Fake Music Scandals Span Four Decades of Deception in Recording History

NPR Music staff outlined four cases in which artists or their handlers manufactured identities, borrowed performances or obscured records, spanning from a Scottish duo's invented American backstory to a classical pianist whose husband substituted other pianists' recordings.

In 2001, Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd of Dundee, Scotland traveled to London for a Polydor Records audition and were laughed off stage as "the rapping Proclaimers." The pair reinvented themselves as American rappers from Huntington Beach, California, signed with Sony UK as Silibil N' Brains, and opened for D12 at Brixton Academy. "Eventually, we couldn't come out of character," Bain told NPR in 2010. The duo split in June 2005 after a fight, and Bain continued the ruse for two more years before breaking character onstage in 2007. A James McAvoy-directed feature film based on Bain's 2010 memoir was released in the U.S.

Joyce Hatto's career as an English pianist resumed in the late 1980s, when she moved outside Cambridge with her husband, record producer William Barrington-Coupe. Working together, the pair released around 100 albums on their own label. Richard Dyer wrote in The Boston Globe, "Joyce Hatto must be the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." She died in 2006 at age 77. Within a year, a Gramophone reader found that a Hatto Liszt recording registered as a performance by Hungarian pianist László Simon, and an audio expert confirmed the recordings matched those of other pianists. In February 2007, Barrington-Coupe admitted to substituting other performers' work on his wife's albums.

A photograph surfaced in summer 2008 showing Rick Ross, born William Leonard Roberts II, in a Miami-Dade County correctional officer uniform. The image contradicted the drug-kingpin persona he had adopted. His album Trilla debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in March 2008. 50 Cent released diss tracks including "Officer Ricky" over the revelation. The Smoking Gun confirmed Ross worked as a corrections officer for 18 months. His 2009 album Deeper Than Rap debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Lana del Rey's debut album Born to Die arrived in 2012, following the YouTube release of "Video Games" with a lo-fi video of her singing to her computer camera. The video went viral, and questions about her career's origins followed.

The four cases span music from 2001 to 2012 and involve forged identities, substituted recordings, an altered employment history and scrutiny of an artist's background.