A Struggling Artist Used Suno Hundreds of Times on One Song. The Result Actually Works.
1010Benja fed his own vocals and lyrics into an AI music tool, edited the output, fed it back in, and repeated that cycle roughly three hundred times. The song is good. That is the uncomfortable part.
Key points
- Artist 1010Benja used Suno, an AI music-generation tool, to produce the opening track of his 2025 EP Time Has Nothing To Do With What You Choose...
- Benja wrote the lyrics, recorded his own vocals, and ran the material through Suno and the editing software Ableton in a back-and-forth cycle he estimates he repeated a few hundred times.
- Streaming service Deezer flags the song as AI-generated; Benja says he is not hiding that fact.
- Benja earned a Best New Music pick from Pitchfork for his previous record Ten Total in 2024, yet describes missing rent payments and periods of homelessness.
- The Verge AI writer who reviewed the track says it is the first Suno output he has genuinely enjoyed.
Most music made with generative AI, software that creates new audio from a text or audio prompt, sounds like wallpaper. Suno, one of the most widely used tools in that category, has a reputation for producing technically passable, emotionally hollow tracks. That reputation has some teeth: we reported in July that a breach exposed internal code showing Suno pulled audio from streaming platforms without permission.
Then there is "Semiramis' Dream."
The opening track on 1010Benja's new EP hits with a jungle beat and Benja's own voice right at the front. It sounds alive.
The process is not the usual drag-and-drop. Benja wrote the lyrics. His collaborator Patrick Holder built the beat. Benja recorded his own vocals. Then they fed those elements into Suno, took whatever came back, pulled it into Ableton (a professional music-editing program), reworked it, and pushed it back into Suno. He estimates he ran that cycle a few hundred times for this one song.
The most obviously synthetic element is the choir of backing voices. Hyperpop, a genre built around heavily processed and deliberately unnatural-sounding vocals, has trained listeners to accept exactly that texture. By choosing a style where artificial sounds are normal, Benja made the AI parts easy to miss.
He is not trying to hide any of it. "We're not hiding it. We don't feel any shame about it," he told music publication Hearing Things. Deezer marks the track as AI-generated in its metadata.
Benja is also clear-eyed about the cost. He acknowledges the environmental damage from large-scale AI systems and is not triumphant about any of this. "The good guy doesn't win this one," he said. He uses the tool because he cannot afford the alternative. "I haven't paid rent last month, and I won't pay rent this month," he told Hearing Things. A professional children's choir is not in the budget.
That tension is worth sitting with. Benja could likely have produced something similar using layered vocal takes and smart processing, without Suno at all. The AI choir is not particularly convincing on close listening. What carries the song is his own voice, his own persistence across hundreds of iterations, and lyrics that hold up.
Does this change anything for independent musicians?
Not immediately, but it clarifies where the ceiling sits. Suno used this way is less a shortcut and more an extremely labour-intensive substitute for studio time an artist cannot afford. The tool did not replace Benja's creative work. It absorbed hundreds of hours of it.
For listeners, the practical point is simple: AI-assisted does not automatically mean low-effort or dishonest. Check the credits, and let your ears decide.
