• Chart-topping track credited to fictional white avatar called Breaking Rust
• Grammy-nominated artist learned about the AI hit when friends blew up his phone
• Former collaborator linked to AI music generator now unreachable

LOS ANGELES, CA (TDR) — When an AI-generated country song called “Walk My Walk” climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart this month, the artist credited wasn’t human. Breaking Rust, a brooding white cowboy avatar with over 35,000 Instagram followers, didn’t exist two months ago. But the vocal style powering the track came from someone very real, and he had no clue his sound had been digitally cloned.

Grammy-nominated country artist Blanco Brown, the Black musician behind the 2019 viral smash “The Git Up,” discovered the situation only after his phone exploded with messages from concerned friends.

‘They Just Used the Blanco, Not the Brown’

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Brown, who has produced tracks for Britney Spears, Childish Gambino, and Rihanna, said he was blindsided by the AI country song’s success. The grit-filled, chant-heavy track bears unmistakable resemblance to his signature “TrailerTrap” style that helped usher in a new era of country crossover music.

“Somebody said: ‘Man, somebody done typed your name in the AI and made a white version of you. They just used the Blanco, not the Brown.'”

The moment quickly shifted from eerie to uncomfortable. A white, digitally generated avatar was topping charts using a sound built on a Black artist’s creative DNA, all without consent, credit, or compensation.

Former Collaborator Linked to AI Hit

The rabbit hole gets deeper. Streaming platforms credit Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor as the songwriter and producer behind “Walk My Walk.” Taylor is also connected to Defbeatsai, a collection of explicit AI-generated country artists that blew up on social media last year.

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That ecosystem traces back to Abraham Abushmais, a collaborator Brown once nicknamed “Abe Einstein” for his sharp studio instincts. Abushmais co-wrote songs on Brown’s 2019 album “Honeysuckle & Lightning Bugs” and is listed as developer of Echo, an AI music generator app. Brown said his former mentee has since vanished.

Brown Fights Back With His Own Version

Rather than simply fume, Brown hit the studio. He recorded his own cover of “Walk My Walk” last week and is releasing a reworked version with new lyrics and arrangement. His management framed the response as a direct challenge to the legal and ethical void surrounding AI-generated music.

The chart-topping achievement itself deserves an asterisk. TIME Magazine noted it only takes roughly 3,000 purchases to top the Country Digital Song Sales chart these days, since few people actually buy digital songs anymore. That’s about $3,000 to manufacture a headline.

Still, for educators and industry insiders, the writing is on the wall. AI music has leapt from internet curiosity to commercial threat.

When AI can clone your voice and style overnight, who really owns the music?

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