{"id":584023,"date":"2026-08-14T01:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T01:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/584023\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T01:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T01:36:14","slug":"fenix-flexin-puts-bankrolls-on-the-table-and-ai-on-the-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/584023\/","title":{"rendered":"Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to\u00a0Listening Habits<\/a>,\u00a0a column where I share the music and musical topics I\u2019ve been fixated on recently.<\/p>\n

Music’s AI revolution has arrived, somewhat … maybe. And naturally, it has come for rap first. This isn’t the kind of trumped-up thing like what has been foretold in the roughly 100 weirdly written profiles<\/a> about “AI actress” Tilly Norwood, a thing you’ve probably already forgotten about if you ever even heard about it in the first place. No, AI has been implemented in music production software, and it has officially gotten a real foot in the door of pop culture thanks to a very strange, very viral new hit song.<\/p>\n

Fenix Flexin is a real person, a founding member of LA underground rap crew Shoreline Mafia, and his song “Rubberz,” produced by Purps on the Beat, is one of the biggest records of the year. It has peaked at No. 58 of the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first AI record to do so. Right when it came out, it was obvious that AI played the main part in its creation\u2014that is, of course, unless you buy that an LA-bred rapper sings with a British affect\u2014and after a period of coyness, Fenix is no longer pretending<\/a> the track was totally manmade. (Alas, we’ll always have the memories of him trying to affect a British accent in interviews<\/a> and live performances<\/a> in order to sell the illusion.)<\/p>\n

Following Fenix’s lead in more ways than one, Tyga has put out a whole album of AI-generated \u201980s pop slop, and is openly acknowledging<\/a> AI’s foundational role in its development. Copping to the charges makes sense. The influence of AI on these songs is so blatant that it would be stupid to act like it wasn’t involved. Plus, owning up to it helps artists like this normalize the concept of AI in music. We are in the future, whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n

What’s most curious to me about the Fenix and Tyga examples is the production template, though. These are two ostensible rappers, making something somewhat adjacent to but very much not rap music. “Rubberz” especially has the lyrical hallmarks of a rap song, but over a sound bed that seems like ChatGPT combining the Smiths with the Galaga soundtrack. More than any of its musical reference points, what the song most sounds like is TikTok, an amalgamation of familiar things presented in a way that’s both generic and attention-grabbing. TikTok has played a vital role in shaping music of the last decade, at first through viral dances, and lately through sounds and songs that evoke nostalgia but as channeled through a robotic, artificial filter. Certain pop songs take off on there because they feel bouncy and nostalgic, like audio candy. The positive spectrum of this can be Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”; the negative can be “Rubberz,” or anything by Bruno Mars. Music that evokes a “school prom in the ’80s” view of appropriate teenage fun.<\/p>\n

What’s tricky about “Rubberz” is that because it is AI-made, it has a much more homogenized vision of already algorithmic pop. And its popularity will almost certainly make people replicate that even more. Think of it as the difference between “Hey Jude” and my Casio electronic piano’s auto rendition of “Hey Jude,” but, you know, not that dramatic. Virality on social media has become the main litmus test for new music’s value, and the closest thing there is to a blueprint for success there is to garner views by being simultaneously familiar and surprising, especially in a jarring way. A couple years ago, 4Batz became a viral star<\/a> for his videos that used the aesthetic trappings of a hard-as-nails drill artist for music that was, in fact, candy-coated R&B. There is a little of that going on with “Rubberz.” The incongruity is amusing, and most importantly, it quickly grabs your attention.<\/p>\n

“Rubberz” is far from the first record to gain success while making a parody out of rap music, or out of black music more generally. It feels like we get one of those almost yearly: “All About That Bass,”<\/a> “White Iverson,”<\/a> “Hollaback Girl.”<\/a> The careers of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, particularly when they get together<\/a>. White people making viral recreations of rap hits<\/a> and the like. The parodic aspect doesn’t particularly bother me in this instance. But the combination of AI with obvious TikTok baiting is nefarious. The record, which sounds like a computer eating our musical memories and regurgitating it back to us, is music by the algorithm and for the algorithm. And it is already influencing music that presumably doesn’t use AI.<\/p>\n

Future’s latest album The Real Me is a dud, which is fine. Except for We Don’t Trust You and its immediate sequel, Future’s music of the past decade has mostly come and gone. What can you really expect from a 40-year-old rap star? Still, it was interesting to see his many attempts on this record to mine a new sound, even if they were mostly unsuccessful. Along those lines, “Hollywood” from The Real Me caught my attention, and not only because it was bad. The track sounds like an AI-free mimic of “Rubberz,” and something clearly aiming for usage on TikTok clips. Incidentally, Future previously had much better success in a similar lane with “Drink N Dance,” which benefitted from not being so rigidly intent on following a preexisting and soulless roadmap. But like any other algorithmic-based chasing, the sound keeps getting more and more homogenized, and more and more inhuman.<\/p>\n

“Drink N Dance” feels like an actual rap record, and an actual Future record as well. “Hollywood” is like Future doing a bad karaoke performance of an \u201980s record that never existed. Even Drake’s “Goose and the Juice,” another clear attempt at \u201980s nostalgia from Maid of Honour, the most experimental of his recent trio of albums, feels more carefully tailored to his specific sound and sensibility than something an algorithm could’ve burped out. In all cases, they veer from the AI tracks’ mechanical weirdness and into something that bears recognizable, human fingerprints.<\/p>\n

What does it say that both AI records and non-AI ones are chasing the same sound, and that the AI one is the most popular of them all? While the sound itself is a flash in the pan, the way it validates AI will make a lasting impact. Its proponents are right that AI is yet another tool in the arsenal of music production techniques, which for decades now have been trending toward automation and digitally assisted “perfection.” It’s not hard to see in today’s AI-in-music controversy echoes of the one from 20 years ago about the use of AutoTune. But will AI get its T-Pains, real artists who stretch the tool beyond its homogenizing intentions and make great, inventive, unmistakably human music? Or are the skids so greased in the industry that there’s only one, sad, uncanny place this is all destined to lead? The only thing I know for sure is that music, AI or not, does not need to reproduce ’80’s MTV<\/a>. One time through was more than enough.<\/p>\n

The Non-AI Song Of The Moment<\/p>\n

If you would like to contribute a song, a suggestion, or ask a question for future installments, email me at\u00a0israel@defector.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to\u00a0Listening Habits,\u00a0a column where I share the music and musical topics I\u2019ve been fixated on recently. Music’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-584023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}