The time is not quite ripe to reveal it here, but over the past few weeks, I’ve put a wrap on 30 full-length albums I made using Suno. During that time, I’ve watched with interest the evolving story around the new AI artist who signed an allegedly $3 million deal with Hallwood media, Xania Monet. One of the wrinkles that has received I think too much attention in this saga has been Xania’s being called out by a human artist named Kehlani, who criticized Xania for being basically not human enough.

As Billboard reported here:

“There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multimillion-dollar deal … and the person is doing none of the work,” a frustrated-sounding Kehlani told followers without directly naming Monet or Jones. “This is so beyond out of our control.” […]

Regardless, Kehlani says, “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me.”

They added, “I don’t respect it.”

I’ve thought a lot about this, and personally, I don’t really like Xania’s songs, one of which has racked up at least 2.3M views on YouTube, and Billboard elsewhere estimates a total of 17M listens across platforms.

Monet’s most popular track, “How Was I Supposed to Know?,” which has ranked in the top 10 on Billboard’s R&B Digital Song Sales for two weeks in a row and hit No. 22 last week on the Digital Song Sales chart overall, has accumulated 22,700 song equivalents in the U.S. and more than 3 million on-demand audio and video streams.  

Here’s the track:

Whether or not I actually like it is, of course, entirely irrelevant. Because those streaming numbers don’t lie (I’ve seen no suggestion of inauthentic stream/fraudulent activity anywhere with regards to this). For me the music sounds a little bit on the boring and derivative side. But what I think doesn’t matter, because it seems that potentially millions of people enjoy it.

I posted a quote from a 1999 David Byrne piece not long ago. Part of it seems entirely relevant to this:

“… to rule out everything I personally abhor would be to rule out the possibility of a future miracle.”

“Abhor” is a very strong word here, and it’s a long way from how I feel when I listen to this track, which sparks a lot less negative emotion for me. I just don’t particularly like it, rather than hate it or what it stands for personally. But I do think the public reaction, which has largely been unfortunately shaped by Kehlani’s reaction is a little bit on the ridiculous side.

Why? Well, because for me, Kehlani’s music is pretty much also on the slightly boring and derivative side. Even if she’s a “human.” Exhibit B:

And here’s my thing: as far as I can tell, Kehlani has no greater right to say she is a “human” than does Xania’s actual creator, one Telisha “Nikki” Jones. Kehlani does not, in my eyes, have some monopoly over what it means to be authentic or human than anyone else does. Kehlani’s statement, referenced above, in part reads:

“Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me.”

My question is basically: so what? Why does anyone else need to justify the art that they make to some basically random person who is unhappy about it? Because in my experience of being a person on the internet, there is basically always some random person(s) who will be unhappy about literally anything you do, and will do their level best to cut you down for it.

Regarding Xania’s record deal, Kehlani further stated, “the person is doing none of the work.” But again, Kehlani has no monopoly on what it means to put effort into something, just because her work follows a particular more conventional mode of creation, where Xania/Jones’ follows a new, different, emerging one. Kehlani also has, as far as I can tell, no magical crystal ball that gives her exclusive insight into the very real struggles we all equally face as humans on this planet, trying to survive & thrive against all odds, and against a system which all equally tries to pull us down at every step of the way.

To suggest someone using AI is doing “none of the work” is to fundamentally misunderstand that as artists, the “work” we all do is the work of merely living. And we all do it equally at the end of the day, regardless of what tools or technologies we use to express that business of living creatively. When we accuse someone else of not engaging in the true authentic work of living, of being a creative person in a society which at times seems almost entirely purpose-built for crushing creative people – simply because we don’t like what they created – we essentially pile ever more work on that person, forcing them to deal with more and more of our own accumulated baggage in addition to whatever portion nature or society has already allocated them to bear. None of us can truly see into the soul of anyone else and therefore has the right to sit in some absolute holy judgement over the pain of the effort anyone else has gone through in their lives to get where they are.

I think it’s perfectly fine for Kehlani, or anyone else, to simply not like Xania’s music. As I said, I don’t particularly enjoy listening to it myself. But what I do or don’t like is all but irrelevant in the face of millions of people who do like it, who do find threads that resonate with their own personal experiences of what it means to be doing the work of being human. It feels selfish and narrow to me to try to undercut that very obviously real sentiment – and for what? Because Kehlani and others obviously feel threatened by someone else who has figured out a different solution to the problems put onto artists by capitalism? To me, that’s cheap.

I’ve wondered in this game too, at what point a “grifter” becomes a “hustler” which is more socially & culturally acceptable. Why are we supposed to “respect the hustle” but scorn the grift? It’s the same damn thing. The reality is we’re all stuck in the same sad, bullshit pathetic grind. If people are able to find some way out of that maze – any way at all – and share some light in the tunnel while doing it, well, I personally *do* respect that. Even if I don’t think it’s necessary that anyone else has to justify any of it to me. At the end of the day, every person who follows the artist’s path is only responsible to their own inner light, their own creative voice and urging that keeps them up in the middle of the night, and keeps them going. The rest to me, increasingly, is just so much noise, and to quote Kehlani’s words back on her, I don’t respect it either.