"Rubberz", the synthpop breakout for Los Angeles rapper Fenix Flexin, appears to be the first AI-generated song to reach the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 58. Suspicion started before release, when snippets sounded machine-made; Flexin and producer Purps On The Beat denied it, and Flexin later joked that people underestimate his British accent.
Producer Medasin built the case against that, showing how readily Treblo, formerly Sonauto, reproduces the song's vocal style and odd phrasing, and pointing to a pre-release file Flexin shared with "Sonauto" in its name. Flexin's Pro Tools session was answered with a demonstration of how easily generated tracks split into stems; the rebuttal vanished.
The near-confirmation came from Treblo itself: a new detection tool rated the track "very likely Treblo", and co-founder Ryan Tremblay said someone appears to have used the model to find a sound millions connected with.
Stereogum's line is drawn not at AI in studios, which is everywhere, but at generating a whole song and denying it, and it notes the majors' proposed chart rules would admit AI tracks under conditions critics read as a route to profit from them. Tour dates have since disappeared.
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