Biggie has gotten the A.I. treatment, rapping 2Pac‘s infamous diss track “Hit ‘Em Up” thanks to the power of artificial intelligence.
The Reddit group Yedits — a community that dedicates itself to the “mixing and editing of a wide variety of artists’ music” — first posted the mashup last month, but it’s recently picked up steam now that it’s making the social media rounds.
AD LOADING...
Though the snippet is only about a minute long, the music featuring The Notorious B.I.G.’s voice is quite convincing — even if him taking shots at himself is less so.
Check it out below:
Many rappers — both dead and alive — have been the subject of the A.I. craze as of late, with varying results.
Timbaland used it to land a bucket list collaboration with Biggie on Wednesday (May 3), playing a new song on Instagram he cooked up using AI-generated Biggie vocals.
AD LOADING...
“Alright so, I’m sitting here with my brother, Creatr God, and we know that it’s a lot of talk about AI and we know how the feelings of violating certain things,” Timbo said in the clip. “But let me tell you something: I got a solution, I’m working on it. It’s gon’ be beneficial to everybody.
“But, in the meantime, I gotta share something I’ve been working on because I always wanted to do this and I never got a chance to. I always wanted to work with Big and I never got a chance to — until today. It came out right! Play!”
AD LOADING...
While Timbaland may be a fan of the software, Snoop Dogg is clearly not, as evidenced by his reaction to the AI Michael Jackson doing a cover of C-Murder’s hit song “Down 4 My N’s.”
The bizarre AI mashup was shared by Snoop on his Instagram, which finds augmented and choppy MJ vocals rapping through C-Murder’s 2010 hit which featured Magic and Tha Doggfather.
“This shit is outta hand,” Snoop exclaimed in the post, adding in the caption, “Wow.”
Major labels, apparently, agree with Snoop, as evidenced by Universal Music Group’s statement released last month, in response to an A.I.-generated Drake and The Weeknd mashup.
“UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists — as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already,” the statement began.
AD LOADING...
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.”
The statement continued: “These instances demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists. We’re encouraged by the engagement of our platform partners on these issues–as they recognize they need to be part of the solution.”
