Tupac’s lawyers are threatening to sue Drake for using an AI-generated Tupac soundalike on his recent ‘Taylor Made’ diss track without permission.
While Drake’s fans have been having a ball with the Canadian rapper’s recently released track dissing fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, the legal team representing Tupac Shakur is threatening to take legal action if the song isn’t pulled off the internet.
Billboard reports that late rapper Tupac’s legal team is ready to take Drake to court over the release of “Taylor Made,” Drake’s recently released song featuring the AI-generated voices of Shakur and Snoop Dogg. In a statement about Drake’s creation of “Taylor Made,” litigator Howard King called the song a “blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time” and said the Shakur estate never cleared the use of Tupac’s voice.
“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King said. “The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”
For the past few weeks, a number of rap artists, including Lamar, Drake, and J. Cole, have been pointedly attacking one another (and entertaining everybody else) through their music after years of simmering tensions over — among other things — who’s the biggest in the game. In response to “Like That,” Future’s recently released song featuring Lamar in which he calls Drake out for making previous jabs, Drake dropped “Push Ups,” a track poking fun at Lamar’s height, shoe size, and the details of his old deal at Top Dawg Entertainment.
Rather than waiting for a response, Drake also debuted “Taylor Made” on April 19th, and the song immediately raised eyebrows — less so for its reference to Taylor Swift and more so for its prominent use of voices from West Coast rappers (one of whom is quite dead) who did not seem to be involved in any of the ongoing beef. Following the release of “Taylor Made,” Snoop uploaded a video to Instagram with an assortment of emoji seemingly indicating bemusement.
The entire situation might seem silly from a distance, but “Taylor Made” is one of the bigger examples of what’s coming out of the AI-generated music boom that’s flooded social media and raised questions about how record labels plan to respond. Interestingly, Drake has a history of publicly decrying AI-generated music while also seeming like one of the more likely sources of “Heart on My Sleeve,” the viral, AI-generated song attributed to anonymous TikTok user ghostwriter977.
Tupac’s estate wants “Taylor Made” pulled within 24 hours, and if Drake made the song without their permission, we might just see it disappear. But as much as this beef has been about garnering attention, Drake could be very willing to go to court to make his case.
