Eleven days ago, Capitol Records, the 80-year-old music institution, announced that it had stormed the metaverse by becoming the first major record label to “sign” a virtual rapper named FN Meka.Today, he has ended his association with this AI artist following huge online backlash against him, which was seen by many as an insulting caricature of black culture and hip-hop.In a statement to Rolling Stone, a Capitol Music Group representative wrote:“CMG has severed ties with the FN Meka project, effective immediately.We offer our deepest apologies to the black community for our insensitivity in signing off on this project without asking enough questions about fairness and the creative process behind it.We appreciate those who have contacted us with constructive feedback in recent days;their input has been invaluable in making the decision to end our association with the project.”Capitol announced FN Meka's "agreement" to release a new avatar single with Gunna, who is currently incarcerated awaiting trial for alleged conspiracy to violate the RICO Act with Young Thug and his record label affiliates. Young Stoner Life.Gunna is actually the author of Florida Water, the song that had already amassed over 1.5 million streams on Spotify before being pulled from the platform yesterday afternoon (Aug 23).Florida Water is a fairly benign and flexible fee that aligns with the outrageously materialistic ethos under which FN Meka has been created for its 10.3 million TikTok followers.“Tesla, Gucci Cybertruck, I wreck that shit, don't give a fuck,” Meka raps in his short verse, referencing a video of him in the that he is seen with an animated vehicle like the one he describes.The over two-year-old clip embodies much of the controversy surrounding FN Meka: It's with the soundtrack to his song Moonwalkin, in which he clearly uses the N-word, once in the clip and four times in the track. complete.In an “interview,” Meka says that TikTok is his favorite post.The virtual rapper, who describes himself as a robot in the aforementioned “interview” and in his social media posts, looks fairly human, save for a golden left hand and a chin plate below his glowing pupils. green.Although Meka isn't obviously a person, neither in the story nor in reality, he does look like one, and he doesn't immediately look black.This racial ambiguity, coupled with songs in which Meka raps with the N-word, has sparked intense anger online.Although Twitter user @natenumbaeight's critical song of FN Meka is comical, it poignantly describes one of the many issues critics have with the virtual rapper: “We cannot let robots say n*gga in any form/If we let robots. say n*gga, that's how robotic racism's born”.There is even more worrying animated content on the avatar pages, such as posts showing him in jail, wearing an orange, seemingly off-white jumpsuit, and being beaten up by a guard because he "won't be a snitch." , which has provoked more protests due to the mockery that FN Meka perceives of black music, black people and the situation of black people.Just hours before Capitol announced it had dropped FN Meka, Industry Blackout, an online coalition elevating civil rights causes at the intersection of blackness and music since the uprisings of the summer of 2020, posted a condemnation of Capitol Records on Instagram, calling on the label to end its association with Meka, formally apologize, remove its content from all platforms, and allocate funds spent on FN Meka to charities that support young black people in the arts and marketing budgets for black Capitol artists.Calling FN Meka an "amalgamation of crude stereotypes and appropriate mannerisms," the Industry Blackout letter reads: "This digital effigy is a careless abomination and disrespect to real people facing real consequences in real life."The group points to the accusation of Gunna, who used lyrics from the Atlanta rapper, “the same type of lyrics that this robot imitates,” as an example, the letter continues.In 2021, Genius discovered that the creators of FN Meka are brothers Chris and Brandon Le.The robot rapper was also defended by Anthony Martini, co-founder of a company called Factory New. Martini claimed that FN Meka was the signed employee of Factory New, which described itself as a music company specializing in powering virtual characters.According to Martini in a 2021 interview with Music Business Worldwide, FN Meka was “created using thousands of data points collected from video games and social media” and its music is performed by a human, but structured by artificial intelligence: “We have developed a Proprietary AI technology that analyzes certain popular songs of a specific genre and generates recommendations for the various elements of song construction: lyrical content, chords, melody, tempo, sounds, etc.We then combined these elements to create the song.”