Rat Race - September 26, 2024
Rat Race is an AI-assisted music and visual project by AiLF (Susan Heslington), created during Suno’s first official public remix competition in September 2024 and thematically centered on modern life’s repetitive pressures. The piece is preserved as part of AiLF’s archive documenting early independent experimentation during Suno’s v3.5 formative era.
Suno partnered with Flosstradamus and invited creators to remix Soundclash (feat. TroyBoi) using official stems and early remix tools. (See official Suno competition announcement) For the first time, hundreds of artists were working from the same source material, racing to build something personal from a shared sonic framework. AI music stopped feeling private and started feeling communal.
That energy became the core of Rat Race.
The song wasn’t just about the contest - it became a metaphor for modern life itself. The lyrics revolve around time pressure, repetition, and exhaustion. Clocks ticking. Work looping. The feeling of being trapped in motion:
Eyes on the clock
It won’t stop
Work, work, work
Stuck inside the rat race
I want out
The visual world matched the message: rats in suits flooding an urban skyline, marching into offices like commuters caught in a mechanical cycle. It’s surreal, but uncomfortably familiar. The track became a protest disguised as rhythm - a scream against routine wrapped in industrial pulse.
Looking back, Rat Race captures two races happening at once: the human grind and the creative explosion of early AI music. September 2024 was a frontier moment. Suno v3.5 felt raw, unstable, and experimental. Nobody knew the rules yet. Everyone was building in public.
The work now functions as archival documentation of a transitional period in generative media, when independent creators were testing the boundaries of AI-assisted art while questioning the systems mirrored inside the music itself.
And at the center of it all is a simple human cry:
I want out.
Historical note: Visuals were created using early 2024 AI video tools (Hailuo / Minimax), reflecting the first wave of consumer generative audio–visual convergence. The video was originally uploaded privately and later released publicly for archival purposes.
