'BBL Drizzy’ The eye of the storm for generative music AI

No artist has been entwined with the music industry’s generative AI reckoning quite like Drake. His voice was deepfaked in ‘Heart On My Sleeve’ in April 2023; then, almost exactly a year later, he used deepfakes of  Tupac and Snoop Dogg for his own track ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’, and then came ‘Wah Gwan Delilah’ in June 2024, the origins of which are still unclear. But the most fascinating case study yet is ‘BBL Drizzy’, a Drake diss track that captivated the internet amid his feud with Kendrick Lamar. The song reflects all of AI’s pitfalls (the lack of licensing frameworks, the confusion of deepfakes) and opportunities (igniting fan creation to build cultural moments), while also exemplifying MIDiA’s bifurcation theory.

The mayhem began in April 2024, when comedian King Willonius released the original ‘BBL Drizzy’, an AI-generated parody song created using Udio. The following month, Metro Boomin not only released his own version of the track, but also offered a prize to whoever could create the best rap over his remixed beat. The trend came full-circle in May, when Drake himself sampled the beat for his Sexyy Red collaboration ‘U My Everything’.

For one, ‘BBL Drizzy’ marks possibly the first example of licensing for an AI-generated song, as Drake cleared the use of the human-created parts (because the US copyright office claims that fully generated works are not copyright-protected) with King Willonius. Secondly, it reflects how AI will explode the opportunities for consumer creation. Remix challenges have existed for many years, but as AI combines with the growing trend of consumer creation, they have perhaps never been more relevant. The Drake-Lamar feud both fueled and was fed by those consumer creations. In fact, without this kind of cultural context, fully AI-generated music will struggle to capture consumer interest — which is why audio modification tools, which allow fans to build upon existing songs and artists, will ultimately be the bigger consumer opportunity than AI music generators.

Finally, ‘BBL Drizzy’ exemplifies bifurcation theory, as the majority of activity took place on user-generated content platforms. Metro Boomin’s remix was released to SoundCloud, where it has reached 6.4 million plays, while fan versions proliferated on social media (and in particular, YouTube), cumulatively garnering millions more. Meanwhile, ‘U My Everything’ is the first and only time the beat has made it to proper DSPs, which is why Drake needed to clear the use. Indeed, part of the reason AI-enabled consumer creation will spread mostly on social media is because those platforms hold less liability for hosting copyright-infringing content. This makes it difficult for rights holders to capture monetisation, and transfers ever more of music’s cultural capital to social platforms. To capture this opportunity, the music industry must figure out a licensing framework that would allow fans to remix and build on their favourite music within social apps. At the time of writing, Metro Boomin is yet to pick a champion for his challenge, but perhaps the social platforms themselves have already won.

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