A 14-track album, 15-Year-Old Shit Talking, uses an AI clone of the voice of Eyedea, the late Saint Paul battle rapper Mikey Larsen, to perform lyrics he wrote as a teenager. It is out on streaming services and on CD through Bandcamp.
The project was led by his mother, Kathy Larsen Averill, who kept his handwritten lyrics and old recordings and brought in local producers. Other people, Averill and rappers Ecid and Brady O'Rourke among them, recorded guide vocals for the model to convert, while DJ Willy Lose and Big Jess of Unknown Prophets made the beats without AI.
Willy, a longtime friend, said he moved from scepticism to thinking the result is close to the real thing and what Larsen would have wanted. The release reopens the argument over cloning the voices of artists who have died.
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