"Capitol Records cuts ties with AI-generated rapper FN Meka over racist stereotypes

The record company apologized to “the Black community” for promoting the robot rapper that critics said was “appropriative” and included “slurs infused in lyrics.”

Aug. 24, 2022, 7:41 AM PDT
By Variety

Not long after announcing that the Capitol label had signed a computer-generated rapper dubbed FN Meka, Capitol Music Group announced
that it is severing ties with the project. The move Tuesday came after
Capitol came under fire from activists pointing out that the music
perpetuated Black stereotypes and included the repeated use of the
N-word but was actually the work of a non-Black creative team.

“CMG has severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately,”
the label group said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. “We
offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity
in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and
the creative process behind it. We thank those who have reached out to
us with constructive feedback in the past couple of days — your input
was invaluable as we came to the decision to end our association with
the project.”

Capitol Records’ signing of the fictional “robot rapper” had just been announced last week, although the project goes back years as an
independent endeavor. The “artificial reality” hip-hop character was described as the brainchild of Anthony Martini and Brandon Le,
cofounders of Factory New. Martini — who’s also chief music officer and partner at Slip.stream — said in an interview with Music Business
Worldwide that “technically speaking, FN Meka is voiced by a human. But everything else about him — from his lyrics to the chords and tempo underpinning his music — is based on AI.”"

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/capitol-records-cuts-ties-ai-generated-rapper-fn-meka-racist-stereotyp-rcna44593

A lot of the music on the radio sounds like it was composed by a
machine that was using pop and country music from the past for
inspiration. It's a bit ironic because there is a lot of good recent
music out there. That stuff isn't making it through the corporate
filters. What they are broadcasting sounds like it was produced by a corporation, instead of individuals.

TB

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)