Mon Jun 22 2026
Recently, the Shoreline Mafia member Fenix Flexin has been at the center of a discourse online in regards to his latest single “RUBBERZ”. Notably, the song is a departure from his previous work with SM and throughout his solo caree, thus the conversation has been dominated by a debate as to whether or not the song is made “with” AI. I have seen essays written in slides on Instagram about “how this is the first song with AI” the author actually enjoys1. Jon Carimanica made a video about it for the New York Times (and came to largely the same conclusion as me, it seems.) What “this song was generated by AI” actually means is kind of vague, and ultimately not what I care to write about. This take reveals a lack of creativity and a lack of understanding about any sort of musical process from people who automatically jump to this conclusion.
“RUBBERZ” is a weird, funny song. It is braggy, forlorn synth pop-rap, and Fenix performs it with a fake British accent. This is, of course, an outlier in his (incredibly stellar) discography, as most of is music is firmly within the localized genre of “traffic music” that was put on the map by RonRonTheProducer 2,3 who produced, in addition to Shoreline Mafia hits, Drakeo Tha Ruler and 03 Greedo. (My personal favorite solo Fenix song is “STILL”, a one off loosey). However, not one aspect of “RUBBERZ” jumps out to me as “this has to be AI.” In fact, Fenix has been pretty vocal about the fact that he recorded this the way he recorded everything else, namely freestyled in his living room. He sang the song on Rap Radar, and described his process to Channel 5. Yet, puzzlingly, the consensus on the use of AI seems to be “jury is still out” which I find absolutely maddening.
Some brief context - I have been making music consistently since 2012 at the very latest, and have moonlit as a producer and engineer in hip hop. You spend a lot of time fucking around on the computer, with sounds, and what sounds good. Sometimes you do something stupid for the sake of your own amusement, only to find out that*…wait a second…*this is actually good as hell. Fenix, I would wager, has spent way more time fucking around on a computer making music than I have, considering he has made a living out of it for the last eight or so years. In addition to his major projects, he has mountains of features an random b-sides uploaded to YouTube. Unquestionably, he takes his chosen art seriously, and taking art seriously requires experimentation and a desire to entertain oneself.
To me, that is what “RUBBERZ” sounds like; a half-joke experiment that he freestyled (as he does all of his songs)4 and upon listening back to it realized that the song had legs. Presumably, he continued to listen to it and prepare to release it as a single and was committed to the idea the song had legs, because he actually released it as a single earlier this month.
The issue with constantly discussing the use of AI around “RUBBERZ” is that it reveals how little imagination and creativity these people who are even entertaining the idea possess. This fixation on how the song must be AI Generated is depressing, and, as an artist, infuriating. Good artists, regardless of their established lane, will experiment and make choices that only make sense to them. To be clear, I don’t think Generative AI should be used to generate music , and I will not listen to music I know to be generated with AI. But, at the same time, I think refusing to entertain the idea that an artist could come up with a song like this on his own also contributes to the stifling of creativity. This attitude homogenizes music and makes it boring.
Hopefully Fenix Flexin has more weirdo experiments in the vault, because I would look forward to him releasing them, and I respect him for releasing "RUBBERZ" as a single. More artists in general should release weird shit that is only funny to them, because it will make the world a more exciting place in which to live. Lastly, long live Mac P Dawg.