he had produced that used an AI-generated voice of Tupac Shakur.
Prince Williams/Wireimage via Getty Images
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.
(Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images
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.
Rap mogul Rick Ross, right, speaks in a hospitality class hosted by entrepreneur David Grutman.
Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Florida International University (FIU)
African artists with major US industry support have the advantage - now more than ever.
Drake has made a career as a heartbroken player who sings and raps.
Drake accepts artist of the decade award at the Billboard Music Awards on May 23, 2021, in Los Angeles.
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
Canadian R&B artists, including Drake, have built lifestyle brands that simultaneously reinforce and challenge dominant beliefs about R&B music as Black and American, and Canadian identity as white.
Generative AI used to recreate Drake’s voice was trained on many copyrighted songs featuring his voice. Drake appears on screen during a tribute to Lil Wayne at the Black Music Collective on Feb. 2, 2023, in Los Angeles.
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
As a composer who has used creative AI in my music, I see that many artists will need to renegotiate terms of their labour, but there are also opportunities for different forms of collaboration.
A crowd surge left 10 people dead at the Astroworld Festival, organized by rapper Travis Scott.
(YouTube)
Advertisers forked over $5.5 million for a mere 30 seconds of air time during the Super Bowl. Here’s Twitter’s verdict on which brands got social media bang for their bucks.
Toronto Raptors forward Pascal Siakam soars to the hoop over Golden State Warriors player Andre Iguaodala during Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Toronto.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Gregory Shamus
The Raptors’ success in reaching the NBA final for the first time in the franchise’s history is an opportunity to reflect on the diversity of the team.
Rapper Drake watches the action at an NBA game in Toronto in 2016. A recent battle between Drake and Pusha-T brought the issue of blackface back into the headlines.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
Is blackface ever innocent? Is it less racist when a Black person enacts it as a statement of resistance? Because of our history of deep and ongoing racism in Canada, the answer is no.