Capitol Music Group, the company that houses major record labels including Capitol and Blue Note, said on Tuesday that it was severing ties with its latest controversial artist: FN Meka, a virtual “robot rapper” powered partly by artificial intelligence, who boasts more than 10 million followers on TikTok.
The company had previously teased the project — the first augmented reality artist to sign to a major label, it said — as “just a preview of what’s to come.” Yet after growing backlash to what skeptical observers said amounted to digital blackface — including content that seemed to trivialize incarceration and police brutality — Capitol said it had “severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately.”