After being a part of a massive feud with Kendrick Lamar, Drake has been given a cease-and-desist order from the estate of Tupac Shakur for the use of his AI-generated voice.
In a recent statement, litigator Howard King claimed that all use of the software featuring Shakur should be taken down immediately, telling Billboard, “The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality. Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights. It is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use”.
This comes in response to Drake’s recent song, ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’, which came as a response to Lamar’s recent diss towards the Canadian rapper on the Future and Metro Boomin track ‘Like That’, where he claimed to be superior to Drake. In retaliation, Drake’s recent track features the AI-generated voice of the famous LA rapper as well as AI-generated Snoop Dogg.
King also said that the estate has been on friendly terms with Lamar for years, explaining, “The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult”.
Compared to Drake’s use of Shakur’s likeness, his estate has been willing to work with Lamar when using the late rapper’s voice in the past. During the making of his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar featured a spoken-word section at the end of the final song ‘Mortal Man’, which features him having a metaphorical conversation with Shakur, with dialogue taken from a previous interview Shakur gave in the 1990s.
Then again, this is far from the first time that Shakur has been at the centre of a rap beef. Throughout his golden age, Shakur was known to be the face of the beef between West Coast and East Coast rappers, eventually writing the song ‘Hit Em Up’ in response to his feud with New York rapper The Notorious BIG.
While Snoop Dogg has also been made aware of the use of his voice on the track, his representatives have not released a statement at this time. As of yet, no action has been taken regarding taking the song down.
