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Sheryl Crow performs in concert during the Noches del Botanico Festival at Real Jardín Botánico Alfonso XIII on June 25, 2024 in Madrid, Spain.
Rb Hip Hop
Sheryl Crow Blasts Drake’s Use of 2Pac AI Vocals on ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’: ‘It’s Hateful’
Drake removed his Kendrick Lamar diss track from social media after being threatened with a cease-and-desist letter from the late rapper's estate.
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Sheryl Crow is voicing her concern with the artificial intelligence tidal wave sweeping the music industry as the “slippery slope” of AI has her worried about the future.
The Grammy-winning singer recently spoke to the BBC about AI, which she believes “goes against everything humanity is based on.” Crow even ripped Drake for attempting to resurrect 2Pac while using the late rapper’s AI vocals alongside Snoop Dogg’s on Drizzy’s “Taylor Made Freestyle” diss track directed at Kendrick Lamar.
“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. It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us.”
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Billboard has reached out to Drake’s team for comment on Crow’s comments.
Crow wrestles with topics such as artificial intelligence and its jarring ramifications on her Evolution album’s title track, which arrived earlier in 2024.
In April, Tupac Shakur’s estate threatened legal action if the OVO mogul didn’t take down his “Taylor Made Freestyle” from social media. The estate shared the cease-and-desist-letter exclusively with Billboard.
“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” the estate’s attorney, Howard King, wrote in the letter. “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 continued: “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.”
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Less than 24 hours later, Drake obliged and removed the track from his social media platforms.
Earlier this week, the three major music companies each filed lawsuits against AI music startups Suno and Udio. They cited the alleged repeated infringement of copyrighted recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.”
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