Tata... for Now

or Glitch Don't Kill my Vibe... on culture as fed to machines.

Nelly was screaming. E.I.E.I.—now Timbo is off the AI.

We talmbout art, machine learning, bamas scraping your intellectual property and poo-pooing your 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours, feeding the poly-algorithm and caking off sans humans. Is that the gist?

After Timbaland’s announcement regarding an AI “artist,” folks went smack in the comments. And I get it, I really do. But we—the collective we—helped to seed the ground from which this move has grown.

How so, Kōk?

Welp, as Deon Cole so eloquently stated—from a producer’s perspective—we oversold and overstayed our welcome in a machine we knew eats its young.

I’ll speak specifically to hip-hop culture, which has been parsed out and sold in separate packaging but still referred to collectively as the culture. Nah, my people. We let that happen. When we allowed graffiti, fashion, DJs, b-boys/girls, emcees—all the tenets of hip-hop—to get subdivided and sold as different intellectual properties, without building a united front in the entertainment space, we created and then enabled this rift.

We told the emcees that their pen was better than the producer’s pen and SP1200, which was better than the DJ’s stylus, which was more valuable than the breaker’s moves and contorted cartilage, which was then far removed from the clothing space or the graffiti artist’s wares, relegated to gallery spaces with economic barriers to entry. We welcomed and invited the “divide” part of “divide and conquer.”

We overstand and understood that money makes muhfukkas do wild things—sell completely out. Not just going “pop”—which, during the golden era, was seen as a scarlet letter and yet another tool to divide the culture—but straight up selling the homies out the deal. And again, I completely get it. You can’t offer a kid more money than their parents ever made and foolishly expect them to read the fine print, to maintain intellectual property rights when nobody passed down the vocabulary of contractual finessing. That took time. Generations even. Tuck your altruism.

And now?

Now we’re in a space where the power dynamic between artist and label, which used to trickle down to artist and producer, has shifted again. The whole game changed when the pathways to being independent got reframed. Artists can now manage their catalogs, own their masters, and control their intellectual property in ways that weren’t possible, unless you had major label backing or deep pockets. And with that independence, the relationship between the artist and one producer has changed, too. It’s not just a one-to-one anymore—it’s teams of producers, often aligned under the artist’s vision or the label’s strategy, building a sound rather than just a track. I’m not talking about the ’90s babies who made that transition—I’m talmbout the new kids. The ones who Fruity Looped, type-beated, and $300-a-beat’d their way into five-figure placements off TikTok waves. The landscape’s different now, the entry points are wider, but the value of building with intention got lost somewhere in that algorithm shuffle.

The six-figure market bubble burst. Penny stocks were the new wave. And we let it happen. The OGs didn’t pull the youngins aside and say, “Yo, demand more.” Instead, they bought them beat packs at $300 a pop, recycled ideas, accepted and nourished ghost-produced tracks, and collected checks. That’s capitalism—buy low, sell high. “You buy, I sell, we split big cake.” (Shoutout Q-Tip.) So, within the toxicity of the music biz and the shankings we took to get where we are, we let the next generation get shanked, or we did the shanking and called it “paying dues.”

Bullshit.

When I signed my raggedy-ass record deal and then got hip, I made a vow: I wouldn’t let anyone who asked me for advice sign something like that. And I sure wasn’t gonna beat anyone out of bread just to say I had a few dollars more. That’s me though, every artist is not a role model or fair, c’mon, you’ve read it before…there be sharks in these waters.

So what does that have to do with Tim?

I’m setting the scene.

Among the deeper issues involved in this whole dust up, specifically regarding IP, the possible misuse of IP, the possible misuse of trust, etc. I also feel like there is an additional point to be made around the idea that we, as artists, should manage a modicum of culpability and accountability for our actions or inactions. Have we done the additional work to find why an artist as ingenious as Tim might want to work with AI as opposed to a human being? Have we asked ourselves, the creatives in the game, how easy we are to work with? I don’t mean “easy to fool”—I mean, can we collaborate without the diva/divo energy? Do you respect the process enough to leave that ego at the door?

Your pen might be some shit, but it ain’t the shit. Time invested should be mutual. Just because your moms and the choir said you can “sang real good” doesn’t mean you know how to write a song or record it properly. That’s why amongst all the folks who appear in the credits, including producers, vocal producers, engineers, and songwriters, exist.

They’re not there to steal your shine—they’re there to help shape it. They understand how to make a record with an artist—not for, not around, not in spite of. With. But only if that artist is open to collaboration instead of barking orders because their TikTok clip went viral last week and their streams are bonk.

I don’t know Tim personally, I peeped the MLM-esque challenges and live collabs, to which i’ll say, I understand the pressure and want to be put on, however paying for someone to listen to your music, without an NDA or any other enforceable document, is playing Russian roulette with your IP. Also, and mutually factual is that Tim is an amazing producer who changed the way people made music, so no slander, and I also imagine that after years of being in the business, he might be tired. Tired of developing artists who don’t trust his ears or experience. Tired of dealing with drama. Tired of giving up publishing and points, even at his level, to up-and-comers who still feel the need to insert knife and twist, because “hurt people hurt people.” So I can only imagine a tech-savvy, genius who has always leaned into innovative ways to create, seeing the potential in investing in machine learning/training to remove potential barriers in the creative process.

And now we got AI in the mix.

There’s a real distrust of AI in the music space—and rightfully so. This industry has a long, ugly history of exploiting artists who didn’t read the fine print or who were never shown the full scope of how to retain ownership, maximize revenue, or protect their creations. So when AI steps in, trained on our voices, our styles, our IP, and then spits it back out as “content” without credit or compensation? Of course, folks are wary.

But AI ain't the villain. It's a tool. A means to generate ideas, not the end product. It still takes human input to get something meaningful out of it. It still takes prompts, intention, and, dare I say, your sauce.

If someone’s a brilliant prompt engineer, if they know how to coax something new and wild and moving out of a machine, isn’t that art too? Ain’t that creativity?

AI tools should assist in the creative process, not replace it. Just like the 808 didn’t kill drummers—it expanded what rhythm could be. Just like sampling didn’t end composition—it redefined how we remember sound, how OG artists got royalties on catalogs of what they believed was dead, even finding out that they either owned or did not own they’re own IP, because factually without sampling specifically from hip hop a lot of OGs would be broke.

So yeah, I understand the beef. I understand the fear of what’s next. I understand that the same resources that are being spent on this technostar could have been allocated, albeit fairly, to many eager and hungry artists who flood Tim’s page daily, and the decision whether to do so or not lies squarely on that man’s shoulders. But as creatives, we need to set the standard instead of being exceedingly leery every time the terrain shifts. The music business has long been a succubus to the love and labor of music—draining the passion, the purpose, the skills, and the joy out of the process in favor of metrics, marketability, and money.

But ask yourself: what’s the real fear here? Is it the fear of less creativity—or the fear that yours might not stack up? Is it the fear of losing a check you didn’t really earn? The fear of being exposed? The fear of progress? The fear that many will replicate this wave based on the precedent set? Or maybe just the fear of not being on the guest list?

Whatever it is, let’s get clear. AI isn’t the villain. The villain is exploitation. The villain is greed. The villain is us when we choose gatekeeping over growth, ego over evolution.

We don’t have to love the tools—but we should love the idea of expanding what’s possible. Let’s stop blaming the machine and start demanding ethical, transparent use. Let’s protect creators, credit contributors, mentor youngins, put somebody deserving on, and remember that the magic still begins with a human intervention and personal sauce, which can’t be replicated.

Tech doesn’t have to divide us—unless we let it.

easy

k

about
KOKAYI
Artist | Author | Producer: The Preeminent Improvisational Vocalist, GRAMMY-nominated musician, and multidisciplinary fine artist, is a Guggenheim Fellow for Music Composition (first emcee to have done so). Author of You Are Ketchup: and Other Fly Music Tales, whose artistry reflects a rich tapestry of life experiences shaped by DC, and the cultural innovations of the Black diaspora—an enduring legacy that continues to shape the world, often without the proper recognition.