Kanye West and Hit-Boy have reunited for a new collaboration — sort of.
The King’s Disease producer shared a preview of the song on Instagram on Tuesday (April 11), which finds Ye rapping Hit-Boy’s hook on his Surf or Drown album cut “2 Certified.”
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“I’ma need all the amenities/ You made a lil’ pape, I went at their neck and made history/ Dumbin’ out on my own beats/ Hot like I threw ’em in grease/ The one, not the two or the three/ I’m watchin’ the numbers increase,” he spits over the drill-flavored beat.
As the West Coast hitmaker revealed in his caption, though, the vocals weren’t actually recorded by Kanye, but were generated by AI (artificial intelligence) voice technology.
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“AI is getting insane. @kanyewest rapping 2 certified sounds too crzy,” Hit-Boy wrote alongside an exploding head emoji.
“That shit is wild!” he can be heard saying in the video as other people in his studio also react with astonishment.
While Hit-Boy appears to be having fun with AI, others in the rap game don’t quite share his excitement. JAY-Z’s longtime engineer Young Guru recently issued a grave warning about the implications of such advanced technology after stumbling on a computer-generated Hov verse that sounded indistinguishable from the Brooklyn rap icon.
“I’ve been trying to tell everyone that this is where we are now with AI. For some reason this one got everyone’s attention. So what do we do,” he wrote on Instagram. “On one hand I’m well aware that you can’t stop technology. Once the genie is out of the box you can put him back in.
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“On the other hand we have to protect the rights of the artist. Not only artist but everyone in society. People should not be able to take your Name, Image and Likeness without permission. We have to add the voice to this law.”
He continued: “We have to learn from past mistakes. You would be a fool to chase every person that is going to do this. We learned that lesson with Napster. The only way I see to deal with it is to change the law. There are so many different opinions. We could change the United States law tomorrow but the internet is world wide. What a time we live in!!”
9th Wonder, DJ Clark Kent, Hi-Tek, Mysonne and Peter Rosenberg also expressed their concern in the comments section. “My God” 9th wrote, while Clark Kent lamented: “This is terrible.”
As for Hit-Boy and Kanye West, the pair formed a formidable partnership in the early 2010s, combining for hits like “N-ggas In Paris,” “Clique” and “Cold.” Hit-Boy even signed to G.O.O.D. Music as an in-house producer.
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Their relationship soon soured, however, with Hit-Boy departing Ye’s label in 2013 after his deal expired. In a revealing Instagram post in 2020, the producer claimed Kanye stopped working with him because he had begun collaborating with Beyoncé.
“I haven’t been a fan of Kanye on a personal/ human level since he told me face to face he stopped picking my beats because I worked with Beyoncé,” he wrote. “this is after I produced n-ggas in paris , clique, and a myriad of other songs / projects for him and his label GOOD Music in the 2 years I was signed with them.”
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After drunkenly dissing Kanye’s reliance on co-producers and songwriters while celebrating the release of his and Nas’King’s Disease II in 2021, Hit-Boy eventually reconnected with his former label boss last year, producing Ye and The Game’s “EAZY” collaboration.
