For months, controversy has been swirling around "Rubberz," a genuinely terrible synthpop pastiche with faux-Morrissey vocals that somehow became a breakout hit for LA rapper Fenix Flexin, a longtime member of Shoreline Mafia. Before the song was officially released, some listeners were already raising questions about whether it was AI-generated based on advance snippets Fenix shared, a theory Fenix and producer Purps On The Beat vehemently denied. Over the past couple months, "Rubberz" has remained wildly popular, even rising to #58 on the Billboard Hot 100, as evidence mounts that the song was mainly the result of AI prompts.
Last week the hip-hop producer Medasin posted a detailed breakdown alleging that "Rubberz" was "fully" AI-generated using a program called Treblo, formerly known as Sonauto AI. He demonstrated how readily the app generates the song's distinctive vocal style and unlikely lyrical phrases. He also pointed to a pre-release snippet Fenix shared with "Sonauto" in its filename. Fenix responded by showing a Pro Tools session as proof the song was made with conventional recording techniques. Medasin quickly showed how easily AI-generated tracks could be separated into stems for that purpose, and Fenix deleted his response.
Fenix was also asked about the "AI accusations" in a joint interview with Purps for RapTV. "I just don't think they understand that I could really talk in a British accent," he said in an almost-British accent. "In a way that like, I could actually record a whole record. The same way I could do it in an English accent I could do it in the UK accent."
Now Treblo has seemingly confirmed that "Rubberz" was created with Treblo. On Monday, the app released a tool to detect whether a song was created with Treblo specifcally. When we uploaded the MP3 from the "Rubberz" SoundCloud, the classifier said, "Very likely Treblo." Treblo says the tool "has a false positive rate below 1 in 10,000." On top of that, in comments to Substacker Marcus Lawrence published Monday, Treblo co-founder Ryan Tremblay seemingly confirmed that "Rubberz" was created with his software: “Someone appears to have used our model to find a sound that millions of people connected with and that’s exciting." That makes "Rubberz" the first AI-generated hit to crack the Hot 100, but it certainly won't be the last.
To be clear, there is a lot of viral AI music out there, and as Empire Of The Sun's Luke Steele recently pointed out, AI is being integrated into a lot of studio tools. Even Charli XCX's Music, Fashion, Film closer "No One Lasts Forever" used the AI-powered "audio mosaic" plugin Concatenator. But fully generating a song and then lying about it, as Fenix is accused of doing, is a different proposition, one that strikes many of us as a bridge too far. Unfortunately, it seems likely that many more AI opportunists will be crossing that bridge soon.
This all comes as the major labels are proposing a framework to determine chart eligibility for AI-generated music. The proposal would forbid AI-generated tracks from charting unless three criteria are met: (1) The AI service used is properly authorized and lawful, (2) the track is substantially human made, and (3) it does not raise stream or chart manipulation concerns. Some, such as the Elite Gymnastics/Default Genders musician and savvy industry commentator Jaime Brooks, have argued that these guardrails are not being proposed to keep AI-generated music off the charts but to ensure the major labels (who have partenerd with Suno and Udio) profit from the inevitable flood of AI-gen hits. Based on the previous track record of major-label execs, I'm sure they'll have no qualms about making a fortune off AI-generated music.
A Fenix Flexin US headline tour was scheduled to begin Monday Aug. 10 in Seattle, but that date and a few others now appeared to be canceled.
