Tupac vs The Notorious B.I.G. Jay-Z vs Naz. The Game vs 50 Cent.
If you thought those hip-hop rivalries weren’t tense or entertaining enough, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has found himself at the centre of the strangest rap battle ever.
The diss track does not come courtesy of a politically-engaged band or some renegade hip-hop outfit, but more surprisingly from a member of European Parliament from Germany, Daniel Freund.
The enterprising Mr. Freund didn’t write the rap, mind you. The Green MEP turned to the AI chatbot dominating the headlines at the moment, ChatGPT, and asked the tool to get composing about corruption in Hungary.
It came up with the following:
He’s been stacking the courts, packing the press
Making sure his critics are silences, no less
Using public funds to line his own pockets
It’s time to call him out, let’s unlock it
From football clubs to luxury castles
Orban’s empire is built on scams and hustles
It’s time to clean up, it’s time to fight
We won’t back down until Orban’s out of sight
It’s no Tupac, but you can’t deny that the chatbot does tick several boxes when it comes to calling out the alleged corruption in Hungary and the country’s long rap sheet – so to speak – when it comes to rule of law concerns from the European Commission.
Indeed, many of Orbán’s relatives and friends have faced corruption allegations, and according to Transparency International’s latest report, Hungary is perceived as having the worst public sector corruption record in the EU.
Freud, who has previously accused Orbán of using cash from Brussels to rig elections and repeatedly called on the EU to withhold funds from Budapest, was also chuffed with the lyrical result. He told AFP: «I was quite impressed how it put widely known accusations against the Orbán government into a rap text.»
And now comes the riposte.
The track hit a nerve in Budapest and retaliation was swift, as Hungarian government’s spokesperson Zoltán Kovács posted his very own ChatGPT rap about Mr Freund.
Yo, let me tell you ‘bout Daniel Freund
A German politician that you need to comprehend
Representing the Greens in the Bundestag
Fighting for justice and freedom, he’s got swag
Daniel Freund, Daniel Freund,
A fighter for democracy, he’s a friend
Daniel Freund, Daniel Freund,
In the Parliament, his voice won’t bend.
Putting to one side the fact that «Bundestag» and «swag» is a pretty weak rhyming duo, asking ChatGPT may have backfired for Kovács, as the rap actually praises Freund – even if it thinks that he’s in the German parliament as opposed to the European Parliament.
However, Kovács did fire back by linking his lyrics and saying that the chatbot was “nothing more than a bullshit generator.”
So, what have we learned?
Well, politics usually gets a bad rap, and that clearly isn’t changing anytime soon.
And AI is definitely not the future of hip-hop.