November 2025 brought a quiet earthquake to Adult R&B radio.
"How Was I Supposed To Know?" landed at #30 on Billboard's Adult R&B Airplay chart—soulful vocals, church-bred emotion, heartbreak you could feel. Then the reveal: singer Xania Monet isn't human. She's an AI-generated R&B artist created by Telisha "Nikki" Jones, a 31-year-old Mississippi poet.
In four months, Jones went from teaching herself AI tools to hitting #1 on Billboard's R&B Digital Song Sales, signing a $3 million record deal with Hallwood Media, and amassing 44.4 million U.S. streams. Xania Monet became the first AI artist to chart on Billboard radio—not through corporate labs, but through one woman's poems and stubborn curiosity.
This isn't a robot takeover story. It's a poet hacking the system.
The Human Behind the Avatar
Before Xania Monet existed, Telisha "Nikki" Jones was writing poetry in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Church choir upbringing. Family stories. Heartbreak and faith documented since her early twenties.
About 90 percent of Xania's lyrics come directly from Jones's life; the rest from friends and community. No engineering degree, no industry connections—just years of R&B storytelling and a question: "What if my poems could sound like the songs in my head?"
She started experimenting with AI platforms like Suno, teaching herself through trial and error. On CBS Mornings, Jones described her creation simply: "Xania is an extension of me, so I look at her as a real person."
When Gayle King raised concerns about people outside Black culture creating Black-sounding AI voices, Jones didn't dodge: "I'm Telisha. I'm a part of your culture; I'm a Black woman; I'm a creator; I'm an entrepreneur; I created Xania."
This is a Black woman artist using AI to project her own stories further than her vocal cords alone could reach.
How It Actually Works
Jones's process demolishes the "type a prompt, get a hit" myth:
She picks a poem from years of writing. Pastes lyrics into Suno with detailed style prompts: "slow tempo, R&B, deep soulful female vocals, light guitar, heavy drums." Suno generates multiple versions. She listens, tweaks prompts, regenerates. Curates the version that captures what she wrote. Sometimes adds live elements with human collaborators.
"I wouldn't call it a shortcut because I still put in the work," Jones told King. "AI is the new era that we're in. I look at it as a tool, an instrument."
Manager Romel Murphy pushed "How Was I Supposed To Know?" from TikTok virality to traditional radio, driving that 28 percent airplay jump. Hallwood Media, led by former Interscope executive Neil Jacobson, bet millions after a bidding war, declaring Jones proves "taste and instinct have always mattered more than technical dexterity."
Result: 44 songs on Spotify, multiple Billboard chart appearances, $52,000 in revenue. Every track starts with the same thing—human poems from Telisha Nikki Jones.
The Backlash Is Real
Other Black women R&B artists aren't buying it.
Kehlani: "Nothing and no one on earth will ever be able to justify AI to me, especially not in the creative arts in which people have worked hard for."
Baby Tate, bluntly: "All you doing is typing?!"
Muni Long noted the double standard: an AI R&B artist gets millions, but "it wouldn't be allowed to happen in country or pop."
The frustration makes sense. R&B gets underfunded and undermined while other genres cash in. An AI singer landing a $3 million deal feels less like innovation, more like another way to cut humans out.
Even King confronted Jones: you can't sing—isn't this a shortcut?
The Recording Academy is drawing lines too: fully AI-written songs can't win songwriting Grammys without substantial human involvement and transparent credits. Xania Monet sits right on that edge—human lyrics, AI vocals and instrumentation.
The question isn't just "Is this creative?" It's "Who benefits, and who gets left behind?"
Why Transparency Matters
While Xania Monet climbed charts, Spotify was removing over 75 million "spammy" AI-generated tracks—undisclosed bot farms gaming streams for pennies. New platform policies now require labels to disclose AI use in vocals, instrumentation, and production.
Xania Monet represents the opposite approach. Jones publicly demonstrates Suno on camera. Her AI creation is disclosed across Apple Music, Billboard coverage, and CBS interviews. She claims full songwriting ownership and plans collaborations with human producers and live performances.
Legal simplicity? Absolutely not. Suno faces lawsuits over training data; copyright offices still debate AI-heavy works. Hallwood's $3 million bet lives in regulatory gray zones.
But there's a crucial distinction: spam hides the machine. Jones openly declares, "Here is the human, here is the machine, here is how we work together."
That transparency will determine which AI music stories survive coming crackdowns and which vanish with the bots.
What About Black Women Artists?
Afrotech and People of Color in Tech framed this not as "robot steals jobs," but as a Black woman using AI innovation to enter the room before the wave rolls over her without her.
Jones had no traditional vocal training. No industry connections. She had years of gospel-soaked storytelling and willingness to learn unfamiliar tools.
Producer Dallas Austin warns the music industry risks being left behind if it refuses human-AI collaboration. Timbaland, who advises Suno, publicly praised Xania and launched AI-focused projects.
But risks are real. Studies predict musicians could lose 25 percent of income to AI by 2028 if economics tilt wrong. Some executives hint AI music deserves lower royalties. If that happens, it hits creators without leverage first.
The stakes extend beyond one AI singer: Will tools like Suno ladder underrepresented storytellers past gatekeeping? Or become another way to pay humans less for emotional labor?
Jones is betting on collaboration—credits, human partnerships, stories staying central.
Who Holds the Mic?
Xania Monet isn't proof AI music beats humans.
She's proof a human—Mississippi poet, Black woman, non-singer—used human-AI collaboration to enter a space not built for her.
Her Billboard success stress-tests industry values: Are we okay with AI when it amplifies a real person's voice? Will we demand transparency or let spam drown actual stories? Can we celebrate innovation without handing power only to platforms and labels?
The future of R&B will be full of strange, blended projects like this. The real question isn't "Is AI in music good or bad?"
It's: Who gets to hold the mic when the machines are turned on?
If stories like Telisha Nikki Jones's stay in the center, human creativity still leads. AI just turns up the volume.