Surprisingly, Sexyy Red and Drake’s song “U My Everything” sampled Metro Boomin's viral track “BBL Drizzy.”
According to Billboard, the St. Louis producer’s diss beat seems to have become the first-ever AI-generated hit song. While it never went to streaming services, “U My Everything” did, making that song the first time an AI-generated sample has been used in an official release.
This is unchartered territory for the music industry, posing the question, as Billboard puts it, “Does an artist need to clear a song with an AI-generated sample?” Metro’s song was a remix from King Willonius, who created the original with AI.
“This sample is very, very novel,” Willonius’ attorney, Donald Woodard, told the publication. “There’s nothing like it.” Woodard—who’s helping to guide Willonius through this complicated process—says the “BBL Drizzy” master recording is viewed as “public domain,” which means it isn’t copyrighted.
While Willonius created the original using AI, he did write the lyrics, so he's been given credit and payment for his sample on “U My Everything.” Woodard added, “We are focused on the human portion that we can control. You only need to clear the human side of it, which is the publishing.”
But does Metro deserve credit? His lawyer, Uwonda Carter, told Billboard no, that Metro doesn’t want ownership or royalties from “U My Everything.”
She had a conversation with Metro, his manager, and his label, Republic Records, about how to navigate a proper release of “BBL Drizzy,” but chose not to pursue it because they didn’t know how clearance would have worked with AI. “Metro decided that he wasn’t going to exploit the record because trying to clear it was going to be the Wild, Wild West,” she added.
"U My Everything" appears on Sexyy Red's new album, In Sexyy We Trust.
