On the debut episode of “Listen & Laugh,” Dr. Dre called AI a whole new level of creativity. Ice Cube, his old N.W.A. partner, was not sold.
Dre made his case the way a producer would. Hip hop was built on sampling, on chopping somebody else’s record into something new, and he does not see AI as a different animal. He even said he would welcome somebody recreating “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” with AI and making it bigger than the original.
“A whole new level of creativity.”
Cube pushed back from the other side of the porch. Sampling took real skill, real ears and real imagination, and his worry is that AI lets artists skip the hard part of actually making the music. Two founders of the same group, two completely different reads on where this is going.
The back and forth is the piece moving online today, with one clip of the debate past 124,000 views by Saturday. Dre also said during the conversation that he plans to step back from music for a year or two, and that roughly 80 percent of everything he has recorded has never come out.
Sampling got called cheating once too. This time, the two men who proved everybody wrong about it cannot agree with each other.
See also: Ice Cube and Mike Epps Started a Podcast Called ‘Listen & Laugh’ and Ice Cube’s “Last Friday” Finally Has a Director After 24 Years.