Mary J. Blige Did A Fucking Suno Commercial

When she is at her absolute best, Mary J. Blige makes some of the most viscerally human music you ever heard in your life. That's what she has been doing ever since she arrived in the '90s. Her voice registers raw, convulsive emotions — heartbreak, betrayal, joy, indignity, distaste for hateration and holleration in this dancerie. When she sings something like "Real Love" or "I'm Goin' Down," you feel it in the pit of your soul. That's what makes her one of the greats, why her extremely of-the-moment commercial R&B records feel timeless. That's also why it's such a fucking drag to see her in a commercial for Suno, the generative AI music platform.

In a Suno ad spot that popped up over the weekend, we see Mary J. Blige, the Queen Of Hip-Hop Soul, sitting in a studio and receiving a demonstrations of what Suno can do. She doesn't present herself an an enthusiastic user of the service. Instead, it's made to look like a candid video of Blige in the studio.

When someone plays Blige what I assume is a Suno-generated version of a new Mary J. Blige song — which sounds like ass, by the way — she says, "I just process because I don't know what the hell y'all talking about, so I like to learn what you talking about. Now, it's like, 'Ah, OK, this is pretty dope,' if we could play with it more and learn more of everything else going on. It's pretty dope."

Presumably because Suno is so controversial, that ad is not prominent on the company's social media. It's currently appearing as a promoted ad on some platforms like TikTok, and rips of the ad are going viral. When Scott assigned this post, Suno did have a Facebook Reel that didn't display on its page, but that seems to be deleted now. There's also a slightly different version of the ad in which Blige says, "This is good to have. Like, I like help."

Those Mary J. Blige ads coincide with the launch of In Suno Studio 2.0, a new version of the platform that features custom audio plugins. In promotional materials, the company says, "Simply by describing what you want in natural language. Whether it's a ‘pumping cavernous reverb’ or a ‘mutating delay sequencer,’ Studio interprets your prompt, confirms the build plan, and generates your new effect in seconds.”

On Facebook, Mary J. Blige's contemporary and occasional remixer Jermaine Dupri posted a clip in which someone says, "There's a brand new app [with which] you can steal the mix from any song on Spotify and apply it to your mix, and it will mix and master your entire song." Dupri then cut that video off and said, "Man, that's wack. First of all, that shit ain't gonna work, and it's fucked up that y'all out here trying to sell these young people, and people that don't know, on shit like this. Y'all gotta cut this shit out... Y'all gotta stop fuckin' the game up with this dumb shit."

Dupri's main issue seems to be the idea that someone can automate the mixing process. In his video, Dupri names noted AI advocate Dr. Dre, a guy who once dissed Dupri on wax, as "the greatest hip-hop producer of all time," adding that he feels that way because Dre used the same breakbeats as everyone else but made them sound new: "What that means is, that's a mix... What the mix is, it's like the clothing that you put on your sound, or the car that you pull up in." In his caption, Dupri writes, "I was watching the new Mary J. Blige, suno commercial and then this shit popped up on my feed, I’m like cmon!! I get it, y’all want this AI shit to be excepted so bad, cool! But cut out all the trickory, Dickory dock shit." Exactly.

Three major record labels sued Suno for copyright infringement in 2024. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are still in active litigation, while Warner Music Group settled and announced a strategic partnership with Suno last fall. Suno is facing several other copyright lawsuits, including a new one that the Regional Mexican music company Gerencia 360 Music filed just yesterday.