Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar (born 1987 in Compton) is the only rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, awarded in 2018 for “DAMN.” Famously press-shy, he speaks almost entirely through his work — and in May 2022 that work delivered one of the most consequential artistic statements yet made with AI.

Six faces, one performance

The video for “The Heart Part 5,” directed by Lamar and Dave Free through their company pgLang, used deepfake technology from Deep Voodoo — the AI studio founded by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — to seamlessly transform Lamar’s face mid-verse into O.J. Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, and Nipsey Hussle. Each morph landed on lyrics written for that man’s story: as Smith he rapped about hurt people hurting people; as Hussle he spoke from beyond the grave, forgiving his killer.

It was the first prominent music video built on face-swapping AI, and critics read it as the moment deepfakes crossed from menace to medium — an artist using synthetic likeness not to deceive but to inhabit celebrated and condemned Black men at once. The Hollywood Reporter noted it also skated onto untested legal ice, since none of the depicted men (or estates) were reported to have consented.

Lamar has never given interviews about AI, and two years later he was on the technology’s receiving end: Drake aimed an AI-generated Tupac verse at him in “Taylor Made Freestyle” before the Shakur estate forced it offline. The contrast between the two uses — deepfake as authored commentary versus voice clone as stunt — has framed the debate over synthetic media in hip-hop ever since.