Fortune magazine, of all publications, decided to pen an article on Ice Cube in a strange rant about his take on artificial intelligence.
The entire point of the article is to strongly suggest that Ice Cube is a hypocrite for claiming that AI is “demonic” in a recent interview with Full Send Podcast, because Ice Cube is a rapper who samples music. Even the headline tries to drive home the point: “Ice Cube, musician who became famous rapping over samples, says A.I. is ‘demonic’ for doing a very similar thing.”
Fortune is foolishly convinced that there is little difference between AI and sampling. When the article was republished on Yahoo!, the comments were flooded with responses, most of which defended Ice Cube and pointed out that AI and sampling are not even remotely the same thing.
I can’t believe someone would have to explain this to Fortune magazine, but the use of artificial intelligence to mimic an artist’s voice and delivery to then create songs has already fooled listeners. Also, the creators of such AI songs did not get any rights from the artists to use their respective voices.
Legal sampling is paying for the rights to a song in order to use a portion of that song in your own. Fortune magazine will have you think that the methods used in sampling are the same as those presented with artificial intelligence. Fortune magazine would be incorrect.
AI mimics. Sampling does not mimic. Sampling literally uses an already made aspect of a song to help create a new one. It allows the original artist to make money from that song, while also crediting that artist as a songwriter in the new song. Additionally, in a sample, the sound used was created by the original artist and not created by a fake voice imitating that artist, or an attempt to recreate the musical sound that the original artist made with live instrumentation. The examples — and differences between AI and sampling — are seemingly never-ending.
The writer claims, “Sampling was foundational to hip-hop in particular.” This is definitely debatable, as the founders of hip-hop were DJs like Kool Herc who found places to perform live and bring people together. I explained hip-hop origins in a more accurate way before, which had a lot more to do with the desire to escape the unkind realities of the Bronx in the 1970’s.
DJs formed the cornerstone of hip-hop and, naturally, DJs play popular music. Rappers were born out of a contingent who simply started rapping while the DJ was playing those popular tunes. After a few years, hip-hop became popular in New York and then, finally, rappers started recording songs. Early recordings of hip-hop simply attempted to capture that magic of the DJ and the rap artist, which made sampling a necessity to achieve that particular atmosphere. Thus, I’d argue that sampling wasn’t foundational to hip-hop so much as it became an element of hip-hip music, though not at all a requirement.
The Fortune writer goes on to take subtle shots at the Beastie Boys’ album Paul’s Boutique, and even shots at Ice Cube himself, and refers to artists that approve of AI, as if Cube is likewise required to do so. He also added that Ice Cube, during his interview on the Full Send Podcast, “set aside time in his interview to criticize artists increasingly resorting to digital crutches of their work.”
Fortune is willing to slightly repaint the picture of the early days of hip-hop, take shots at Ice Cube, and equate sampling to AI, all in a way to support the technology-driven changes that AI unkindly brings about. It’s a shame that they have taken such an approach, because now their article appears to be backfiring, with many slamming the magazine.
Perhaps they should rename themselves Misfortune.