Story by Marsalis Anderson
Photos by Darius Carraway and Keon Marcus
Anderson:
Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, created that song. It has the power to mimic virtually any voice and it’s a phenomenon that has taken the music industry by storm. Even though the concept of AI-generated music has existed since the 20th century, it has gotten really popular within the past year.
Brandon Fennell, also known as his stage name, B Nell, is a student and an artist who currently attends North Carolina A&T. He’s very familiar with the technology.
Fennell:
“AI has been controlling the music that’s made and what we listen to as far as the mass media for years now before computerized programs were popular.“
Fennell says his approach to music isn’t affected from a creative standpoint, but from a marketing standpoint.
“As far as promoting it, and marketing myself, it has become more difficult, and it’s made me work harder to think of ways to get my music to the people that I wanted to get to.”
Fennell’s ultimate goal with his music is to go against the grain and create music for people who truly understand his message. He doesn’t want to be a part of what the popular trends are.
“I don’t want as many ears as possible. I want the ones that can understand my art for what it is and take something from it that hopefully you know affect their day-to-day life.”
A slightly different approach to AI comes from UNC-Chapel Hill student and artist Adrian Tillman, also known as his stage name: DEI.
Tillman is more focused on the technical aspect of AI, noting different ways that it could be incorporated into current music.
Tillman:
“Maybe a chord service, if such a thing was like reliable and consistent and stayed away from using cord progressions that are in like current popular songs. But overall, I just think the risk of coming off as inauthentic or uncreative is so much better than the reward of something that if you put in the time and effort, you’ll come up with yourself.”
Despite AI being helpful in certain aspects of music, like beat-making, Tillman doesn’t want to rely on something like that.
“I feel like I have a relatively organic process. I’m just messing around and I hear some chords that I think sound nice. I’m gonna see if I can build that out into a song.”
Overall, Tillman doesn’t view AI as something that could dominate the music industry due to copyright issues among other things, and he isn’t worried that it will affect any of his music in the future.
Anderson:
Authenticity is the motivating factor for Tillman and Fennell… Both are relying on themselves instead of a computer to get to where they want to be musically. I’m Marsalis Anderson, reporting.
