Kid Rock just dropped his new album Halfway 2 Jesus, and joined Real Time with Bill Maher to talk about the new project. One of the most interesting topics of conversation was his track "Heal My Faith," the panned collaboration with his friend Eminem. As it turns out, the Detroit artist admitted to using artificial intelligence to help out with the song, as caught by Blue Georgia on Twitter.
"I sang that hook myself, I did the harmonies myself," he expressed. "My singers weren't around. I'm an impatient guy. It's not about the money of getting the choir... I can save time. So I go into AI, I prompt the harmony notes, I prompt the lead notes. 'Southern gospel choir,' blah, blah, blah. I have to do this several times, I put it together, I love that. So the choir on there is AI. It's a tool in the bag."
"Did we put [singers] out of work, though?" Rock added. "They said this when the electric guitar came. Did we put drummers out of work when the drum machine was invented? I know AI's something different... It's a tool right now. I see the dangers of it, I 1,000% believe it needs to be regulated at the highest levels."
Eminem's Kid Rock Collab
This conversation also included a note about how the country-rock-rap artist stacked vocals from singers to make a choir on the Lil Wayne-assisted song "7 Sins." As such, it seems like there were different approaches to the production and recording, with "Heal My Faith" being a more isolated example.
Of course, Kid Rock's Eminem collab garnered backlash for other reasons. Fans of Slim Shady expressed disappointment in him working with Rock, an ardent MAGA supporter, after years of criticizing United States President Donald Trump. Although they were friends far before Trump even considered running for office, the decision still led to a lot of outrage.
Kid Rock and Eminem don't seem to mind, though. While the track came and went, this revelation about the use of AI has led to a lot of criticism as well. But maybe the conversation around AI is normalizing and folks might not bat an eye.
