Legendary producer Timbaland has faced criticism online after a video surfaced of him allegedly stealing music from KFresh and using it for an AI beat prompt in association with Suno. He uploaded audio from TikTok to Suno AI featuring KFresh's beat, along with an artist named C-Red freestyling over it, and used his "Baby Timbo" AI to create a new version.

Watch the clip below (provided by @CurtissKing on X):

Timbaland and Suno have some explaining to do.

Suno was allegedly caught stealing @kfreshmusic 's beat and producer tag in a Ai generated beat prompted by Timbaland. pic.twitter.com/tU4zyxQFZf

— Curtiss King 🏁🛠 (@CurtissKing) June 13, 2025

After requests for transparency, Timbaland defended himself by claiming that he was merely making a remix using KFresh's beat and producer tag, and stated that it enabled the artist to work with Ghostface Killah, who had initially requested the beat. However, KFresh stated that the rapper never reached out to him, even though he's shared beats before.

While some have defended this as continuing hip hop's tradition of interpolation and sampling, others have brought up that AI's inclusion brings into question whether artists have the right to not have their music used to train algorithms without permission.

KFresh had this to say in a response:

Come talk to me, let's have a conversation...more importantly, you guys got a responsibility to look out for the young guys who look up to you...there's so much more you could be doing in terms of giving back. Change the game, like we know the music industry is messed up, but it don't have to be like that...y'all got way more influence than a lot of us.

K Fresh's message to Timbaland and Suno.

(📹: Curtiss King TV/YouTube + @kfreshmusic ) pic.twitter.com/TXAZaKdfYP

— Curtiss King 🏁🛠 (@CurtissKing) June 14, 2025