Well, when I was discussing my new piece on Madison McFerrin—specifically how she landed on my radar during that “BBL Drizzy” wave—my guy (the very founder of this site, mind you) hit me with the dreaded: “What song is that?”
So for the uninitiated, it went a little something like this.
Drake took the first swing in his beef with Kendrick Lamar and threw a jab at Metro Boomin with the line: “Metro, shut yo h* a** up and make some drums…”* In a move as petty as it was poetic, Metro did exactly that. He made drums. But not just any drums.
Inspired by a Rick Ross quip calling Drake “BBL Drizzy,” an internet creator named King Willonius (who specializes in AI-generated vintage R&B tracks) dropped a soulful, 70s-style song of the same name. It’s a 1-minute-and-38-second ditty that sounds like it was pulled from a forgotten Motown crate, but it’s all AI—except the lyrics, which were pure Willonius wit. Here’s the original track.
Metro Boomin found it, chopped it, pitched it, added his signature drums, and dropped a SoundCloud link with an open challenge: best verse over the beat wins a free Metro Boomin beat. That tweet still rests here:
For ease of listening, the beat’s on YouTube too.
That’s when “BBL Drizzy” went from meme to moment.
It became the first distrumental—a beat that’s a diss in itself, before a single bar is even rapped. No vocals needed. The instrumental is the insult. And what’s wild is that it’s built on an AI-generated sample. That’s right: the most talked-about diss beat of 2024 was born out of an AI soul groove sung by a singer who doesn’t exist.
Say what you want about the beef, but Metro just shifted the culture again—blurring the line between satire, innovation, and battle rap history. And like any true shift, it starts small. A joke. A jab. A beat. A new frontier.
You’re watching hip-hop evolve in real time, and whether you’re here for the music, the memes, or the message—it’s worth paying attention.
Now excuse me while I go replay Madison McFerrin and other versions of this magic viral moment again.
