Will Hatcher got internet famous when Metro Boomin sampled his AI-generated song for a diss track released during the Kendrick Lamar-Drake beef. That was just the beginning.
During the height of the Kendrick Lamar-Drake beef earlier this year, disses and responses were flying thick and fast across social media. In the midst of it all, comedian and creator Will Hatcher helped make history when legendary hip-hop producer Metro Boomin sampled Hatcher's song "BBL Drizzy" for his diss track instrumental of the same name. Everyone wanting to take shots at Drake rapped on the beat; Metro Boomin gained notoriety for, according to Billboard, becoming "the first major producer to use an AI-generated sample."
Under his alias King Willonius, Hatcher had released "BBL Drizzy" in April, riffing on a Rick Ross post on X that had joked about Drake getting a Brazilian butt lift. The song did well on X as Ross' diss trended, but the viral hype inevitably died down and Hatcher moved along to the next meme.
A few weeks later, Metro Boomin put the track into a beat, and encouraged his followers on social media to rap over it, promising a prize of $10,000 and a free beat to the best one. This sent "BBL Drizzy" into the stratosphere, landing Thatcher in outlets like Vulture and The Guardian, where he went on record stating that though the music and vocals were AI-generated, the lyrics were all him. "There's no way AI could write lyrics like 'I'm thicker than a Snicker and I got the best BBL in history,'" he told Billboard at the time.
No, AI likely can't write "thicker than a Snicker," but its lyric-writing capabilities lag far behind the availability and flexibility of audio-creation tools. Just last week, Google rolled out MusicFX DJ, which allows almost anyone to create new songs live, simply by typing text prompts. The company behind music generator Suno announced last Tuesday that mega-producer Timbaland, a "top user" of the tool, would be coming on as a strategic adviser.
As part of the announcement, Timbaland put the stems from his new song "Love Again" on Suno, offering aspiring producers $100,000 in cash for the best AI-assisted remix. The contest ends early next month. A group of music labels sued Suno, along with AI music-generator Udio, which Hatcher used on "BBL Drizzy," earlier this year for copyright infringement, alleging the tools were trained on their artists' work. The companies claim using copyrighted recordings is fair use.
All of which makes "BBL Drizzy" look like a lodestar for AI music. While some of his fellow creators may disagree with him, Hatcher is a proud advocate for AI tools. The success of "BBL Drizzy" and the popularity of the AI content on his social media channels overall show that the AI music landscape is rapidly changing, as more creators find ways to use AI not just to produce curiosities or oddities, but massive hits.
