“Digital Blackface”: Accused of racism, black robot rapper FN Meka, star of TikTok, fired by his record company

@fnmeka I’m a dancing / rapping robot 🤖 #dancechallenge #robotics #hiphopmusic #dopearmy ♬ Moonwalkin FnMeka – FNMeka

A black robot rapper, FN Meka, star of TikTok created thanks to artificial intelligence, was fired by the record label Capitol Records after being accused of conveying racist stereotypes about black people. It was the group of American activists Industry Blackout who, after a campaign on social networks, wrote Tuesday to Capitol Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music, to denounce FN Meka, “a direct insult to the black community and to (its) culture”.

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Industry Blackout had denounced “an amalgamation of crude stereotypes, appropriations (cultural) of black artists and insults contained in the lyrics”. FN Meka is notably accused of having used the famous “N-word” in English, a word that has become unpronounceable in the United States because of the character deemed racist, insulting and offensive towards black people. On social media, a digital image also shows the robot – a sort of black cyborg with a tattooed face and a half-shaved head – being bludgeoned to the ground by the avatar of a white American police officer.

Technically, the robot rapper does not sing – it’s a real anonymous black artist who does it – but the music is generated by artificial intelligence. FN Meka, however, maintains its TikTok account with more than 10 million subscribers and more than a billion views for its videos.

Le Figaro