It's a bad time to be Drake, whose loss in his feud against Kendrick Lamar now results in an arena full of people screaming along to a hit song accusing him of being a pedophile five times in a row. Now, he's continuing to get dragged, as Sheryl Crow has called Drake "hateful" for using AI to imitate 2Pac for his Kendrick Lamar diss track "Taylor Made Freestyle."
Drake used a fake version of Tupac Shakur's voice in the track, which came out back in April and was quickly taken down after Shakur's estate sent a cease-and-desist. Now, two months later, Crow has laid into Drake for the move.
"You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that," Crow told the BBC. "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."
She further told the BBC that using AI is a "slippery slope" and "a betrayal" that "goes against everything humanity is based on." She described an incident where an acquaintance paid to have an AI John Mayer sing a song, and Crow said that she was "literally hyperventilating" after being "terrified" by how realistic it was.
She said, "I know John and I know the nuances of his voice. And there would be no way you'd have been able to tell that he was not singing that song."
Crow added, "AI can do lots of things, but it can't go out and play live. So as long as we have live music, as long as we have hands holding a paintbrush, all is not lost."