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Claim: Canadian singer and rapper Drake sang Mohbad’s song as a tribute to the late Nigerian musician.
Verdict: False! The video was captured at a different event while the audio was imposed on the video using an Artificial intelligence tool.
Full Text
On Sept. 12, 2023, Ilerioluwa Aloba, the Nigerian singer popularly called MohBad, passed away. His management announced his demise via his Instagram page.
The development sparked widespread outrage and many claims on social media regarding the circumstances surrounding his death. Some youths also took to the streets to protest the young artist’s death, as seen here, here and here. It also trended on social media with the hashtag #JusticeforMohbad.
Following the outrage, the acting Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, ordered a probe into the late singer’s death, which led to an autopsy.
Amid this, a video had gone viral on social media, claiming Drake sang Mohbad’s song as a tribute to the late singer. The video was posted by an X user @Abisco_YBNL.
The video showed Drake seated on what looked like a bed, with Mohbad’s image imposed on the video. When this report was filed, the video had been viewed 2.6 million times, while over 23,000 tweeps had liked the post.
Some who had viewed the tweet claimed it was AI-generated, while others believed the video to be true. Those who believed the video lamented how the singer became more popular after his death.
However, A few others queried the poster, who directed them to Drake’s Instagram handle.
Verification
DUBAWA first subjected the video to the INVID video verification plug-in to ascertain the source of the video. Using the keyframe analysis feature and, subsequently, the reverse image search option, it was observed that the video was initially posted in Jan. 2023 during one of Drake’s live performances.
The videos posted on TikTok showed that the singer performed at the Apollo NYC theatre, singing some of his popular songs, as seen here, here and here. The video was also posted at the same time on Instagram.
DUBAWA further listened to the audio and observed it had been created using an AI voice cloning tool. According to Voicemod, voice cloning collects audio data from a person, feeds it into a neural network, and then analyses the audio to recreate the person’s voice.
Also, a search through Drake’s social media handles showed he neither said anything regarding Mohbad’s death nor created any video to that effect.
Conclusion
The claim that Drake performed Mohbad’s ‘Beast & Peace’ as a tribute to the late singer is false. The video was from another event and was manipulated.
