Blanco Brown Claims Breaking Rust, The AI-Generated Artist That Topped Country Digital Sales Chart, Is Based On Him

Blanco Brown believes that an AI-generated song that’s recently been making waves in the music industry actually belongs to him… in a way.

You’ve surely heard about the AI-generated song that topped the Billboard Country Digital Songs Sales chart, right? Whiskey Riff reported that a track titled “Walk My Walk,” by an artist called Breaking Rust, had seemingly fooled the masses. It’s a complete AI creation all around – from the artist, to the music video, to the song itself.

“Walk My Walk” is actually credited to someone named Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, who has seemingly also created another “artist” called Defbeatsai, which posts nothing but raunchy AI-generated songs. At least when it comes to the Instagram page for Defbeatsai, it’s disclosed that the songs are AI-generated (I mean, AI is in the name of the artist).

When it comes to the social media for Breaking Rust, that “artist” is described as “Outlaw Country” and “Soul Music for Us.” There’s no mention that Breaking Rust’s music has been created entirely by AI, and “Walk My Walk” in particular is the one that rocketed to the top of the digital sales chart. It became one of the top stories in not just country music, but all of music in November.

And Blanco Brown believes Breaking Rust is a direct rip off of his work.

For those not familiar, Brown is an Grammy nominated artist that went viral in 2019 for his TikTok dance number, “The Git Up,” and then followed it up with another No. 1 as a guest on Parmalee’s hit single “Just the Way.”

Blanco recently spoke to ABC News and he strongly believes that Breaking Rust’s style is based solely on his music.

The artist says that others reached out to him after listening to “Walk My Walk” to warn him that the AI might have been trained by Brown’s catalogue:

“I didn’t even know about the song until people hit me up about it. My phone just kept blowing up. Somebody said: ‘Man, somebody done typed your name in the AI and made a white version of you. They just used the Blanco, not the Brown.”

And his argument has some legs.

Why? Well, as I mentioned earlier, Defbeatsai appears to be the creator behind Breaking Rust. If you are to look more into that AI organization (I guess you can call it that?), there’s an actual person that appears to be involved by the name of Abraham Abushmais.

Also known as “Abe,” Abushmais was a co-writer on Blanco Brown’s 2019 project Honeysuckle & Lightning Bugs. Considering that the two have worked together in the past, there’s a strong likelihood that Abushmais did just help Defbeatsai learn how to create and sound like his former collaborator.

And according to Brown, he can’t get a hold of Abushmais to talk about the matter:

“Abe’s number changed. We used to talk. I ain’t heard from him in a year or two.”

Besides Brown speaking out about the song, he’s also chosen to take some matters into his own hands. The rapper went into the studio and covered “Walk My Walk,” then released it in late November. There are also plans to rework the song with a different arrangement and modified lyrics, and release that as well.

Brown’s motivation for doing so? Rather simple:

“If someone is going to sing like me, it should be me.”

When I’ve covered stories involving AI before, I’ve pointed out that artificial intelligence can’t just create things out of thin air. There’s always something that AI is pulling from to bring to life something else. Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad, called artificial intelligence the “world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine” in recent weeks.

I’d guess Blanco Brown feels the same way.

Blanco Brown – “Walk My Walk”

The post Blanco Brown Claims Breaking Rust, The AI-Generated Artist That Topped Country Digital Sales Chart, Is Based On Him first appeared on Whiskey Riff.