"I don't know what Pitchfork is, all I know is the devil uses a pitchfork." Facing the site's 0/10 review, Tyga brushed it off with that pun. It's not the first time he's dodged a direct confrontation—when Doja Cat called him "a penis for making an AI album," his response was similarly soft before slipping away: "I love Doja, but she dropped a demonic-ass album too, and I still love her." He didn't name which one.
Tyga dropped his ninth studio album *$tarface* late last month, following up on 2025's *NSFW*. After release, he confirmed AI was used in the making of the album, calling it a "tool" and comparing it to Auto-Tune: "People hated on it back then, but real artists ended up using it." He gave examples of when he'd use AI—like needing "an '80s synth sound" or knocking out a guitar solo on a deadline—while emphasizing that the album's production and "all the vocals" were not AI-generated.
The backlash came fast. Last Wednesday (Aug. 12), Doja Cat brought it up unprompted during a livestream: "Nobody asked me about Tyga, but I'm gonna say it anyway—Tyga's a penis for making an AI album." She's previously collaborated with Tyga on two tracks. Around the same time, Pitchfork gave *$tarface* the lowest possible score, 0/10, calling the album "self-satisfied and depressing," and going as far as writing that "its existence makes the world a worse place."
Caught in the crossfire, Tyga went on TMZ Live to address it head-on—but his strategy was to defuse the attacks first before diving into his creative rationale. He reiterated that he wrote every lyric himself, and that trying out a new sound was simply because "after 15-plus years in music, you gotta switch it up sometimes." He also framed $TARFACE as a persona separate from himself: "This is a completely different artist persona, a completely different aesthetic."
Whether AI has a place in music-making remains a divisive topic in the industry. Empire Of The Sun's Luke Steele and Boy George have both publicly admitted to using AI in their work, while Mac DeMarco, SZA, and Lorde have taken a more critical stance—Jack Antonoff went so far as to call musicians who use AI "faithless whores." Both Apple Music and Spotify have stated they'll start letting users know when the music they're listening to is AI-generated.
