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It was fun while it lasted, but it looks like the era of AI-generated reproductions of rappers’ voices online is already facing its end. As I predicted a couple of months ago, it only took the right/wrong artist being unwillingly exploited for profit before the labels stepped in, shutting down some of the more notable tracks.

“Heart On My Sleeve,” one such track that had gone viral after being posted on DSPs, was the subject of a takedown request by Universal Music Group, which had it pulled from streamers. The track garnered attention for pairing the voices of Canadian artists Drake and The Weeknd for a song about The Weeknd’s ex Selena Gomez; it was a reunion of sorts for two artists who were once a dynamic duo but have since seemingly kept each other at arm’s length after a falling out.

Drake, it should be noted, wasn’t laughing when an AI-generated cover of his voice rapping Ice Spice’s “Munch” came to his attention. It’s just one of many fan-created joke tracks, which even include a phony Eminem verse on a David Guetta song.

And while proponents said “Heart On My Sleeve,” created by anonymous TikToker ghostwriter977, sounded just like something the two performers would actually make, detractors derided the song for only doing so on a surface level, throwing in additional criticism for listeners who praised it, calling them nothing short of racist for downplaying the true creativity that goes into hip-hop (you don’t see, for instance, AI-generated pop-punk or country music going viral for sounding “authentic”).

In a statement to Billboard, UMG decried the practice of generative AI copies of artists’ vocals, saying:

The training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation. We’re encouraged by the engagement of our platform partners on these issues – as they recognize they need to be part of the solution.

And hey, look: The irony of a major label complaining about “denying artists their due compensation” is not lost on me here. (Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.) But they’ve got a point: AI doesn’t just cut out the middleman (in this case, the labels), it also cuts out artists, who don’t get a say in the sort of subjects these fan-generated AI reproductions will ultimately indulge in (it’s only a matter of time until someone turns Kanye’s borderline neo-Nazi rants into a song, sung by an artist like Beyoncé or Rihanna). So, it’s probably best someone steps in sooner rather than later — at least to get some sort of legal framework in place so artists have recourse when they’re inevitably “forced” to “say” something they never said.

Ice Spice and Instagram might have some issues now. The “Bikini Bottom” rapper had her post removed, citing it represented “violence and dangerous organizations,” which went against the app’s community guidelines.

Her original post was a selfie, which she captioned “Ayo Isis,” along with an eye emoji. She then posted a screenshot of the deletion alert to her Instagram story, writing, “can’t type my name is ode,” with a crying emoji. Because the Bronx musician’s real name is Isis Naija Gaston.

While Ice Spice has millions of followers on the platform, you’d think it wouldn’t have gotten flagged for what it thought it was referencing, but the social media algorithms seem to just be… doing whatever these days.

As for her music, she recently collaborated with Nicki Minaj on “Princess Diana” and PinkPantheress on the “Boy’s A Liar” remix.

“I’m so excited to be collaborating with her because I’m really a huge fan, ever since I first heard of her I’ve been a fan,” Spice shared with Dazed about PinkPantheress earlier this year. “So for her to ask me to hop on ‘Boy’s a Liar,’ I’m really excited. And the video is fire too. It’s unexpected, but we still have a correlation to each other somehow. Even before the record, fans really wanted it. There was already requests for that.”

PinkPantheress is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Does anything slap as hard as the combination of beans, rice, and cheese wrapped in a warm tortilla? Few fast food menu items can compare to this simple masterpiece, especially when you consider value. Every drive-thru operation that serves bean, cheese, and rice burritos will sell them to you for under S3 — a steal! Even as a side order, a burrito is a straight-up meal, few value menu items can say the same. A side order of fries is just a box of carbohydrates, an order of nuggets is all protein (and oil), mozzarella sticks, and jalapeño poppers are just cheese (gulp, plus more oil), but with a burrito, you get it all!

Not enough for you? Buy a second one, you’ll still land under $5.

Because I live in Southern California, I can get a great burrito at whatever the closest taqueria is, but not everyone is so lucky and we feel for you. We know that sometimes fast food is as good as it gets. So who makes the best version of this burrito in the fast food universe? We set out to find out by ordering the legendary BRC burrito at three popular fast-food chains.

PART I — Methodology

Compared to our previous blind taste tests, this one was incredibly simple. A bean, cheese, and rice burrito holds heat better than any other fast food dish, and two of the three chains we selected for this contest were in the same strip mall parking lot, so it only took me 15 minutes to collect all three.

Once home, my girlfriend split the burrito in half (for photo purposes) and served me a burrito at random. Rather than just a few bites, I ate a whole half before moving on to the next. Not for any reason in particular besides the fact that I love bean, cheese, and rice burritos.

Here was this challenge’s tasting class:

• Del Taco — Bean and Cheese Burrito with Rice
• El Pollo Loco — BRC Burrito
• Taco Bell — Bean, Cheese, and Rice Burrito

To break down the individual elements I rated each component (beans, rice, cheese, tortilla) on a 5-point scale and added them up for a total score. Let’s get to the tasting!

PART II — The Tasting

Taste 1

Beans: 3. The beans have a good meaty flavor, but the texture here is muddy. Think a very thick bean broth with very little texture.

Cheese: 2. Too salty, almost American-cheese-like. It has no depth.

Rice: 1. It might as well be nonexistent. Not only is it flavorless, it adds little if any texture.

Tortilla: 5. This is my sort of tortilla. It’s gummy, buttery, thin, and a bit greasy.

Taste 2

Beans: 2. This has the opposite problem from Taste 1, the beans here are too dry. While the texture is fluffy and tender and the flavor is great, it’s too easy to taste each individual bean, there is nothing binding them together.

There also isn’t nearly enough here, the ratio of this burrito is totally off.

Cheese: 5. Creamy, salty, almost nutty, this is Monterey Jack cheese, a classic and the only correct cheese for a burrito.

Rice: 4. There sure is a lot of it here. It’s textural, with some nice umami from the tomato sauce, but its overuse makes this burrito a bit drier than it should be.

Tortilla: 2. I can tell it would be a good tortilla if they bothered to heat it up on the flat top. Seriously what happened here? Did they microwave this?

Taste 3

Beans: 5. This is the real deal, fluffy, tender (I’m tasting oregano and garlic in there), flavorful, and there is a lot of ‘em. This is the perfect ratio of beans.

Cheese: 3. It’s more complex than Taste 1, but it’s not Monterey Jack. It’s nutty and has a bold present flavor, but there isn’t enough in here.

Rice: 2. It’s white rice, which is fine from a textural standpoint, but it doesn’t have the nice tomato complexity that Spanish rice offers. It’s not flavorless though, it’s almost buttery, which is something.

Tortilla: 4. Fluffy, and gummy, but a bit thicker than I like my tortillas. At least it’s been warmed on a flat top!

Part 2: The Ranking

3. Taco Bell (Taste 1)

Total Points: 11

Sorry to Taco Bell fans but this burrito is doing the bare minimum. It’s practically a dead ringer for one of those frozen gas station microwaveable burritos. It gets the job done in a pinch but it’s not worth looking forward to, and that’s sad.

I’ve heard rumors that Taco Bell’s beans aren’t real beans, but some freeze-dried powder stuff that they add water into. I wouldn’t doubt that given how bad the beans were here.

The Bottom Line:

This burrito failed to deliver on beans, and considering that’s a pillar of this dish, we’re ranking it at the bottom.

Find your nearest Taco Bell here.

2. El Pollo Loco (Taste 2)

Total Points: 13

El Pollo Loco has some great individual ingredients, but the execution here is what held the burrito back. There weren’t enough beans, there was too much rice, and although the cheese was good the burrito came across as a bit too dry.

Maybe that’s a quality control issue, but considering how easy it is to put together a burrito, there is really no excuse for the lack of execution here.

The Bottom Line:

Great flavors, poor execution.

Find your nearest El Pollo Loco here.

1. Del Taco (Taste 3)

Total Points: 14

Look at that! Our first blind taste that ranked in order, each burrito in this taste test was better than the last culminating in this great but not perfect bean, rice, and cheese burrito. While the simple change of cheddar for Monterey Jack cheese and white rice for Spanish Rice would’ve made this a perfect 20/20 burrito, all of the individual flavors here deliver enough to give this the top spot.

It helps that Del Taco infuses this burrito with green salsa, adding a mild chili flavor into the mix that makes this burrito taste better than the competition, ingredients be damned. Anticipating this, my girlfriend made me try the competing halves with their respective hot sauces/salsas.

I tried El Pollo Loco’s avocado salsa and Taco Bell’s mild sauce on each respective burrito and while it enhanced the experience of both, my ranking remains the same. I’ll give El Pollo Loco points for having the best salsa, but it wasn’t enough to knock it up from second place to first.

The Bottom Line:

The best bean, cheese, and rice burrito you’ll get from an American fast food drive-thru. Hands down.

Find your nearest Del Taco here.

Earlier this month, Ariana Grande revealed that the forthcoming Jon M. Chu movie adaptation of Wicked is halfway through filming.

Now, new photos show the singer donning her puffy pink dress and a massive tiara, while also holding a wand that’s almost taller than her. She also shared a dim movie still on Instagram, but if you squint hard you can see her engulfed in that dress as she ascends stairs.

It was also recently divulged that the movie will be split into two parts.

“As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years,” Chu shared on Twitter. “With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys of these beloved characters.”

Meanwhile, Grande also acknowledged the batch of unreleased songs of hers that were leaked last month online.

“You guys have heard every bad song and bullsh*t demo that I’ve ever made,” she said in a R.E.M. Beauty video. “Hilarious. It’s impossible to keep things from you. You gotta take some swings and misses.”

After failing to reach a settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, Fox News is trying out a new strategy: it’s all Donald Trump‘s fault. As the network faces a potentially disastrous trial that could force the conservative media giant to repeatedly apologize to viewers for spouting election fraud claims — despite private messages revealing that its anchors knew full well there was no evidence and didn’t believe the conspiracy theories being spun by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney “The Kraken” Powell.

In a last ditch legal filing, Fox News’ attorneys are now attempting to argue that its on-air personalities were simply repeating what the president at the time was saying. Via Newsweek:

Such a development, if accepted, could play a key role in the development of the case. To successfully win a defamation suit, the allegedly defamed entity would have to prove the person or organization who defamed it did so with harmful intent.

Because Trump was the president, Fox News’ attorneys argued, his comments about the company were therefore newsworthy, raising questions about whether the conservative network’s personalities were acting with “actual malice” in repeating them on the air.

Fox News’ attorneys reportedly argued that the jury should have to decide “whether allegations being made by a sitting U.S. president have credibility because of who is making the allegations.”

As for how Trump is responding to this strategy, you guessed it, he went on an all-caps rant on Truth Social encouraging Fox to tell its viewers that the 2020 election was stolen. According to Trump, this will take care of the whole lawsuit problem, somehow.

“IF FOX WOULD FINALLY ADMIT THAT THERE WAS LARGE SCALE CHEATING & IRREGULARITIES IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WHICH WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR THEM, & FOR AMERICA, THE CASE AGAINST THEM, WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL, WOULD BE GREATLY WEAKENED,” Trump wrote.

(Via Newsweek)

Chlöe is keeping busy, as she’s still hot off the release of her solo debut album, In Pieces, and touring North America in support of the album. Equally busy is her sister, Halle Bailey, who is gearing up for the premiere of The Little Mermaid, in which she plays Ariel. But their tight schedules couldn’t stop them from reuniting last night (April 17) on Jimmy Fallon’s That’s My Jam.

During the episode’s “Mixtape Medley Showdown,” the two sang a musical montage of iconic break-up anthems. Chlöe kicked off the challenge with a smooth cover of Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor,” then, on Halle’s turn, she sang Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” The two went back and forth singing covers of songs by Kelly Rowland, Carrie Underwood, Fleetwood Mac, Olivia Rodrigo, and more.

Though the two are proving fruitful in their solo endeavors, nothing can break the bonds of sisterhood. Last month, in a campaign for ZyrTec, Halle said that the two are not finished making music together as Chloe X Halle.

“She’s my biggest supporter. I’m her biggest supporter. We’re just really excited to be able to be doing all of this together and for this all to be happening. I’m so proud of her,” said Halle.

You can see a clip above.

Round one of the NBA Playoffs is well underway and the latest twist in the epic sports narrative that has been the 2023 NBA season is an event that took place during last night’s Game 2 of the series between the Golden State Warriors and the surprise success of the season, the Sacramento Kings.

In the fourth quarter, as the Kings led the Warriors 91-87 in Sacramento, the Dubs’ Draymond Green and the Kings’ Domantas Sabonis got tangled up fighting for a rebound, leading to Sabonis ending up on the floor (for what felt like the 99th time this series) and grabbing at Green’s ankles to prevent him from getting back down the court.

Whether by accident or design, Green wound up planting his foot dead in the middle of his opponent’s chest, resulting in his expulsion from the game. The incident seems to be all anyone can talk about this morning, with Shaq standing up for Draymond on last night’s Inside The NBA and lots of fans chiming in — including rap’s resident supervillain, 50 Cent.

50, who has a drinks partnership with the Kings and attended both games in Sacramento, was quick with the jokes on Instagram. “Said @money23green what the fuck you do that for?” he wrote in the caption of a pair of screenshots of the incident. “He said 50 im a big stepper, i’m out here steppin on sh*t it’s the play offs.”

I guess 50 approves, but that’s no surprise from someone who had as many rivalries on records as Green has had on the court.

The wildest moment of the 2023 NBA Playoffs came with about seven minutes to go in Game 2 of Warriors-Kings in Sacramento, when Domantas Sabonis grabbed Draymond Green’s ankle and then promptly got stomped in the chest by Green in retaliation.

Sabonis would stay on the ground for much of what became a lengthy review at the monitor by the officials, who decided on a technical foul for Sabonis’ ankle lock, while Green was ejected for a Flagrant 2 for his stomp to the chest. Green spent the review doing Hulk Hogan ear gestures to the crowd and then screamed at fans behind the Kings bench that were giving it right back to him.

After the game, Green said his foot “had to land somewhere,” calling out the Kings for grabbing his leg in each game — Malik Monk was the offender in the opener. On the other side, Sabonis called out Green for a dangerous play and then someone made sure ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski got the word out that he was having X-rays to see if there was any damage to his ribs or lungs.

Four hours later, there was an effort to combat that by getting Green’s injury concerns out to the public by doing the same, as Marc Spears reported there will be X-rays on the Warriors star’s ankle.

The showmanship on display from both is incredible here. We literally saw Draymond jumping around to hype up his team during the review and after the ejection, certainly not looking any worse for wear on that ankle, while Sabonis played the last seven minutes of the game and tried to take a charge in the chest and popped up after. I have no doubt the stomp hurt and Sabonis is probably quite sore, but the X-ray thing certainly seems to be an effort to further sway public (and the league’s) opinion on the altercation. As for Green, this is just incredible trolling.

There’s a real professional wrestling quality to this feud that’s building between the two, as they have spent an inordinate amount of time tangled up, baiting one another into fouls, and flopping on contact at every turn. Everything is embellished to an almost comical degree, and now they’re posturing over who hurt the other worse with a dirty play. That hasn’t been lost of fans, one of whom fired up WWE 2K to create a Draymond-Sabonis match in the ring, complete with chest stomps from Green.

The posturing from both sides only adds fuel to the fire, and I really do appreciate how over the top the display from both sides. I hope it only continues and Draymond comes into Game 3 getting taken to the bench in a wheelchair like Kevin Nash with a fake leg in a cast.

Dr. Seuss is one of the most enduring and endearing children’s books writers of all time. His work has been around for over sixty years, and while certain titles certainly fall short of today’s standards, kids continue to enjoy the unique use of wordplay, illustration style and abounding optimism of his beloved classics.

But how exactly did Dr. Seuss came up with such an impactful idea in the first place? That’s a story unto itself, and one that, much like his fictional works, still feels relevant today.

As explained in a Twitter thread by writer and research assistant Billy Oppenheimer, it all began when another award winning author, John Hershey, started investigating the looming question of 1954: “Why can’t children read?”

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After two years of reading children’s books, meeting with experts and observing how reading was taught in schools, Hershey ultimately came to a rather simple conclusion—children didn’t want to read, because children’s books were boring.

Even in an age pre-TikTok and Snapchat, reading had to “compete for the interest of children with television, radio, movies, comic books, magazines, and sports,” and children’s books by and large just weren’t entertaining enough to hold short attention spans in comparison to their instantly stimulating counterparts.

In 1954, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey investigated the question everyone was asking, “Why can’t children read?”

Hersey found the answer and then wrote about it in a piece published in Life Magazine.

Which led to one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.… pic.twitter.com/SZmTw88b3j

— Billy Oppenheimer (@bpoppenheimer) April 16, 2023

Henry would end up publishing his findings in an issue of “LIFE” Magazine, along with the call to action for writers to create something more compelling than what the current market provided. The article would be read by an editor at Houghton Mifflin, who would then challenge an illustrator friend of his to “write me a story that first graders can’t put down.”

That illustrator was, you guessed it, Theodor Seuss Geisel.

Seuss has the added obstacle of only being able to write a story using a vocabulary list of 300 “accepted” words. So his strategy, as is with many brilliant creatives, was to just play around, combining different rhyming words until something resonated. Eventually the words “cat” and “hat” caught his attention…

…And in 1957, we’d have “The Cat in the Hat,” a blockbuster of a book that used 236 unique words, which Hershey himself hailed as “masterpiece” and a “gift to the art of reading.” It would also remain the book that Suess was proudest of, “because [it] proved to a number of million kids that reading is not a disagreeable task.”

A lack of interest in reading, particularly reading for pleasure, is still a widely discussed topic among parents and educators. And much like in Dr. Seuss’ time, an overwhelming amount of competing tech-media is largely to blame. A 2021 survey from Common Sense Media revealed that in just two years after the pandemic (between 2019 and 2021) kids ages 8 to 18 increased their time on social media 17 percent, amounting to somewhere between a little more than five and half hours to just over eight and half hours a day.

We might not be able to grab even shorter attention spans with rhyming tales of Whoville, but we can still take a page from Dr. Seuss’ book by making reading seem more “interesting.” Perhaps it entails a wider selection of book titles, or joining forces with the power of social media to form communities like #BookTok to make reading still feel fresh and modern—these are two strategies that have already proven successful. Or perhaps it’ll be something altogether different.

The solution might not be completely solidified, but like Dr. Seuss, we have to maintain a curious spirit and incorporate a sense of play in our approach. Keeping something fun is akin to keeping something alive more often than not. Take it from the guy who brought us Grinches and Loraxes and Whovians that still lift our spirits today.

Speaking of reading, if you care to check out Seuss’ biography, which Oppenhemier cited in his thread, you can find it here.

Back when Donald Trump was an active Twitter user, he only had 280 characters to share his nonsensical ramblings. Now he has unlimited space to call Elon Musk a liar.

“I don’t believe Elon Musk voted for Biden, not for a minute!” the former president ranted on Truth Social. “He told me that he voted for me, but who knows about that, and who cares? Elon is just trying to make friends with the absolutely horrible Biden Administration because of all the government subsidies he gets, and all the permits he needs. His space company, car company, battery company, tunnel company, and even Twitter, which was illegally controlled by the FBI, need government HELP & SUBSIDIES.” Trump added, with heavy sarcasm, that Musk is “MENDING FENCES.”

Trump is referring to Musk’s interview with Tucker Carlson (cursed sentence) on Monday night, where the Twitter destroyer revealed that he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. “I’m not saying I’m a huge fan of Biden, since that would be inaccurate,” he said. “I would prefer, frankly, that we put just a normal person as president. A normal person with common sense. Whose values are in the middle of the country.”

And maybe they can be super funny, and look really good in a cowboy hat, and of course they need thick skin. A real man of the people, always looking out for the working class. That’s the kind of president Elon can get behind.

(Via Mediaite)