Sheryl Crow has strongly criticized Drake for using AI-generated Tupac Shakur vocals in one of his Kendrick Lamar diss tracks.
In April, Drake released the song “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which included barbs aimed at both Taylor Swift and Lamar. It featured AI versions of Lamar’s West Coast rap idols, Tupac and Snoop Dogg. A week after its release, the “Hotline Bling” rapper took down the song after Tupac’s estate threatened to sue him.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Crow, 62, condemned the use of AI to recreate the vocals of dead artists.
“You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that,” she said. “I’m sure Drake thought, ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t do it, but I’ll say sorry later.’ But it’s already done, and people will find it even if he takes it down.
“It’s hateful,” she added. “It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us.”
Drake has been involved in a longstanding feud with rapper Lamar for years. In March, Lamar took aim at Drake and fellow rap rival J Cole in his song “Like That,” claiming that rather than representing the genre’s “big three” it’s just “big me.”
A few diss tracks later, Drake responded with “Taylor Made Freestyle.”
Shortly after its release, litigator Howard King sent Drake a cease-and-desist letter, telling him that he had 24 hours to take down the song or the estate would “pursue all of its legal remedies” against him.
“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King wrote. “Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”
King added that the state was also unhappy with the lyrics aimed at Lamar. “The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult,” he said.
Last month, Drake released “Family Matters”, made up of three parts, in which he accuses Lamar’s pro-Black activism of hypocrisy. In the track, he also accuses him of domestic violence, and of “begging” the Tupac estate to sue Drake for his use of AI versions of the late rapper in a diss track.
