Every few months some AI video platform pops up promising "cinematic visuals in minutes," and every few months the results look like a Midjourney fever dream rendered at 12 FPS. So this time, instead of rolling my eyes from a distance, I spent a weekend actually living inside one of these things: Freebeat.ai.

The idea was simple: Take older songs I really love that never got proper videos, and see if AI is finally at a point where independent artists, or even mid-tier mainstream ones, could realistically use this as a real option.

I made three videos:

1. He's Hers - Vanity Press

2. Chachi - C.V. in America

3. Alex Ludovico featuring Zilla Rocca - liquid.sword

1. Ranking the Results: 

Best: He's Hers

This one came out the strongest by far. The story is straightforward, the style is consistent, and the visuals actually feel like they belong to the song instead of fighting it. It's not perfect, but it's somewhere in the "I could see an indie artist releasing this" category.

Second: Chachi

Chachi's video lands in that middle zone: some really nice moments, some weirdness, but overall watchable. You can see the potential, but you can also see the seams: little character glitches, occasional off-beat cuts, and an almost obsessive focus on a random item (in this case a Greek Evil Eye necklace that was in the reference photo I gave it before creating the video).

Last: Alex Ludovico - "liquid.sword"

This one? True AI slop. I went more ambitious here - more stylized, more fantastical, more "Ninja Scroll-style anime battle" - and Freebeat just folded. Characters morph and never really interact properly, continuity collapses, and the whole thing feels obviously AI.

The lesson: the more you ask AI to do, the more it reminds you it's guessing.

2. What I Learned About How Freebeat Actually Thinks

You Have to Babysit Every Shot

If you're willing to put in the time and edit every single shot - and by "edit" I mean constantly adjusting the prompt you're feeding Freebeat - you can drag the results into something decent.

• Don't just set one prompt and walk away.

• Treat each shot like a separate creative decision.

• Nudge, refine, simplify, repeat.

The more hands-on you are, the better it gets. If you're lazy, it will punish you.

Simple Storylines Work Best

Freebeat does best when you stick to:

• a very straightforward storyline

• limited character descriptions

• clear, grounded actions

The more detail you cram into the prompt, the more likely it is that:

• characters change appearance mid-video

• outfits morph

• faces drift

• continuity evaporates

It's like working with a brilliant but easily confused intern: give it one job at a time.

3. Style Choices: Why I Stuck to Animation (For Now)

For this first run, I kept everything in animated styles. No "real" humans, no photorealistic faces, no fake actors because that's where AI video is strongest right now. It can hide its flaws behind illustration, abstraction, and stylization.

In the future, I want to test whether Freebeat can handle realistic human video generation -faces, performances, emotional beats - but right now, that still feels like the uncanny valley's front porch.

4. Pro Tip: Use Copilot Before You Use Freebeat

One thing that became really clear: prompt quality is everything.

If you're going to use Freebeat (or any AI video tool), I'd actually suggest:

1. Describe the video you want to make to Copilot first.

2. Ask Copilot to rewrite your idea as a clean, efficient, structured prompt.

3. Then feed that into Freebeat.

The more disciplined and efficient your prompt, the less Freebeat flails. Spending the weekend working on this genuinely helped me understand:

• what kinds of prompts work

• what kinds of prompts break things

• how much of this is actually a skill you can develop

Prompting isn't a gimmick, it's becoming a real creative craft.

5. So... Is This Ready for Independent Artists?

Short answer: kind of, but not as a full replacement for real footage.

Right now, I think the best realistic use case is:

• You go out and film a bunch of footage yourself

  • even just with a newer iPhone or high-end phone camera

• Then you give that footage to an AI platform

  • to edit, stylize, and sync it to your song

That hybrid approach oc real footage + AI editing/stylization is going to give you much better results than:

"Here's my song, build everything from scratch with AI."

It's not plug-and-play yet. It's more like: plug, wait, adjust, wait, curse, adjust, and eventually get something you can live with.

His newest release continues that run: grounded, intentional, and cut with the kind of clarity you only get when you've survived a few cycles of hype, heartbreak, and Minneapolis winters.

Here's the track:

MaLLy's always been one of those rappers who treats verses like architecture: clean lines, intentional spacing, no wasted motion. This new joint is exactly that: a grown-man record that's soulful, steady, and built for headphones .

If you've been following MaLLy through the years, and we've covered him a lot over the years (search "Mally" here), you already know the formula: introspective but never soft, confident but never corny, technical but never academic.

It's the lane he carved out long before "lyrical rap" became a marketing term again.

Some links for further music from Mally, merch, and all that:

• Official Website: mallympls.com

• Stream the Album: lnk.to/thesweetest

• Instagram: @mallympls

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1492 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Fri, 8 May 26 10:15:00 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1492#comments

Every once in a while a new track drops that feels like it came straight out of the same grimy, calculated, quietly dangerous universe that Stringer Bell operated in: all cool precision, no wasted motion, and a certain "don't raise your voice, raise your value" energy baked into every bar. That's the lane Stringer.9 (similar name, a bit less ruthless than Mr. Bell) slides into with his new joint, Pay Homage to the P.O.T. It's a record that sounds like it could've been playing in the background while Avon and Stringer were arguing strategy in the copy shop.

Before we go any further, here's the stream of it on youtube:

"Pay Homage to the P.O.T."

If the voice on the track rings a bell for longtime 33jones readers, it should. Way back in the day, I wrote about him under his previous moniker Rich Port.

A lot has changed since then but the talent is the same. Actually, scratch that. It's sharper now.

He's even been working with Josh Gannet, Redman's engineer, which explains why this sounds so premium. You can hear the difference immediately: clean mix, punchy low end, vocals sitting exactly where they should.

And while I'm not making this about personal history, I'll mention this one thing in passing: somewhere in the vaults, there's an unreleased track with the only official scratching I've ever done on record. One day maybe it'll surface. Until then, this new joint is more than enough to hold you over.

Support the artist directly

If you want to show love where it actually counts, you can buy the track over on Apple Music.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1491 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Thu, 7 May 26 09:15:00 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1491#comments AEAO right when the beat drops and Korean emcee Choiza opens his mouth, where you forget, for a split second, that you're listening to Korean rap over a beat produced in a studio in New York by a guy from Houston by way of Brooklyn. That's the thing about DJ Premier: His production has always operated like a universal language, not because it's designed to be accessible, but because it's designed to be true. Grimy drums, looped soul and jazz, razor-sharp scratches on the hook. Whether the emcee above it is rapping in English, French, Japanese, Korean, or German, the infrastructure underneath them is unmistakably Preemo, which means it's unmistakably hip hop, which means it carries the full weight of a specific place and a specific time regardless of what language the words arrive in.

Le Bien, Le Mal, Guru feat. MC Solaar (1993)
Before we get to Korea, we have to go to France. Or rather, we have to go to Jazzmatazz Vol. 1, the 1993 Guru record that was, among other things, a quiet argument that hip hop and jazz and international culture all belonged in the same room together. "Le Bien, Le Mal" (The Good, The Bad) put French-Senegalese emcee Solaar over Premier's production alongside Guru, and the result was one of the most bilingual moments in early-90s hip hop. Solaar raps in French. Guru raps in English. Premier holds the whole thing together underneath them with the same architecture he was using to make Nas and Jay-Z sound legendary at the same time. The fact that nobody in the room spoke the same first language didn't come up, apparently.


MC Solaar remains, to this day, one of the best rappers to have ever recorded on a Premier beat, which is a sentence that requires no qualifier, no asterisk, no "for a French rapper" caveat. That Premier was this open to the international dimension of hip hop as far back as 1993 makes everything that followed feel less like a surprise and more like a logical progression.

The Untouchable, Zeebra (1997)
Japan took to hip hop early and took to it seriously, which means Japan took to Premier early and took to him seriously. Zeebra, one of the founding figures of Japanese hip hop, got Premier to produce "The Untouchable" in 1997, and the resulting track sounds exactly like what it is: a Japanese emcee who has done his homework, placed over a beat that is giving no points for effort and full points for execution. Premier sampled Billie Holiday and Public Enemy in the same track. That tells you everything you need to know about the architecture.


The live footage from the 1998 Japan Tour is worth a separate twenty minutes of your time, watching a Tokyo crowd respond to that Preemo snare with the same body language as a crowd in Queensbridge is one of those small, affirming moments that reminds you what this culture actually is when commerce doesn't have its hand in it.


Gangster, Bushido feat. DJ Premier (2011)
Germany's Bushido, one of the biggest names in German rap, which is a bigger deal than most American hip hop heads are prepared to acknowledge, pulled Premier in for "Gangster" off his 2011 album Jenseits von Gut und Bose (Beyond Good and Evil, which, yes, is a Nietzsche reference on a rap album). The collaboration story has a wrinkle worth knowing: Premier, by his own account, had never heard of Bushido before the session. He came in cold, made the beat, cut his scratches, and moved on. The track came out. Then Premier found out that the label had added new vocals and edited his DJ cuts after the fact, without giving him the chance to hear the changes before release.


He was not thrilled. Which, setting aside the specifics, tells you something important about how Premier operates. His scratches aren't decoration. They're not post-production seasoning. They are structural. Editing them without his involvement is like handing an architect the keys to a building and then quietly moving a load-bearing wall while he's out of town. The fact that this happened on an international collab specifically, with a label that maybe didn't fully understand what those cuts were doing, is not a coincidence.

AEAO and Animal, Dynamic Duo feat. DJ Premier (2014)
And then there's this. Dynamic Duo, Choiza and Gaeko, two of the most significant figures in the history of Korean hip hop, signed to Amoeba Culture, put together an entire project with Premier in 2014 called A Giant Step. The lead singles were "AEAO" and "Animal," and both of them are exactly what you want from this kind of collaboration: Korean emcees who clearly grew up on the East Coast sound, rapping over beats that don't compromise the aesthetic for the sake of international palatability. Premier didn't make a "Korean-friendly" version of himself. He just made Premier beats, and Dynamic Duo rose to them.

"AEAO" is the one that went everywhere, and for good reason. The sample flip, built around AZ's "Animal," which is its own full-circle moment, has that Premier quality of feeling both immediately familiar and completely fresh. Gaeko and Choiza's delivery across a language barrier somehow sharpens the energy rather than softening it.


Now. About the slowed version. I'll be honest, there's something about dropping the tempo and letting the reverb breathe on AEAO that actually expands what the beat is doing. It reveals the melancholy sitting underneath the aggression, which was always there in the original, just moving too fast to catch. It's a different experience and I don't think it's a lesser one.


"Animal" is the grimier of the two, built on an Alex North orchestral sample that Premier folded into something considerably less cinematic and considerably more threatening. If AEAO is the anthem, Animal is the aftermath.



What Premier's International Work Actually Means
It would be easy to frame all of this as a curiosity, New York producer makes music for rappers who happen to live in other countries, file under "global hip hop," move on. But I think it's more than that. What Premier represents in all of these collaborations is the opposite of the sync music problem we wrote about last time. His sound doesn't travel because it's been stripped of context. It travels because the context is so deeply embedded in it that anyone who has seriously studied this music, in Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, Berlin, can feel it the moment the drum hits.

The artists who sought him out weren't looking for "hip hop energy" to put underneath their project. They were looking for the real thing, which required them to actually be the real thing in return. Zeebra had to be ready. emcee Solaar had to be ready. Dynamic Duo had to be ready. You can't phone in a Premier collab. The beat won't let you.

That's the distinction. In a world that's increasingly comfortable with AI-generated "cinematic hip hop" and sync libraries full of anonymous loops that sound vaguely familiar, Premier's overseas catalog is a reminder of what happens when the music is built on a foundation that actually knows where it came from. You can export it anywhere. It doesn't lose anything in translation.



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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1490 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Mon, 4 May 26 09:20:00 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1490#comments

There are hip-hop breakups that feel like classic relationship breakups: N.W.A., Wayne & Birdman, Dame & Jay, 50 Cent and Game. And then there are the ones that feel like a corporate restructuring, where suddenly one partner owns the LLC, the trademarks, the merch, the publishing, the parking spot, and the emotional rights to the nostalgia. The latter is where we find ourselves with The Neptunes, who have entered into their Succession Arc.

Because while we were all busy debating whether Frontin' was a Pharrell solo record in disguise, Pharrell was out in the streets acquiring full ownership of The Neptunes trademark, leaving Chad Hugo looking like the guy who shows up to the cookout only to find out someone else already claimed his potato salad.

We're used to hearing about these sorts of business moves in the hip hop world occurring with some level of overt threats (think Suge Knight hanging Vanilla Ice over a balcony by his ankles) but in this instance Pharrell didn't even do it with any sort of muscle. He did it with branding - the most polite form of violence.

The Timeline: How We Got Here

1992-1999: The Origin Story

Pharrell and Chad meet at Princess Anne High School, form The Neptunes, get discovered by Teddy Riley, and by 1998 they're producing "Superthug."

This is the era when they're still two kids with matching Star Trak dreams and no lawyers.

2000-2005: The Golden Run

The Neptunes become the sound of the early 2000s.

They launch N.E.R.D. in 2001, drop In Search Of... in 2002, and basically turn the entire decade into a skate-park-meets-spaceship aesthetic.

2010s: The Divergence

Pharrell becomes a global brand - fashion, film, skincare, Grammys, the hat.

Chad becomes the quiet genius who shows up once every few years with a chord progression that makes producers cry.

2022-2024: The Trademark Era

This is where things get spicy.

Pharrell's company files multiple applications to register "The Neptunes" as a trademark - without Chad listed as co-owner.

Chad files legal oppositions in 2023 and 2024, arguing that Pharrell's filings "falsely suggest that Mr. Williams is the sole creator and owner of The Neptunes."

The Tactics: How Pharrell Became the Sole Neptune Without Ever Saying "I Quit"

Step 1: Become the Face of the Brand

Pharrell was always the one in the videos, the interviews, the fashion spreads, the "Happy" soundtrack, the hat that launched a thousand memes.

Chad was the guy in the corner making sure the snare didn't sound like a wet paper bag.

This is the classic "Steve Jobs vs. Wozniak" maneuver - except with more falsetto.

Step 2: Blur the Lines Between "Pharrell"and "The Neptunes"

By the mid-2000s, Pharrell had positioned himself as the voice, the face, the producer, the songwriter, the brand, the skincare routine and face of the Neptunes. Meanwhile Chad was... still in the studio, still doing the work, still allergic to cameras.

Step 3: File the Paperwork While Your Partner Is Still Tuning the Synth

Pharrell's team filed for sole ownership of The Neptunes trademark. Chad had to legally challenge it.

In one filing, Chad's lawyers wrote that Pharrell's applications were made "without Hugo's knowledge or consent" and that they "misrepresent the true history of the duo."

That's not a diss track. That's a sigh typed in legalese.

The Sound: What They Made Together vs. What They Made Alone

When They Were Together: The Alien Funk Era

This is peak both of them. The drums are Chad. The chaos is Pharrell. The UFO-landing-in-Queensbridge energy is 50/50.

"I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)" (Jay-Z, 2000)

Chad's chord voicings + Pharrell's melodies = Jay rapping like he's wearing a mink coat made of Skittles.

Pharrell Solo: The Smooth, Glossy, Skincare-Approved Era

"Frontin'" (2003)

This is Pharrell doing Pharrell. But you can hear the missing 12% of weirdness that Chad usually sprinkles on top.

Chad Solo: The "I Actually Know Music Theory" Era

"Love Language" (SZA, 2023)

This is Chad's harmonic brain on full display. It's colder, more angular, more composer than pop star.

N.E.R.D.: The Third Brother in the Divorce

N.E.R.D. wasn't just a side project - it was the purest expression of Pharrell + Chad + Shay as a unit.

It's where Chad's harmonic brain, Pharrell's melodic instincts, and Shay's grounding energy fused into something neither Neptunes nor Pharrell solo could replicate.

So what happens to N.E.R.D. now? If Pharrell legally owns "The Neptunes," and Chad is fighting to be recognized as co-creator, then N.E.R.D. becomes the kid stuck in the middle of the custody battle.

Will they still make music together? Doubtful. But even if they did, the energy won't be the same when one parent owns the house and the other is arguing about who bought the couch.

The Relationship: Not Broken, Just... Re-Negotiated

Pharrell and Chad aren't beefing. They're not throwing subs. They're not doing Drink Champs episodes with ominous pauses. But the vibe? The vibe is "We're still cool, but don't ask us to split the check."

Chad's legal filings weren't angry - they were hurt. The filings say Pharrell's actions "undermine Hugo's contributions and legacy."

That's the sound of a man who spent 30 years building a spaceship only to find out someone trademarked the launchpad.

The Real Loss: The Sound We'll Never Get Back

The Neptunes weren't just a production duo. They were a chemical reaction. Pharrell brought melody, charisma, and the ability to make any rapper sound like they were smiling. Chad brought harmony, structure, and the ability to make any synth sound like it was built by NASA interns. Together, they made music that felt like the future. Apart, they make music that feels like very good versions of themselves - but not the future.

And maybe that's the saddest part: The Neptunes didn't break up. They just stopped orbiting each other.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1489 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Tue, 5 May 26 09:20:00 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1489#comments
I was watching a truck commercial the other day, one of those "this vehicle will restore your pride in America" joints that could just as easily be advertising a mass-produced beer while something that sounds vaguely like hip hop plays underneath, and I found myself trying to identify the track. Not because I liked it. Because I couldn't tell if it was made by a person, a marketing team, or AI. It's a question that doesn't just apply to commercial hip hop jingles, it's something that could be asked of virtually every type of media these days, but we gotta lock in and stay focused here.

What Is Sync Music, and Why Does It Pay

Sync licensing is the business of pairing music with moving images: TV shows, films, commercials, trailers, video games, social media campaigns, and the loading screens of apps you use twice and forget to delete. The "sync" in the name refers to the synchronization license that grants the right to match a piece of music to a specific visual. Pair that with a master use license (to use the actual recording), and you've got the legal paperwork that puts a song in a Chase Bank ad.

The money is real. A placement in a major car commercial or network TV show can generate anywhere from $15,000 to $500,000 in upfront sync fees alone. That's before performance royalties that come from things like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC every time the content airs. A song that lands in a documentary picked up by Netflix, or an ESPN highlight reel that runs for two years straight, can throw off five-figure royalty checks long after the artist has moved on to their next project. The global sync licensing market is somewhere north of two billion dollars annually, and unlike streams, where you need approximately the population of a small country to listen to your song before you can pay rent, a single sync placement can change an independent artist's financial situation overnight.

This is why there are entire agencies, libraries, and careers built around making music specifically for this purpose. Not music that gets synced. Music that is designed to be synced.

The Hip Hop Angle

For obvious reasons - energy, rhythm, cultural cachet, the fact that the word "hip hop" now functions as shorthand for "modern" in every brand guideline ever written - hip hop has become a dominant force in the sync world. Go to any sports broadcast, any fitness app, any startup pitch deck with a video attached to it, and you will hear something that has the shape of hip hop. Drums that knock. A chopped loop. An 808. Maybe a hook that sounds vaguely motivational without saying anything you could actually quote back.


If you're looking to hear some examples of this, Vo Williams is near the top of the sync music industry and has built an entire career in this lane. His tracks have appeared in NFL Films, ESPN montages, movie trailers, and the kind of content where someone is running up a mountain and achieving something. The production is clean, cinematic, emotionally manipulative in exactly the way a picture editor needs, and entirely instrumental or lyrically vague enough to not step on whatever message the client is trying to deliver. It's a shrewd business-over-art decision, and he's certainly executed well on it.

If you want a deeper look at how this ecosystem works - the relationships between artists, supervisors, and the brands that pay the bills - this recent episode of Vox's Today Explained is worth 30 minutes of your time: The Secret Soundtrack to Your Life.

Enter the Slop

But things in the sync world started to get disrupted over the past 18 months or so. Everything I just described about sync-designed hip hop - the functional emotion, the purposeful vagueness, the interchangeable energy - is also an accurate description of what AI music generation tools are producing right now. Platforms like Suno and Udio can generate a "cinematic hip hop beat with motivational energy" (a prompt I give you permission to use, go for it) in twelve seconds. No publishing split, no master rights, no artist to pay. Just a prompt and a download.

The sync market noticed. Subscription libraries like Epidemic Sound and Artlist which were already pushing the "unlimited royalty-free music" model that undercut traditional sync fees for lower-budget placements are now integrating AI generation tools into their platforms. Which means the next wave of influencers/youtubers/content creators don't need someone like Vo Williams, they just need a text box and an entry level understanding of English. The decision for content creators isn't whether to choose AI music vs. good music. It's "AI music vs. music that was never created for the sake of art anyway." Sync-designed hip hop was always operating as a product rather than art, purposefully stripped of the context, politics, and community that give the genre its actual meaning. AI just completes that process by removing the human .

But Let's Be Honest About How We Got Here

If you're waiting for the part where I tell you hip hop sold its soul to sync licensing, I'm going to have to disappoint you. That ship has been sailing since Run-DMC put on a pair of Adidas without laces and turned a product endorsement into a cultural statement (and then their label turned around and made sure they got paid for it, not Run-DMC). The corporate co-optation of hip hop is not a recent development. Jermaine Dupri wrote jingles. Diddy was building brands (and doing a lot of other stuff as well, as it turns out). Even the Clipse took a break from coke rap to help with Arby's branding. This is a genre that has been fighting for its soul against commerce since before most of the people now worried about AI were born. What's different now is the scale and the speed at which it can be commodified.

Jay-Z, Graffiti, and the Shrinking Definition

Which brings me to something that's been sitting with me since Jay-Z's recent interview where he waved graffiti off as a part of the culture.

Hip hop has five elements: DJing, MCing, Breaking, Graffiti, Knowledge. That's not an opinion; that's the framework that Afrika Bambaataa (RIP) articulated as a way to give young people in the Bronx a structure that wasn't crime or drugs. Graffiti is the one element on that list that is categorically impossible to monetize through a label deal, a sync license, or a streaming payout. You can't put it on Spotify. You can't put it in a car commercial. It exists in public space, without permission, and belongs to the people who made it.

So when one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in the history of hip hop suggests on a major platform that maybe graffiti isn't really part of the thing, what he's actually doing is redrawing the map around the money. He's not wrong that hip hop is bigger than any one of its elements. But the choice of which element to minimize is telling. You don't accidentally forget the one that doesn't have a revenue model.

It's not an entirely surprising take from a man that has done more for the business of hip hop than almost anyone alive. He is a "business, man!" let's not forget. But the business and the culture are not the same thing, and the merger of those two definitions - which sync music quietly accelerates, and which AI slop will eventually complete - is worth calling out.

Hip hop was born in a specific place, out of a specific set of material conditions, by people who had been systematically excluded from the economic structures that are now paying very good money to license its aesthetic. The soul didn't leave the music when it started making money. But it gets a little harder to find that soul every time someone opens a prompt box and types "motivational hip hop, 120 BPM, no lyrics" and drops it into the background of some mindless slop video or commercial.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1488 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Wed, 22 Apr 26 09:20:00 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1488#comments