Tyga’s AI-assisted turn was meant to frame him as a musician adapting to new technology. Instead, it has made $TARFACE a test case for how quickly “innovation” can be heard as artistic abdication.

The dispute began with Tyga’s ninth album, an ’80s-inflected project built around a “Miami Vice”-style alter ego, synth-pop textures and retro imagery. In an August interview with Vibe, he said AI was used for elements including period-style synths, while insisting that he wrote the lyrics and performed the vocals himself. His argument was straightforward: “There’s nothing wrong with using technology as a tool.”¹

That position places Tyga among artists treating AI as an extension of the studio rather than a replacement for the artist. He compared the backlash to early resistance to Auto-Tune, and later told TMZ that fears of replacement may be driving the criticism: “At the end of the day, I’m better than the AI.”¹ The broader entertainment industry has been split along similar lines, with advocates citing speed and efficiency while critics warn of lost jobs, uncompensated training data and a cheapened creative process.¹

Then came Pitchfork’s verdict. The publication gave $TARFACE a 0.0, reportedly its first zero for an album in 20 years; Jet’s Shine On was the previous recipient in 2006.² Reviewer Drew Millard turned the score into a labor critique, writing that the amount of “actual effort or even labor” on the record was “about zero.”¹

The backlash was not confined to critics. Doja Cat, who appears on two Tyga songs, condemned the project during a livestream, saying, “Tyga is a penis for making an AI album.”¹ For Tyga, AI is a tool in a long technological lineage. For his detractors, $TARFACE is evidence that the tool is already changing the value of the work.