TJ Reynolds’ ‘AI LP’ takes inspiration from AI, and Kendrick Lamar-Drake rap beef

Every summer has a major news story so inescapable, it reaches local creative scenes. This year, it’s a war of words between two of the most popular rappers alive, and it spurred Arlington artist and rapper TJ Reynolds to drop an experimental and potentially controversial album that took him only weeks to create, “AI LP.” The rappers in question, Kendrick Lamar and Drake, have had bad blood for years, but Lamar brought it out into the open with a verse on producer Metro Boomin and rapper Future’s track “Like That” in March. A few weeks later, Drake fired back with two diss tracks: “Push Ups,” where he insulted Lamar’s wife, Whitney Alford, and “Taylor Made Freestyle,” where he used an artificial intelligence voice changer to make two of his verses sound like they came from Snoop Dogg and Lamar’s biggest role model, the late, great Tupac Shakur. Lamar responded with four diss tracks in five days, two of which called Drake out on using AI to disrespect Shakur’s legacy and one of which (“Not Like Us”) debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. He even organized what might have been the first ever diss concert, the Pop Out, which...