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Timbaland made a longtime dream a reality by using A.I. to create a song with The Notorious B.I.G. but fans have mixed reactions to the iconic producer's use of the late rapper's voice. On Wednesday (May 3), Timbaland hit up Instagram to reveal that one of the very few accomplishments the esteemed beatmaker had yet to achieve in his storied career has come to fruition. With the help of artificial intelligence, Timbo locked in an original collab with the late great Notorious B.I.G. in a song that has garnered a tremendous amount of both controversy and praise. "Alright so, I'm sitting here with my brother, Creative God, and we know that it's a lot of talk of A.I. and we know the feelings of violating certain things but let tell you something," Timbaland said while prefacing his creation using Biggie Smalls' voice in the clip below. "I got a solution that's going to be beneficial to everybody but in the meantime, I gotta share something I've been working on because I always wanted to do this, and I never got a chance to. I always wanted to work with Big and I never got a chance to until today. I came out rightplay."
As Timbaland lets the computer-generated audio loose, The Notorious B.I.G.'s immediately recognizable baritone voice can be heard flowing over Tim's signature drums and synths as if the legendary Brooklynite never left this Earth on March 9, 1997. Through an algorithm that was likely used to train A.I. software to replicate Biggie's voice, the lyrics find Smalls name-dropping other fallen rappers Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke and Young Dolph, all of which were murdered long after The Notorious B.I.G. passed.
Due to the ongoing controversial nature of the ever-evolving use of A.I. in hip-hop, many fans of both The Notorious B.I.G. and the Virginia-bred producer expressed a strong sense of distaste for Timbaland's representation of the MC who many consider to be the greatest of all time.
Interestingly enough, when Timbaland posted the video clip of his new A.I. song with The Notorious B.I.G., he tagged Young Guru, Jay-Z's personal engineer, who has been very vocal about the deep concerns he has for the use of artificial intelligence in hip-hop. Guru has yet to respond.
Watch the video and listen to the track below:
Source: XXLMag.com