Tyga released his ninth studio album, $tarface, at the end of last month and dropped a bombshell on fans in an interview surrounding the project. After admitting that he used AI to complete $tarface, Pitchfork unceremoniously granted his album a rare 0 rating as a result.
It was bad news for the California native when, during an interview with VIBE, Tyga admitted to using AI. In his view, he viewed the use of AI as a tool akin to how some vocalists used Auto-Tune. With growing anti-AI sentiment across the nation and around the world, the “Rack City” star’s all-in stance has been met with disdain.
Which brings us to Pitchfork’s scathing review where, for the first time in 19 years, a 0 rating was applied to an album. We’ll share an excerpt of the review below.
From Pitchfork:
If you want to get a sense of what $TARFACE actually sounds like, I suggest going to the free-to-use music AI music generator Treblo (née Sonauto), allegedly the one that Fenix Flexin used to create his hit single “Rubberz,” and typing in the following tags: “tyga, 1980s, synthpop, new wave, 80s pop, tyga, tyga, tyga, sung, thriller, synth.” (You have to type “tyga” a bunch of times to make the model realize you want Tyga’s vocals; do not, under any circumstances, try to add a “Fenix Flexin” tag to get your AI Tyga to sing because it’ll just spit out Fenix Flexin vocals.) I’m not saying the record is AI-generated; all I’m saying is that I was personally able to generate a song that sounded exactly like $TARFACE, assuming it had included a song about a critic trying to write a review of a Tyga album.
Suffice it to say, $tarface is getting rightfully slammed online after the ratings news went wide this week. We’ve got reactions from X below.
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Photo: Getty
