Elon Musk Released A Harambe Rap And This Isn't April Fools'
Today is April 1, which means everyone is on the lookout for the slew of prank articles which, to journalism's credit, keep getting harder to spot as our reality slowly descends into nonsensical chaos. But we here at Cracked don't do April Fool's pranks. We make jokes about true, verified, totally not-bullshit events. Like the world's most famous billionaire launching his rap career with a song about a dead gorilla.
Like everyone who gets retweeted loads but doesn't have a lot going on, tech billionaire and Martian Meme-Emperor Elon Musk has resorted to plugging his terrible SoundCloud page. Last weekend, under the fake label Emo G Records, Musk released a SoundCloud rap titled "R.I.P. Harambe," which pays tribute to the heavily memed Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was shot to death after a kid got into his enclosure in 2016. Produced by Grimes collaborator BloodPop and written by Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek (yes, a song with lines like "R.I.P. Harambe / Smokin' on some strong, ayy" needed not one but two professional songwriters), the emo rap perfectly embodies just about everything that stopped being cool after 2016: Harambe memes, autotune, and Elon Musk.
Supposedly, Musk himself is doing the spitting, but that's impossible to confirm because of the 17 layers of autotune and Musk's history of not crediting other people's artistic contributions. The musical pivot itself, however, was pure Musk, inspired by what Rolling Stone mistakenly described as a "joke" made by the former chairman about how "Emo G" sounds like emoji -- which is like a pun, but somehow even lazier.
"But," we can hear you thinking, "isn't this an April Fool's joke?" Hasn't Elon Musk and his Galactic Brain just figured that it's extra hilarz to do them a few days early? Sure, there's a better than average chance that Musk will soon fire off a "Lulz, all those journalists fell for it" tweet before launching into yet another tirade about ethics in journalism, but here's the issue there: As a prank, Elon Musk doing something outrageous blandly is a terrible prank. Here's a guy who "ironically" sells flamethrowers, shot a car into space, uses weed jokes to disrupt the stock market, and called a hero diver a pedophile for criticizing his waterproof child coffin. Making a silly dad song referencing something most Gen Y's don't even remember has fewer teeth than whatever April Fool's joke is in today's New York Times crossword puzzle.
In fact, the only thing subversive about Musk rapping about a dead gorilla is that it might be the distracting wails of a man-child who desperately wants everyone to briefly forget about his upcoming contempt hearing on April 4. So whatever way this gets twisted, Musk is uninspiringly bad at something, whether it's music, shitposting, or PR. Feel free to decide for yourself which one this is.
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For more, check out Tom Hiddleston's Chinese Vitamin Ad Is Deranged Art and The Internet Can't Stop Over-Analyzing 'Us'.
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