Hip Hop x NBA – AI Remix

Was there a better decade than the '90s? Before Trap Rap was ever a thing, before load management benched our NBA superstars and when AI was just the name of an icon. Here at Tool, we're remixing the old school with the new cool, dropping some tech genius into the golden era of Hip Hop and the NBA.

In the summer of 2023, we were inspired by the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop and wanted to use that as our cultural backdrop for experimenting with some of the most exciting new generative AI techniques.  We started looking at each of the decades of Hip Hop as its own era, defining iconic artists, lyrics, fashion and social moments that dominated those eras.   With many brands doing activations to celebrate this anniversary, the insight that inspired us was actually a bit more unique.  We tapped into an insight which was that there is a deeply rooted cultural crossover between Hip Hop and the NBA and wanted to play with that as we remixed memorable aspects of the eras.  Since time is finite, and we wanted to select a single decade as a slice of storytelling, powered by some very visual AI techniques. 

For anyone who was a kid in the 90s or is nostalgic of that era, these creations might be described as AI memorabilia or an AI time capsule of your childhood bedroom. Below are four of those experiments from our team at Tool, as we endeavored to reboot of of the '90s with a dash of AI swagger🎤🏀🧠