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Imogen Heap has always been known as an innovator in the music industry. The British singer, songwriter, producer and technologist has been experimenting with cutting edge tools to push her creativity forward since she first began releasing music over 25 years ago.
Now, as AI music continues to make headlines in the music industry and infiltrates the songwriting process, Heap is working on ethical ways to incorporate it into her own work. Recently, she released the song “I AM___,” a 13-minute epic that featured a collaboration between Heap and AI.Mogen, her self-trained AI voice model, and by collaborating with her digital self, Heap forces listeners to consider big questions, like the nature of art and self-identity.
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She’s also working on a company called Auracles, which recently announced a partnership with SoundCloud designed to create a verified digital ID for musicians that, in the age of AI, helps them track their music’s uses across the internet, grant permissions for approved uses of their work and create “the missing foundational data layer for music.”
To talk through how she’s using AI in a responsible and creative way as well as the 20th anniversary of her seminal album Speak For Yourself, Heap joined Billboard‘s new music industry podcast, On the Record w/ Kristin Robinson, this week.
Below is an excerpt of that conversation.
Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts here, or watch it below.
You’ve been watching this space for a long time, but when do you feel like you noticed a shift when everyone else started paying attention?
I feel like the silver lining, really, we definitely are at that place where it’s very confusing right now, and we do need some clarity, but we are, we can do it. There are tools, and everybody wants it. So I feel like the silver lining, really, of this dark cloud that’s on my seat as AI music taking over, is that we are going to get the data layer of works, we’re going to get this complete data layer of works because people will want to prove not only that they’re human, but they want to go there. They want to actually say, “No, I’m human and these are all my works that I actually contributed to.”
Hallwood Media is the first music company to be open about signing so-called AI artists like Xania Monet and imoliver. Do you think that major labels will start signing AI talent, or talent that uses AI very heavily, in the next few years?
I think a lot of things when you say that. I feel a lot of major labels are signing music that sounds AI generated to me anyway, it’s just like, ‘oh, that just sounds like that last thing and that last thing’ — nothing’s changed. So, it wouldn’t surprise me. I thought that that would happen, and wherever there’s money, obviously they’ll go if they think they can make money out of this artist.
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You recently released a 13-minute song called “I AM__” which featured you singing alongside AI.Mogen, which is essentially your own AI voice model. Why did you decide to collaborate with yourself, and what were you trying to say artistically?
It’s kind of a very long winded, kind of silly way to do things, but I did it as a statement. I did it to rile people up, I suppose, and just be able to have this conversation. Because the song, in the beginning, it takes you through this journey of what I’ve experienced over the last four years where I started to think about, ‘Who am I? What am I? And this ego, what is it?
And then I started to think about AI. Because what is AI? What can I feel that AI can’t feel? The noise section in that song is like the annihilation of my ego —I’m not saying I have no ego now — But then, after I needed a section for after care. I wanted to explore this idea that AI is our child. AI is something that we are raising together, as the as the mother and father. Right at the end, there’s the voice of AI.mogen. I wanted it to be an AI voice, even though I had to sing everything. The way I made this is I sang all the parts, and then I put it through my AI model so that the model of my voice is then singing the words. It’s like changing the sound on a on keyboard.
Yeah, so like a voice filter over your own performance, but this filter is also you in a way?
Yeah, and I wanted to trick people. After this quite traumatic noise section, they would feel something, and that voice would not be my voice would be the AI agent’s voice. I wanted to create a discussion. I wanted to, you know, show people that we already don’t know the difference between AI and human, but does it matter? I do say in the title, it’s AI.mogen, but it was all ethically sourced. It was all done in the best way possible. And it’s my own voice, and I didn’t use any, I didn’t generate any music.
Of course, some people already canceled me for, you know, even saying that AI is in my music. So many people have said: ‘You use AI to generate the song?’ I was like, ‘No, I did not. I wish I could, because it took me four years to do it with 100s of hours,’ but the point of this is everybody is fearful of it, but we can still feel. And what is art? Art something for someone, not to somebody else, but if a sense of it, it speaks to you and it makes you feel something does it matter if it makes you recognize something in yourself? I mean, essentially, or AI is generated from human.
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I love that you’ve been able to make this model that is totally within your control. I think the thing that gets scary is when anyone can create another person’s voice model online. I think such an important part of being an artist is having the taste and the curation to know what you want to say and don’t say. In an age of AI, it feels like you’re losing a lot of control over yourself. Do you have fears around that?
I mean, we already have lost control. People basically, you know, say that we’ve written something when we haven’t, and they don’t credit us when we have been a part of it. But that’s still very much less. I do think it’s gonna, really, it’s just gonna, it’s gonna force us into creating something that will make sense of what we have already and for the future, so that we can put a flag in the sand as humans and go, okay, up to this point, it was human generated. Again, I think it just comes down to this core missing piece that we don’t have which is an ID layer, like, identifying home for each individual.
AI almost completely lowers the barrier to entry for making music. As a trained musician, I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that?
Why not? Anyone who has spent 10,000 hours perfecting your craft will always have an edge. If you generate anything off these services right now, you’re just going to sound like 99.99% of other people who did that too, but if you have an edge, if you have a real something there that connects with people, you use these models differently. But, yeah, this helps everyone move forward. I don’t have problem with that at all.
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Gucci Mane and his personal transformation have been long documented, but that hasn’t seemed to dilute his creative process and outlook on delivering trap-heavy joints. In a new interview, Gucci Mane talks about apologizing to Drake, his legacy, and much more.
Gucci Mane sat down with the Big Facts podcast and didn’t hold back in the chat. Of course, Big Guwop discussed his personal mental and physical health journey, his career, breaking artists in his hometown of Atlanta, and his new album, Episodes, which dropped on Friday (October 17).
In the course of the chat, Gucci addressed his infamous online rant in 2013, where he dissed several artists, notably Drake. And while Gucci said the Canadian superstar accepted the apology, he did lose some connections in the wake of that explosion.
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“A lot of them people, I reach out to and said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, I’m going through something,’” Gucci Mane said. “Them folks like, ‘I forgive you, Gucci.’ Like, I said some bullsh*t about Drake, text him something crazy. But I was going through an episode, so I kind of had to hit him back and be like, ‘I’m sorry about that. I was going through something.’ And he was like, ‘Man, you know we going to get past that. Brothers go through stuff.”
Gucci explained that some of those connections were irreparable but most of those who were caught in the crossfire have forgiven him.
Speaking of forgiveness, Gucci also explained that he has forgiven Young Thug after the leaked prison phone calls, where the YSL rapper questioned Guwop’s toughness since going free from prison. Gucci says that he has no hard feelings and spoke from a place of understanding. The 1017 Records honcho also spoke about the recently freed Pooh Shiesty, one of the remaining centerpieces of his label.
Check out the Big Facts Gucci Mane episode below.
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Clearly Tyler Herro’s all-star abilities on the court do not all transfer off the court. He says he doesn’t believe in any history that occurred prior to 1950.
As per Complex, the Miami Heat shooting guard made a recent appearance on Adin Ross’ Kick livestream. During the visit, he was fielding questions from users ranging from basketball to popular culture. During the Q&A segment, one viewer asked if he thinks if Wilt Chamberlain would be a top-five player in today’s league. “I don’t even know what Wilt looked like, played like,” Tyler Herro responded. Adin followed that question by asking The Boy Wonder if he thinks Wilt actually scored 100 points in a game. While Tyler’s initial response was “yes” he popped a general question about the past. “You think history is a real thing?” he added.
Tyler Herro went on to reveal that he is very skeptical of anything that has occurred more than 40 years ago. “Nah, I don’t believe in history. No, I’m deadass,” he said. As expected Adin was taken by surprise and asked does he believe what was said to have happened 200 years ago to which the Miami Heat baller responded “hell no.” The conversation soon turned to getting his point of view on moments that went on to change the world specifically the moon landing in 1969. “No, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in anything that happened before 1950.”
One viewer responded with the obvious saying that history is well documented and it is obvious to them that he never read a book. “See, y’all believe that sh*t,” Tyler Herro responded to the chat. “I don’t believe that sh*t! I never read that sh*t in school.” You can see the clip below.
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Styles P has been one of the sharpest rappers in the game for the past three decades as a member of The Lox, along with his prolific solo career. In a recent interview, Styles P essentially ranked himself higher than Jim Jones and cited his body of work as proof.
Styles P was a recent guest on The No Funny Sh*t podcast hosted by Kenny “KP” Supreme & DP. The G-Host discussed a bevy of topics, including his alignment with his brothers from The Lox, his various health business ventures, becoming an elder in Hip-Hop, and life as it happens.
In a clip that began to buzz online, Kenny Supreme, who we should note is a Harlem native, floated the idea that the Capo Jim Jones would get Styles P out of here in a song-for-song VERZUZ-like battle. Holidays Styles, a battle-tested MC, met Supreme’s assertion head-on as any rapper would when it comes to their skill set.
“Me and Jim [Jones] ain’t in the same league,” Styles says, after telling Supreme that his opinion is incorrect in his eyes. “Me and Jim don’t do the same things. I’m a bar master. I’m a lyrical technician. I’ve been on joints with some of the best emcees in the world. [The Notorious] B.I.G., Hov, Black Thought, Talib [Kweli]. I bar sh*t down.”
Styles added, “If there is a lyricist or MC, I’m one of their favorites. I’m not here to make catchy hooks and do dope shit, I don’t know that. I’m into making your f*cking soul move.”
Styles P, along with Jadakiss and Sheek Louch, easily dispatched of Jim Jones and the Dipset collective in their explosive VERZUZ battle in New York that the culture still talks about with high reverence. Will this renew interest in a further battle? Will the Vamp Life honcho respond to Styles? Stay tuned.
Hop to the 23:00-minute mark to hear the discussion above.
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Rebecca and Megan Lovell, otherwise known as the musical duo Larkin Poe, are the first to say they aren’t breaking new musical ground. “We’re all derivative,” Rebecca says to Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from a tour stop in Boise, Idaho. “There are very few original ideas.”
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Take “Easy Love Pt. 1,” an upbeat, Bonnie Raitt-styled number from the group’s new album, Bloom. “That’s not reinventing the wheel. It’s a song that is built upon basically the changes [of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s] ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” says Rebecca.
Then again, the Georgia-raised, Nashville-based sisters are taking the blues and Southern rock to unlikely places. In January, the sisters visited Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform “Easy Love Pt. 1.” Not many blues-based artists get a national television audience these days. And few women are winning a Grammy award for best contemporary blues album, which Larkin Poe did in 2024 for its 2022 set, Blood Harmony.
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Guitar-playing Rebecca and lap steel guitar-playing Megan deserve credit for crafting an accessible, modern spin on traditional music. The sisters have succeeded in honoring the histories of some great American musical genres without being afraid to finding their own approach to a familiar sound.
Over the years, the Lovell sisters, who began Larkin Poe in 2010, incorporated beats to their music and occasionally changed the lyric of a cover song. “I do think that there is this temptation at times for — and I hear it a lot in the blues, specifically on a lot of the festival touring circuit that we’ve done — you speak with the same metaphor. You are honoring the past, and you’re putting this whole genre of music kind of behind glass. And it’s a little museum. And we look at it, but we don’t engage, we don’t tweak it. And so I think, very respectfully, Megan and I, over the years, have done our best to get in there, and if we’re going to do a blues cover and there’s a lyric in there that we don’t agree with, we’ll change it. And and we do so with utmost respect, because we respect the songs, and we believe that art and genres of music, specifically traditional American music, needs to evolve.”
Bloom “is a little bit of a departure,” says Rebecca. “It embraces a lot of different types of Southern music that we previously were maybe limiting ourselves [to] a little bit in order to be a blues-fronted outfit. Because I do think [Bloom is] more driven by melody, whereas previous records were more driven by riffs.”
Following the release of Bloom, Larkin Poe reached No. 11 on the Top Album Sales chart, No. 16 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart, No. 20 on the Vinyl Albums chart and No. 66 on Billboard’s Artist 100 chart. Larkin Poe arguably has a stronger presence on the road, though, and has spent 2025 performing at mid-sized clubs and theaters across the U.S. In March, the band set sail on Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea cruise.
The sisters, who began their career in music as folk trio The Lovell Sisters with older sister Jessica, began their appreciation of blues music in their late teens. “We unbraided some of the hillbilly jazz influence of our bluegrass upbringing in order to allow more soul into the music,” says Rebecca. “And I do have to shout out Son House and Skip James, those two artists specifically as really capturing our imagination for turn of the century blues and showing us the possibility of a human voice and an acoustic or electric guitar.”
They were prompted to dig deeper into the blues when on tour with Elvis Costello, who Rebecca calls “a fount of knowledge.” Since Rebecca and Megan were listening to the Allman Brothers, Costello encouraged them to follow the group’s history and research its musical predecessors. “That definitely influenced us to go back and do our research about where these songs were coming from,” says Rebecca.
Listen to the entire interview with Rebecca and Megan Lovell using the embedded Spotify player below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
Over his 45-year career, Thurston Moore has always comfortably had his feet in two worlds: the song-centric music of Sonic Youth, the pioneering noise rock band he co-founded in 1980, and the experimental world born from his upbringing in New York’s No Wave scene in the late ’70s and early ‘80s.
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“I really give equal value to composition … that I would give to improvisation,” Moore tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from his home in London. “I mean, they really inform each other.”
Moore’s latest album, Flow Critical Lucidity, released in 2024, often splits the difference between keeping to traditional song structure and tossing the rulebook out the window. Moore was joined in the studio by musicians who have performed on his song-based solo efforts: Deb Googe, the bass player for My Bloody Valentine; drummer Jem Doulton and guitarist James Sedwards. Googe and Sedwards also appear on Moore’s 2020 album, By the Fire, 2017’s Rock N Roll Consciousness and 2014’s The Best Day — albums that harken back to Sonic Youth’s more accessible work and Moore’s 1995 solo debut, Psychic Hearts.
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But much of his work captures his love of experimental music that took root in the New York music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Spirit Counsel, released in 2019, has three expansive tracks that run a total of 2.5 hours. The free-flowing Screen Time, released in 2021, was fittingly released on Southern Lord Records, the home of drone metal band Sunn O))).
This month, Moore premiered Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations at the New Music Dublin festival in Dublin. He was joined by Googe, Doulton and guitarist Jennifer Chochinov, one half of the London-based duo Schande. A suite in nine pieces, Cloud Formations is “very lengthy, repetitive, immersive guitar, sort of drone pieces,” says Moore, “because I wanted to have that kind of elemental nature to them as opposed to being more song-centric.”
Recording and performing a variety of music creates some uncertainty, though, among promoters, retailers and fans. So, Moore is careful to draw bright lines between his different styles to eliminate confusion. Before his recent shows in New York City and Philadelphia, he asked the promoters to make clear that fans would see an experimental trio featuring percussionists Willie Winant and Tom Surgal, not the band that recorded Critical Flow Lucidity. When he performs songs from Critical Flow Lucidity, he wants fans to know they’re not going to see free-form guitar improvisation. And although he could release a torrent of music, Moore is careful to flood the market.
“I realize that there’s a bit of a responsibility,” he says. “I mean, I know people who I associate with who are musicians who release music every week on Bandcamp, and they’re just constantly recording, releasing. And in some ways, I hold myself back from doing that. I mean, I have gotten into this situation through the years where I want to do a tour and the promoters are like, ‘Well, you were just here playing noise improv in some basement in Paris. So we don’t feel like we can actually book you right now, because the audience is confused.’ Like, what are you going to do? And so that has been a bit of an issue. It’s like, are you going to do your band? Are you going to be playing proper quote-unquote songs, which there’s much a bigger audience for? Or are you going to come here and play with some electronic noise guy? And so I understand that. It’s difficult for the other people involved who are presenting your gig, particularly promoters, because they don’t know how to promote it, and so I’m a bit careful.”
His desire to push boundaries — and his seemingly never-ending supply of friendships with influential musicians — finds Moore collaborating with some prominent names. Last year, for example, Moore performed a free improvisation set with former Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., and later in London (joined by drummer Steve Noble at one gig). The Big Ears performance was “extremely polarizing” for anybody who expected to hear a cross between Led Zeppelin and Sonic Youth.
“It was just pretty jarring. It was like creating this kind of sound world of improvised noise music. And the place was just jammed. Everybody wanted to see this. And then I think within 30 minutes, it was half full, and I think maybe people got the idea that we weren’t going to be playing any tunes. We were just into this other thing, which we really wanted to do. And we did it, and I really loved it. I have actually mixed down the session. I’d love to put it out some day.”
Three musicians Moore is unlikely to perform with are his Sonic Youth bandmates: Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Steve Shelley. From Oasis to Pavement, many rock bands from the ‘90s have capitalized on nostalgia and the longevity of their brands by returning to the stage. While Moore doesn’t exactly rule out a Sonic Youth reunion, he says isn’t motivated by the payday and believes the band’s legacy stands firm without one. “We covered so much territory that I don’t feel like it was a story left on untold. I think it really had a nice trajectory, and it certainly doesn’t feel unfinished to me.”
Listen to the entire interview with Thurston Moore in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
The Promoter 101 podcast is returning more than five years after dropping its last episode. Hosted by Dan Steinberg of Emporium Presents and Live Nation and music manager Luke Pierce from Works Entertainment, Promoter 101 will make its official return at the Pollstar Live! conference on April 17 in Los Angeles. Guests for the inaugural return […]
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Michelle Obama is launching a new video podcast with her brother Craig Robinson, with a live episode set to be recorded at South By Southwest this week.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama is reentering the podcast genre with a new show and her brother as co-host. On Monday, Higher Ground announced the debut of IMO (short for In My Opinion). Higher Ground is the media company formed by Mrs. Obama and her husband, former President Barack Obama. The former First Lady will host with her older brother, basketball executive Craig Robinson. It’s the first video format podcast for the media group, in sync with the current standard of podcasts released today.
The first episode features the siblings reflecting on the surroundings of the apartment that they were filming in and contrasting it to the modest home in their hometown of Chicago, Illinois, where they both shared a bedroom. The conversation between the two sees them discuss certain challenges they’ve faced, with Robinson reflecting on what he’s learned after divorce, and the former First Lady discussing her initial reluctance about her husband’s presidential run. They also shared fond memories of their parents – their father, Frasier Robinson III, passed away in 1991, and their mother, Marian Robinson, passed away last May. The second episode boasts a celebrity guest – actress, producer, and writer Issa Rae. She and the hosts talk about maintaining adult friendships.
There are also several light-hearted moments through the released episodes, with Michelle Obama revealing that she’s just now getting back to driving after years of being driven by the Secret Service. Future guests on the show include actors Seth Rogen and Keke Palmer, along with director Tyler Perry and others who’ve appeared on The Michelle Obama Podcast, which was released on Spotify in 2020. Each episode is slated to be an hour in duration.
IMO is releasing both episodes to the public on Wednesday (March 12) and will record a live episode at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, on Thursday (March 13). The show’s episodes will be produced with Audible, which is owned by Amazon. Sponsors of the show include Pine-Sol, Theraflu, and Rivian.
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R. Kelly is currently serving 30 years behind bars due to his explosive sexual abuse and human trafficking case, where he was convicted on nine counts. Largely mum during his prison stay. R. Kelly was a surprise guest for an inmate-focused podcast, saying at one point that singing was a “beautiful disease.”
As seen on TMZ, R. Kelly was a surprise guest for the Inmate Tea with A&P podcast, hosted by April Smith and Patricia Dillard. The podcast is centered on prison reforms and gives inmates a platform to “advocate for criminal justice reform and the humane treatment of inmates, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, by raising awareness of the injustices within the judicial and prison systems,” according to their website bio.
The hosts were slated to speak with another inmate at the FCI Butner Medium I in North Carolina but caught wind that the R&B singer and songwriter was housed there. While Kelly didn’t explicitly speak about his case, he did showcase his vocal ability and even shared that he’s written over two dozen albums.
At one point, Kelly referred to singing as “a beautiful disease that’s incurable” and pledged to always lean into that craft as long as he’s able. In a follow-up TMZ post, Smith and Dillard defended their choice to feature R. Kelly on their broadcast, seemingly elated by the big name-grab for their show. Despite Kelly’s infamous reputation, the pair told the outlet that they were able to separate Kelly from the heinous crimes attached to his name and have received backlash for running the interview.
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Gabrielle Union spoke about the comments she received after revealing the 50/50 financial split she has with her husband Dwayne Wade in an interview.
Being open about her marriage took a turn for Gabrielle Union, as she revealed the backlash she received for detailing a financial agreement between her and her husband Dwayne Wade. During her appearance on the recent episode of the Balanced Black Girl podcast this week, Union spoke about how the comments she received left her taken aback. “I famously said, 50/50 or bust, right? And I meant that financially, spiritually, and emotionally,” Union said on the episode that aired Tuesday (March 4). “It’s a trauma response… and 50/50 is, ‘I’m not going to be vulnerable enough to trust you with 100% of anything. Not my heart, not my cash.’”
Union called the comments “wild” and “aggressive.” She first spoke of the arrangement during an interview on the Idea Generation podcast last year, which led to an outcry from social media users who pointed to Wade having a larger net worth as a former NBA star. Wade’s estimated net worth is $170 from his playing career with the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers. Union’s estimated net worth is estimated at $40 million.
The actress explained to the host, Les Allred, that she had to step out of being “fiercely independent” in order to give up control in that manner, citing her being abused sexually at the age of 19 and being “diagnosed with PTSD” in the aftermath as the foundation for being “hyper-focused on efficiency and time,” which she didn’t want to impact her marriage with Wade. “It’s being vulnerable enough to be open enough to know that I’m OK. I’m OK as his wife,” the Bring It On star explained. “He’s OK as my husband. I’m OK in this family. I’m OK in this home. I deserve it… and so, I’m trying to expand my heart, expand all of the notions of what vulnerability can look like.”
Wade defended his wife while appearing on the Club Shay Shay podcast last June. “I have 20 to 50 responsibilities, and my wife has 20 to 50 responsibilities, and when I say that, that means she has her mother, she has her sisters, she has her dad, so she has a lot of things she’s responsible for,” he stated. “She pays 100% of that and you know what I do? I pay 100% of my life.”
Check out the interview above.
