If you’re anything like me, heavily and endlessly online, then you may have come across the BBL Drizzy song in one form or another. BBL Drizzy, released by an internet listening comedian @kingwillonius, features an AI-generated Motown singer waxing poetic about Toronto rapper Drake’s rumored butt lift. The song gained mainstream attention when it was sampled by Missouri hip-hop producer Metro Boomin on a beat of same name.
Earlier this month I found myself at Sneaky Pete’s in the Cowgate on a Sunday of all nights (perks of being a freelancer I guess). Behind the decks was DJ and producer Nikki Nair, whose Boiler room set with Hudson Mohawke had recently been making the rounds of the electronic music scene. As the clock struck 2 a.m., a familiar pool-lifting sample crossed the dance floor. A funny song written by an American comedian, performed by an amorphous mash-up of thousands of soul and Motown tracks, written and dubbed by a born AI model, had been sampled and mixed by a talented producer in an Edinburgh club.
But how did we get here? How did a song about Drake getting a Brazilian butt get nearly five million plays on SoundCloud?
For the past two months, the online music conversation has been dominated by an extended and brutal rap battle between two of North America’s top artists, Kendrick Lamar and Drake. In mid-May, the Billboard top 100 was Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us, the rapper’s latest in a rap beef.
Back in mid-April, in response to Drake’s first diss track in the saga, former collaborator Rick Ross, feeling burned by Drake’s inclusion of his name on Push Ups hit back two days after the Champagne Moments single was released. Ross’ track resurfaced rumors of Drake’s alleged rhinoplasty and liposuction by posting the phrase “BBL Drizzy” on his Instagram history. Inspired by Ross’ words of wisdom, King Wilonius took up the pen and began writing the lyrics for his magnum opus. The track flew under the radar until Metro Boomin, also upset by Drake’s Push Ups, sampled the AI tune in his own work in early May. [Editor’s note: On the day we published this article, Drake teamed up with Sexyy Red on U My Everything, in which he raps over a sampled version of Metro Boomin’s BBL Drizzy.]
Singles written by humans and performed by AI models are nothing new, with ghostwriter977 coming in 2023 heart on my sleeve, a track featuring AI-generated Drake vocals. Drake himself has also dipped his flippers into the AI pool, with his second diss track, Taylor Made Freestyle, featuring lyrics from Tupac and Snoop Dogg in a strange attempt to put words into the mouths of Kendrick’s West Coast idols and contemporaries. Compared to BBL Drizzy, however, these previous efforts are nothing but a flash in the pan, with the Metro/Willonius AI ditty gaining significant traction in hip-hop sample culture and beyond.
Hip-hop has always been a genre that relies heavily on slicing and dicing existing songs, turning them into something entirely new. BBL Drizzy follows this trend, with multiple versions and jams spreading like wildfire online. The song uses artificial intelligence to mimic hip-hop’s long association with ’70s LPs and soul and Motown LPs in a seemingly calculated effort to attract producers who want to try the track.
Comedian King Willonius explains his reasoning for using artificial intelligence in his creative process in an article with Music Tech, saying, “I had an advantage over many of my peers, only in the ability to create warp speed.” In a cultural landscape where artists are already able to produce music faster than ever à la Viper and RXK Nephewwho both released more songs in one year than the Beatles did in their eight-year career, AI is speeding that process up even further.
While undeniably funny, the piece seems to ring a bit hollow. it ignores the art and skill of composition in favor of the instant gratification of synthetic production. But then again without AI, BBL Drizzy would never exist. If King Willonius wanted to create his piece without the help of AI, he would have to not only write, but compose and perform it in time to remain culturally relevant, a task that would not be worth the time and money . are associated with this process.
The breakneck pace of the Kendrick-Drake beef set the stage for King Willonius to create his song, and as a result, BBL Drizzy has set a precedent for AI music, with its widespread use being the first of its kind.
The creative industries as a whole face a dilemma today – on the one hand genetic AI is a tool that can make some of the most tedious jobs in the industry trivial (I myself have saved hours of my life by using AI tools to transcribe interview recordings) but on the other hand seeks to replace creativity itself, offering nothing more than a virtual pulp production line. music and art that looks and sounds “about right” and nothing more.
