Like 30 minutes ago, I was scrolling though random rappers' Spotify's and discovered that Karrahbooo+DC2Trill+Camo were linked to this album called "B4LB" by someone named Colby Nelson, with copyright attributed to OVO Sound. But if he was signed to OVO, then why is everything distributed through DistroKid?
That's the original introduction I wrote for this article like 2 weeks ago when I was just gonna make this about Colby Nelson but because I had a change of heart, I decided to scrap this... until I discovered a bunch of other desperate people who also have faked big collabs. In my research, I've found a few Reddit posts (one [full thing, well researched], two) and even a post on Spotify's community section exposing this shit, only for nothing to be done about it.
Colby used to be a Twitch streamer alongside someone named Berto circa 2020~2022. They didn't get a lot of viewers, so around 2021 is when he started posting music. Two years ago (~2023), Colby's entire Spotify catalog was wiped. You can still find his "music" on Apple, Qobuz, etc., but not Spotify. Colby hasn't given a reason as to why Spotify booted him (hell, the only acknowledgement seems to be this post) but my theory is that he got in trouble for botting his tracks. To circumvent his Spotify blockage, he created a new profile and tripled down on the OVO Sound thing. He gets roughly 5,000-7,000 monthlies on there, which is crazy to me. He also peddles A.I. generated drop-shipped merch. Colby got desperate enough to post a fake Vogue cover to his Facebook on July 16, 2024.
(left) From his own IG post (March 26, 2022) | (right) Edited screenshot of Colby's "can't determine me" trending on iTunes' charts.
You can tell it's fake because the text for "can't determine me" is fuzzy compared to how sharp the other text is.
Shortly after Playboi Carti (finally) released "MUSIC," Colby posted this:
I tried looking for this album and its subsequent deluxe release and couldn't find shit (except for this Facebook teaser). I don't doubt Uzi has the ability to produce stuff, but I highly doubt he made a beat for this guy. Neither BKTHERULA or Lil Uzi Vert liked this post or have mentioned Colby anywhere online. If there were any features on this project, I guarantee they were A.I. vocal filters.
Kind of insane to accuse someone of biting your non-existent sound as a method of promotion Even joking about getting his lawyer to draft up a letter. He uploaded a snippet titled "Rather Not Lie" (even copying the "MUSIC" album logo style) to piggyback off the popularity of Carti & The Weeknd's song of the same name.
On March 16, 2024, Colby posted on Instagram promoting this THC shipping company called Delta Extrax (he promotes it a lot). In the Reel, you can see him wearing a McDonald's crew member shirt. Not to hate on him for grinding, but I highly doubt he got it from Goodwill. This just adds to the erosion of his credibility as a major, signed artist. There's also some really cringe posts begging people to comment emojis based on how you feel about yourself
Screenshot from the ad where you can clearly see Colby wearing a McDonald's employee shirt.
This seems to be a growing trend, faking being involved with full-fledged rappers and artists.
I've been finding a lot of streaming songs filled with A.I. or stolen features, but this Colby guy just bothered me for some reason. I feel like this is a symptom of the streaming era of music and the ease-of-access towards A.I.
I don't mean to trash this Nelson guy so viciously, this is a mental health issue, but how do you let it get this bad? So deep in the lies that on every single post, you tag Shein and a bunch of other brands begging for validation. Seems like the guy has been through a lot (being queer in a pretty homophobic space doesn't help).
Here's the full list of everyone Colby claims to have worked with:
OVO Sound / Concrete Boys / Santa Anna Records / EMPIRE Records / Zack Bia (Field Trip Records) / Maybach MG / 300 Ent.
Drake / Kanye West / Lil Uzi Vert / Playboi Carti / BNYX / BKTHERULA / Danny Wolf / skaiwater / Tay Keith
Draft Day / DC2Trill / xtsy* / Yung Fazo / Pi'erre Bourne / Lex Luger / TM88 / myr / Jace! / Euro
FBG Duck / FBG Murda / FBG Butta / dutchaelli / Southside / PlaqueBoyMax / Sonny Digital / Wheezy
Murda Beatz / Bloodhound Q50 / Yeat / Yuno Miles / Lil Man J / Camo! / Stvii Dawzrd / DJ Swamp Izzo
Karrahbooo / CDM Beats / Lil Novi / Horz / Dreamz / the6erz / st10 / Arshan Jawaid aka KTO! / Fyb J Mane
Julian Avery Grzela aka Cult5ive is a white Canadian rapper who (according to himself) started back in 2019 with his Instagram racking up 10k followers as of the time I'm writing this. His Spotify (65 monthly listeners) and SoundCloud (66 followers) accounts have not been nearly as successful, but this is due to the fact that his IG account has botted followers. On Spotify, his biggest song is "How High Are You?" with Kee Nola, at just 1,667 plays. Surprisingly, it is an original song.
Screenshot of Cult5ive's SoundCloud Spotlight, all 3 are leaks he slapped his own LQ verse onto.
As for Vanessa Donald aka Vanessa Doll, she has an even crazier ratio with her Instagram/Spotify accounts as you can see above. Her most popular song is "My Life is Going On" from 2018, with 2 artists who have nothing but her music on their accounts, tamer and V9P, which currently sits at 55,235,860 plays (yes, really). Listen to it yourself, it's not great. V9P may be a real producer, but again, everything is just Vanessa Doll. As for 'her' song "Hands Up!" (6,865,658 plays), this is stolen from Ayesha Erotica's "For the Girls" and a few other songs including one by 6arelyhuman. She recently put out a """collab""" album with Stunna Girl called "Stunna Chronicles" except Stunna Girl hasn't posted about it at all. Stunna Girl is the perfect artist for doing this as she isn't small enough to get zero results but she isn't big enough for Vanessa to get easily caught doing this shit and have the fake material taken down.
Screenshot of Vanessa Doll's Apple profile. "Stunna Chronicles" was taken down but she got it back up somehow, it does contain a mix of Stunna Girl's music and Vanessa's terrible songs.
"YKWTFGO" doesn't have any music by Vanessa and is literally just Stunna's album of the same name unaltered.
Recent IG stories from her account. The left slide shows the terrible original cover for "Stunna Chronicles".
There's a lot more people I found that are like this.
My main confusion with all of this is... why? This doesn't actually get you real fans or help your music get out there, if anything this damages your career long term. By the way, I do know why: Money. Greed. The dumb common consumers will probably not even notice. Prime example being a close friend who sends me songs she finds on TikTok that are stolen from other artists all the time. She gets excited thinking it's a brand new song by (for example) Rico Nasty, but in reality it is an old (sometimes SoundCloud) song someone took and uploaded under their own name. I always hate breaking the truth to her.
If these frauds do get some notoriety from this, real artists will eventually learn about it and refrain from collaborating. Most of the time you'll see botted listens and followers which doesn't equal real people as I've noticed the genuine people avoid engaging with these accounts. This is apparent when you look at the engagement differential across their socials. Reporting on iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, etc. doesn't seem to do anything, which sucks.
And to be fair, most of the time this isn't directly hurting or antagonizing the true artists, hence why no one cares but it's still pathetic.
Fuck A.I.
Support real artists, always.
Support real artists, always.
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