Last week, the world learned that Capitol Music Group was signing FN Meka, the world’s first and hopefully only big AI rapper. A week later, we have to announce the sad news that FN Meka has just been dropped by his label. Ok, chances are our readers are wondering who the hell FN Meka is, so we’re gonna have to try and explain that. If one is to google “FN Meka”, they’ll encounter an image of what looks like an NFT that gained sentience and tried to escape the confines of the blockchain.
The good news is that Meka has nothing to do with NFTs (at least not yet). The bad news is that he has to do with something even worse than that. Meka is the creation of a shady group and was publicized by Clix, a white Fortnite pro player who helped boost Meka’s popularity on TikTok to stratospheric levels. In short, they went full Tarantino 2.0 and created a virtual black character they could use as a mouthpiece for racial slurs. Meka’s songs attracted a lot of criticism because, well, they’re as tasteful as you’d imagine, and the backlash caused Capitol to understand how stupid of a move this whole thing was. Clix is literally just a 17-year-old who can probably just get away with claiming that “Fortnite made him do it”, but there’s more to this.
They didn’t use some weird AI to do FN Meka’s voice – even though that’s totally a thing now. A real black artist named “Kyle The Hooligan” provided the voice for the character, but he was allegedly ghosted without compensation as soon as he concluded is voice work. The people behind FN Meka state that the character isn’t that problematic because there’s only one white person in the group, but the way they treat their talent indicates that they probably aren’t to be trusted in anything they say.
Top Image: Epic Games
Related: Black Creators Who Got Their Material Stolen
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