Tupac Shakur’s estate isn’t too happy about Drake cloning the late hip-hop legend’s voice in a dissident Kendrick Lamar track. billboard reported on Wednesday that attorney Howard King, representing Mr. Shakur’s estate, sent a cease-and-desist letter calling Drake’s use of Shakur’s voice “a blatant violation of Tupac’s advertising and the estate’s legal rights.”
Drake (Aubrey Drake Graham) released the dissident track “Taylor Made Freestyle” last Friday, the latest chapter in the artist’s decades-long simmering feud with Pulitzer and 17-time Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar.
“Kendrick, we need you, the savior of the West Coast / Engrave your name in hip-hop history,” an AI-generated 2Pac raps in Drake’s song. “If you’re being vicious about it / You seem a little nervous about all the publicity.”
Representing Shakur’s estate, King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter that Drake had less than 24 hours to finish “Taylor Made Freestyle” or the estate would “pursue all of its legal remedies” to force the Canadian rapper to act. “The unauthorized, equally disturbing use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend of the estate who has shown nothing but respect for Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, adds insult to injury,” King wrote billboard.
“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King wrote. “The record is not only a blatant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, but also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. “The estate would never have approved this use.”
“Taylor Made Freestyle” also used AI to clone Snoop Dogg’s voice, with Drake using digital clones of two of Lamar’s West Coast hip-hop influences to hit him where it hurts. In a video posted to social media the following day, Snoop appeared unaware of the trail. “You did what? When? How? “Are you sure?” said the 16-time Grammy nominee and herbalist. “Why is everyone calling my phone and blowing me up? What the hell? What happened? What’s up? I am going to bed again. Goodnight,” he continued.
Engadget emailed Snoop Dogg’s management asking for their opinion on Drake cloning his voice. At the time of publication we had not yet received a response.
The saga contains more than a little irony — if not outright hypocrisy — on the part of Universal Music Group (UMG), the label that represents Drake. You may remember Ghostwriter977’s “Heart on My Sleeve” which briefly went viral last year. It was pulled after UMG complained to streaming services for using an AI-generated version of Drake’s voice (along with The Weeknd).
Engadget asked UMG whether it agreed with Drake’s use of AI-generated voices in “Taylor Made Freestyle” and how it felt about the larger issue of artists’ use of digital clones. We have not received any comment at press time. Without a clear explanation, it’s hard not to see the label siding with whatever seems most financially advantageous to them at any given time (surprise!).
Laws dealing with AI-cloned voices of public figures are still evolving. billboard notes that federal copyright law does not clearly cover the issue because AI-generated vocals typically do not use specific words or music from the original artist. Mr. King, who speaks for Shakur’s estate, believes they violate existing California publicity laws. He described that Drake’s use of Shakur’s voice creates the “false impression that the estate and Tupac are promoting or endorsing the lyrics for the sound-alike.”
Last month, Tennessee passed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act to protect artists from unauthorized AI voice clones. The “first legislation of its kind” makes copying a musician’s voice without consent a Class A felony.
But none of the parties involved in this feud are in Tennessee. At the federal level, progress is much slower, which leaves room for legal uncertainty. In January, bipartisan lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications Act, targeting cloned voices like those used by Drake in the government’s crosshairs. Congress has taken no public action on the bill in the more than three months since.
“That’s unbelievable [Tupac’s record label]“The intellectual property was not scraped to create the fake Tupac AI,” King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter. He demanded that Drake “provide a detailed explanation of how the sound-alike was created and which people or companies created it, including any recordings and other data that were ‘scraped’ or used.”