Quick Bonus post today. I don’t intend to do these often as I’m not in a position to cover time sensitive content, but I thought this was interesting enough to share. Meet back Thursday for our regularly scheduled posts!📌
I came across a tweet today mentioning an AI generated song with Drake and the Weekend.
A quick iTunes search yielded no song by Drake and The Weekend called Heart On My Sleeve so I was immediately intrigued. The picture in the background is of a person wearing a sheet over their head like a ghost, and after some searching, I was able to track the song to a TikTok Account by ghostwriter977
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The full song was posted to a YouTube account also named ghostwriter1 but it is unknown if they are the same person, as I’ve seen this song reuploaded by multiple other YouTube accounts, including one called imrealghostwriter. The ghostwriter YouTube account has other AI generated songs by Drake like a short cover of Bubbly by Colbie Caillat, but they were all posted within the last 24 hours. The oldest link to the song Heart On My Sleeve I can find is on Genius.com2 which lists the lyrics and has a release date of April 4th.
Searching more generically for AI generated drake songs lands me on a post on the website NME with the title Fans are using AI to create their own Drake songs3 It points to a site called drayk.it, but the site just has a picture saying, “If you’re reading this it’s too late”.
Curiously both the drayk.it website and the TikTok bio link both point to links asking for phone numbers to stay abreast of AI generated music.
Drake has recently responded to a viral AI video of him covering Ice Spice’s song munch4 with him saying “This the final straw, AI” in his Instagram reel. Other Rap artists like Kanye West have also been used in AI songs, to do covers, and can be found on YouTube.
The AI space is moving fast, and I’m seeing more and more AI generated content every day. It’s beginning to get harder and harder for me to tell what is real and what isn’t, and we are still in the early days. In the context of this Drake song, we can’t discount that this is just a marketing ploy that is exploiting the new hype around AI, and TikTok, like Gayle’s ABCDFU5 from last year seemed to do.
Regardless, it’s clear the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has not yet gotten wind of all these AI generated musicians, or they would destroy it faster than you can say Napster. For now, we are only left with these messages from ghostwriter “The future is here” and “This is just the beginning”. This is just the beginning indeed.
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