AI country hit built on Blanco Brown’s sound sparks questions

LOS ANGELES (AP):

When an AI-generated country song called Walk My Walk hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart this month, it was credited to a fictional artiste named Breaking Rust — a white, digitally generated avatar that didn’t exist two months ago. But the song’s vocal phrasing, melodic shape and stylistic DNA came from someone who does exist: Grammy-nominated country artiste, Blanco Brown, a black music artiste who has worked with Britney Spears, Childish Gambino and Rihanna.

And he had no idea

“I didn’t even know about the song until people hit me up about it,” said Brown, whose 2019 country rap hit The Git Up helped usher in a new, hybrid era of country crossover. “My phone just kept blowing up. Somebody said: ‘Man, somebody done typed your name in the AI and made a white version of you. They just used the Blanco, not the Brown.”

The moment is the latest example of how generative AI is upending the music industry, giving anyone the ability to instantly create seemingly new songs by typing prompts into a chat window, often using models trained on real artistes’ voices and styles without their knowledge.

The credits for Walk My Walk list Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor as one of the creators, with streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify identifying him as both the songwriter and producer. In recent months, Taylor has also been credited as the songwriter and producer behind Defbeatsai — one of several X-rated, AI-generated country artistes that exploded across social media last year.

The Defbeatsai ecosystem, however, connects back to another figure in Brown’s past: Abraham Abushmais, who co-wrote a couple of songs on Brown’s 2019 album Honeysuckle & Lightning Bugs. He is listed as the developer of Echo, an AI-powered music generator app. Brown said he wasn’t notified about their involvement in the AI hit, and the collaborator he once mentored has since become unreachable. The AP reached out to Abushmais for comment but did not receive a response.

The digital avatar fronting Walk My Walk, a white, AI-generated country singer built with a vocal approach modelled on Brown’s sound, is where the moment shifted from eerie to uncomfortable. For Brown, the shock quickly gave way to action. He went into the studio and recorded his cover of the song, which was released last week. He’s also putting out a reworked derivative of the track on Monday with new lyrics and a new arrangement.

“If someone is going to sing like me, it should be me,” he said.

For Brown, this situation is a legal and cultural issue. He spent years navigating country music as a black artiste who blends gospel, hip-hop, pop and twang. He’s been nominated for a Grammy and embraced by the Recording Academy, but country radio hasn’t given him consistent traction.

Meanwhile, an AI song built on his vocal identity and paired with a white avatar went straight to No. 1, a dynamic he says reflects a familiar pattern in Nashville: innovation from black artistes being reattributed.