Drake

Aubrey Drake Graham (born 1986 in Toronto) is the most commercially dominant rapper of the streaming era, with more Billboard Hot 100 entries than any artist in history. He is also generative AI’s favorite test subject: his instantly recognizable voice made him the most-cloned artist on the internet, from the viral fake duet “Heart on My Sleeve” (2023) — which Universal scrambled to purge from streaming — to countless soundalike covers.

From victim to user in one year

In April 2023, reacting to an AI cover of Ice Spice’s “Munch” in his voice, Drake posted “This is the final straw AI” to Instagram. A year later he was on the other side of the cloning: his April 2024 Kendrick Lamar diss “Taylor Made Freestyle” opened with an AI-generated Tupac Shakur verse and followed with a synthetic Snoop Dogg — using the technology as both weapon and taunt in rap’s biggest feud.

The Shakur estate’s lawyers called the track a “flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights” and a “blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time,” demanding removal within 24 hours. Drake pulled the song the next day. NPR noted the episode helped push AI voice-cloning legislation like the NO FAKES Act into congressional debate, and Metro Boomin answered with “BBL Drizzy,” an AI-generated diss beat aimed back at Drake.

Drake has never articulated a coherent public philosophy on AI — his positions track his interests, objecting when cloned and cloning when useful. But as actions go, releasing a headline track built on synthetic voices of hip-hop icons remains one of the most prominent uses of generative audio by any A-list artist.