Elon Musk Drops Surprise Rap Single "RIP Harambe"

Weeks after the Securities and Exchange Commission asked for him to be held in contempt for violating his company’s settlement with the SEC, Elon Musk has released a surprise rap single about the 17-year-old, 440-pound gorilla known as Harambe.

The Tesla CEO took to Twitter on Saturday to unveil a SoundCloud link to the new song. Titled “RIP Harambe,” the track references a tasteless, three-year-old internet joke inspired (?) by the gorilla’s death in 2016, when it was shot by a Cincinnati Zoo worker after grabbing a young boy who fell into its enclosure. “RIP Harambe, sipping on some Bombay, we on our way to heaven, Amen, Amen,” Musk sings through AutoTune.

The song was uploaded to SoundCloud through through a label called “Emo G Records,” which has not released any other music. “I’m disappointed that my record label failed,” Musk later wrote on Twitter. The track features production from Grimes collaborator BloodPop® and songwriting from Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek.

Grimes (or c) recently sat down with the Wall Street Journal to promote her new album Miss_Anthropocene, where in addition to announcing her plans to kill off her old persona, she described her relationship with Musk “in a long, pained groan.” Both the songwriter and her former collaborator Azealia Banks were ordered to preserve their Twitter, Instagram, and text messages about the circumstances surrounding Musk’s famous “420” tweet, which later resulted in him stepping down as chairman of Tesla and being fined $20 million.