🐈⬛Witchy Woman, See How High She Flies🐦⬛
I'm scrolling through my feed and there it is—the headline that makes you pause mid-swipe. Xania Monet has become the first known AI artist to earn enough radio airplay to debut on a Billboard radio chart, landing at number 30 on the Adult R&B Airplay chart with How Was I Supposed to Know?
And honestly? I don't know how to feel yet.
Let me get the facts straight first. Xania was created by 31-year-old Mississippi poet Talisha Jones, who writes the lyrics herself and then uses the music creation service Suno to transform those lyrics into songs. So there is a human in the equation—a poet from Mississippi who's been writing for years, who grew up singing in church, pouring her stories into these tracks. 90% of her lyrics are her own true stories, and the other 10% are inspired by the stories of her friends and community.
But here's where it gets wild: Xania Monet has been signed to a multimillion-dollar record deal with Hallwood Media after what Billboard called a bidding war. We're talking about a $3 million deal. For an AI-generated voice singing words written by a poet who isn't the one performing them.
Kehlani said in a now-deleted TikTok video: "There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multimillion-dollar deal … and the person is doing none of the work. Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me." SZA has also spoken out against this development. These are working artists watching AI encroach on their industry in real time, and their anger feels justified.
Meanwhile, Xania's manager Romel Murphy keeps saying the quiet part out loud: "AI doesn't replace the artist. That's not our goal at all. It doesn't diminish the creativity and doesn't take away from the human experience. It's a new frontier." He wants people to just listen to the songs, listen to the lyrics, and then make their judgment.
But can we separate those things? Can we hear an AI voice—however smooth, however soulful—and not think about what it means for the singers, the session musicians, the vocalists grinding it out at open mics and in church choirs, hoping for their shot?
The thing is, at least six AI or AI-assisted artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings in just the past few months. Xania isn't alone. She's just the first one to crack the radio chart—the old-school metric that still somehow matters. And at least one AI artist has debuted in each of the past four chart weeks, which suggests this isn't a fluke. It's a trend, accelerating.
I haven't heard How Was I Supposed to Know? IRL yet. Part of me wants to hear what $3 million and 44 million streams sounds like blaring from an SUV window. Part of me is just... doomscrolling through the discourse, watching the music industry grapple with something that feels both inevitable and deeply wrong.
Maybe after I talk to some real people—musicians, poets, people who actually make things with their voices and their hands—I'll have a clearer sense of where I stand. For now, I'm just sitting with the weirdness of it all, trying to figure out if this is a new frontier or just the beginning of something we're going to regret.
Either way, the line just moved. And we're all watching to see what happens next.
