Strange Things About Elon Musk And Grimes

Congratulations are in order! SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and musician Grimes welcomed their first child — a baby boy — on May 4, 2020. Musk announced his son was "A few hours away!" and later followed the tweet with an update, writing, "Mom & baby all good." While this baby marks the first child for the Canadian singer, Musk has five sons from a previous marriage.

Grimes (real name Claire Elise Boucher) confirmed her pregnancy via Instagram in January 2020 after baby bump photos led the internet to speculate that she might be expecting. After taking to social media to confirm the news, Grimes openly shared her child-bearing experiences. 

"For a girl, it's sacrificing your body and your freedom," Grimes told Rolling Stone in March 2020. "It's a pretty crazy sacrifice and only half of the population has to do it. It was really profound to me when I decided I was going to do it [have unprotected sex] ... I have sacrificed my power in this moment. I have, like, capitulated, And I have spent my whole life avoiding that situation. I have never capitulated to anything, so it was just a profound commitment."

"I do actually just really love my boyfriend," she added. "So I was like, 'You know, sure.'"

Shortly after his son's birth, Musk revealed that the couple named the newborn X Æ A-12 Musk, per People. But when you stop to consider how strange Musk and Grimes' relationship has been since they first started dating, the name actually seems completely on-brand.

Despite the many dating apps available, Elon Musk and Grimes bonded over an artificial intelligence joke the Tesla CEO tweeted in 2018. According to Page Six, Musk's pun blended Rococo, "the ornate French 18th century baroque style," with Roko's Basilisk, a "thought experiment," which suggests the possibility of a future where AI overlords dominate the world and "punish those who did not help it into existence." Grimes, however, had already made the same joke in 2015, as she created a character named "Rococo Basilisk" for her "Flesh Without Blood" music video.

"Elon was researching the idea of joking about Rococo Basilisk, and when he saw Grimes had already joked about it, he reached out to her," an insider told Page Six. "Grimes said this was the first time in three years that anyone understood the joke. They were both poking fun at AI." The two began dating shortly after the exchange.

Musk also allegedly inspired Grimes, who was born Claire Boucher, to legally change her name to c, the scientific symbol for the speed of light, per The Verge. Grimes claimed on Twitter that "Claire" was "the bane of [her] existence since [she] became sentient" and, since according to The Verge, "'C' was already her nickname among friends," Musk encouraged her to commit to this change. 

Both have clearly shared a love for science from the start!

Many consider Elon Musk and Grimes to be an odd couple. But as Grimes told Rolling Stone in March 2020, she never expected her time with Musk to define her image so irrevocably. "No one believes me about this, but I just did not understand what I was getting into at all," she said. "Not that I'm mad about it. I just didn't think it would be a thing. The s**t that's happened with my boyfriend this year has overwritten so much of my life's work."

Grimes noted that "most of the rage" fans have toward her and Musk's relationship comes from the fact that Grimes has always been "hard, hard, hard left," while Musk has been known to donate to Republican campaigns in the past. Yet, while their differences could present a moral conflict, Grimes continues to stand behind the father of her child, comparing him to "force for good" Senator Bernie Sanders.

"When I look at the aims of my boyfriend and I look at the aims of Bernie, like, their end goals are very similar," she added. "Fix environmental problems, reduce suffering. It's worth dissecting the wealth gap, it's worth dissecting the existence of billionaires, but situations have nuance." 

The two have obviously established a foundation of mutual respect upon which their love was built. Who are we to judge?