{"id":687048,"date":"2026-06-06T01:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T01:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/687048\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T01:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T01:20:13","slug":"on-ai-in-hip-hop-pitchfork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/687048\/","title":{"rendered":"On AI in Hip-Hop | Pitchfork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, Kasher Quon<\/a> dropped a music video that uses the Detroit scam rapper\u2019s ridiculously vivid and sometimes offensive punchlines as prompts for a batshit AI cartoon. In \u201cTransported,\u201d a dude with a small afro has a shaking fit at a liquor store counter as a group of Asian caricatures watch him in confusion (\u201cYo\u2019 bum ass mad the liquor store just ran out of beer\u201d) and a balding Italian man yells at his pizza boy for flashing money into his phone camera on the job (\u201cShouldn\u2019t be posting banks on the \u2019Gram if you work at Happy\u2019s, he at a pizza place\u201d). Then, to get darker, a mustached cartel leader is detained by ICE agents (\u201cMy plug ain\u2019t supposed to be here, his ass got deported\u201d) and a man overdoses on fentanyl in the recording booth (\u201cMy opp just bought a percocet, I hope that bitch fent\u201d). In less than two minutes, there\u2019s about a dozen other scenes just like these, including a bunch that feature Kasher\u2019s AI avatar doing stuff he could easily do without AI: Count money, fill a styrofoam cup with lean, eat dinner at a steakhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransported\u201d is by far one of the stupidest rap videos I\u2019ve seen in a minute, but it\u2019s been on my mind in a why does this exist way ever since. It doesn\u2019t feel like AI just for the sake of AI, instead part of an absurd artistic vision that makes sense coming from the edgy, no-budget world of Detroit scam rap. In that vision, he\u2019s sort of like the last man on Earth meets Robin Hood, spending his days coming up with schemes in the aisles of nearly empty department stores, outside of closed banks, and inside of Airbnbs and hotels that seem to have no other guests. These videos can seem so desolate and quiet that they already feel unnatural, the AI only amplifies that effect.<\/p>\n

To see more, I dove into the catalog of director Klipp Ai, where all of the videos were in the same style\u2014AI versions of random rappers from random cities flexing money and shooting guns and dancing with girls and going to the club\u2014but none of them were nearly as twisted, just an automated formula. (I had no idea if Klipp Ai was even a real person until we had a cryptic DM exchange: \u201cI wanna remain faceless but we have meet [sic]on another occasion,\u201d they told me.)<\/p>\n

Up until I watched \u201cTransported,\u201d AI in any element of rap visuals\u2014videos, cover art, show flyers, etc.\u2014was an uncomplicated issue for me: It was undeniably bad, probably evil. But the moment I found merit in one video, the holes in my moral stance were exposed. Questions I never thought to ask myself began to rattle around my head: Is there ever an excuse for AI art? Are all uses of AI equal? Am I more concerned with AI art itself or being morally implicated in a technological shift I didn\u2019t ask for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Kasher Quon dropped a music video that uses the Detroit scam rapper\u2019s ridiculously vivid and sometimes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,17978,74],"class_list":["post-687048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-off-the-dome","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}