Tupac estate threatens Drake with legal action over A.I. voice on diss track

It was probably inevitable that, of all the really big names in rap and hip-hop, the first one who’d get seriously obnoxious with A.I was going to be Drake. (It was him or Kanye West, and West’s trajectory is so weird and out of step with modern tastes right now as to make the confluence unlikely). After all, A.I. is currently ubiquitous, deeply corny, and will probably conquer us all—so what better parallel for Drake’s music could there be?

Now, though, the Canadian Degrassi alum finds himself in some potential legal hot water, after allegations from the estate of Tupac Shakur that a recent diss track features an illegal and unauthorized use of the late rap star’s voice have led to the issuing of a cease and desist. Per Pitchfork, the Shakur estate alleges that recent Drake song “Taylor Made Freestyle”—which is aimed at Kendrick Lamar, as part of some fairly playground ongoing music beef bullshit—features a recreation of Shakur’s voice that is both “a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the Estate’s legal right” and “a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time.” This is compounded, thecease and desist order notes, by the fact that the track targets Lamar, “a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately.”

The actual details of the lyrics attributed to the 2Pac A.I. don’t really bear going into, being the usual blend of sexual insults, insinuations, and inside jokes that typically mark the form—except, this time, recreated in the voice of a dead man who never had anything to do with this particular fight. (The song also pulls a similar trick on the voice of the still very-alive Snoop Dogg, who posted an Instagram video apparently responding to the whole thing with confusion.)

The Shakur estate says it will “pursue all of its legal remedies” to get “Taylor Made Freestyle” taken down.