Grimes Opened Up About A Big Difference She's Noticed In Her Son X

What most of us know about Musk and Grimes’ child is that he was lumbered with a “weird” name. Yes, the couple dubbed him X Æ A-12 Musk. Which, you have to admit, seems like it might be hard to say! Luckily, the pair seem to have decided to refer to him as X.

The new mom took to her new role like a duck to water, or so she said. This was true even if she was a bit skeptical about using the term “parenting.” She told the world that the experience had led her to feel “less hate, more optimism, more creativity, more desire for life, and more respect for women.” And it seemed that baby X may also have inherited a bit of Grimes’ wacky side.

Offbeat has always been the flavor of Grimes and Musk’s relationship, which began on Twitter. Musk was on the verge of posting a jape about artificial intelligence when he found out that the singer had already made the joke by calling a character in one of her videos “Rococo Basilisk.” This name is a pun on “Roko’s Basilisk,” a thought experiment that found an appreciative audience among some of the internet’s nerd faction.

Musk is an active user of Twitter, to say the least, and controversy never seems to be too far from him. When he’s not floating a plan that sounds decidedly space-age, he’s getting into trouble with off-the-wall posts. When some Thai kids were stuck in a cave, he said he’d save them with a mini-sub — though he didn’t. And when a guy upset him, he called him a “pedo” — you might be unsurprised to learn that the guy wasn’t one! Famously, in 2018 a joke about taking his firm Tesla private caused a ruckus.

One big scrap in which the billionaire inventor got himself ensnared involved rapper Azealia Banks, who is no stranger to a clash with other celebs. Banks doesn’t mind mixing it with some language that is distinctly not family-friendly, and in 2018 her target was Musk. And this fight also involved Grimes, who had been working with Banks.

What was the beef? Well, Banks claimed that she had been invited to Musk’s L.A. mansion to work together with Grimes. So she did — but, she asserted, no one was there! And when Musk did turn up, Banks claimed he wasn’t very pleasant. This was roughly the time he had tweeted about Tesla, and she claimed he had been struggling with investors. Musk’s company simply denied everything she’d said.

Musk has a track record with famous women, but Grimes made an unlikely conquest for him at first glance. She has a reputation for being a bit kooky, yes, but also for sitting on the left of politics. So a multi-billionaire capitalist accused of union-busting did seem a bizarre choice of man for the singer.

Certainly, Grimes has the kind of high profile that has attracted Musk in the past. Born Claire Boucher, the Canadian singer was arty from a young age, although music only became her focus when she began at Montreal’s McGill University. Since then she’s made a name for herself with slightly offbeat pop music, which has more than a touch of the weird about it.

The Canadian’s first album in 2010 only appeared on cassette, but her second in the same year was slightly more tech-friendly. Her success in music led her to drop out of university, and in 2012 she joined the British label 4AD. The album she released with 4AD, Visions, gave her a taste of success, and she’d never look back.

Grimes contemplated a switch to a more poppy sound, even penning a tune for Rihanna in 2014, but the fans weren’t happy. Still, the song, which Rihanna didn’t use, appeared on 2015’s Art Angels, the album that featuring the song about Rococo Basilisk which caught the eye of Musk.

For Musk’s part, when he met Grimes, he was on the rebound from a relationship with Amber Heard that had left him heartbroken. When discussing the breakup in 2017 he also mentioned how much he disliked dad Errol. It seemed to be all tied up in an unhappy childhood, which saw him relentlessly bullied by schoolmates.

University seems to have been kinder to the future tech guru, and he would hook up with his first wife there. It took a bit of wooing before Justine Wilson was willing to marry the South African rich kid, but eventually, she was convinced — as she later told website Business Insider — by a flourish of his credit card.

The 2000 wedding proved fruitful, although it began with a family tragedy. Son Nevada passed away soon after birth, struck down by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). But the couple soon welcomed not just a set of twins, but also triplets. All five were boys too! Musk would describe the boys as “the love of my life” in 2010. Wilson, though, had already become history — the marriage ended in 2008.

Two years later Musk was tripping down the aisle again. This time he was wedding Talulah Riley, an actress. A couple of years of marriage later, they were divorced. But after a year, they clearly reconciled – and remarried. It didn’t last, though, with a second divorce proving more final in 2016.

After a courtship carried out largely in the arena of Twitter, Grimes and Musk got together in 2018. Whispers about a relationship had been spread by a report on Page Six. The website claimed that they had been dating for a while and would make a public show of togetherness at rich people’s playdate, the Met Gala.

True to Page Six’s word, the pair did show at the Met Gala. That brought a flood of memes from their fans and some touching words from Musk. He explained to newspaper The Wall Street Journal that he adored Grimes because of her “wild fae artistic creativity and hyper-intense work ethic.”

For her part, Grimes sprang to Musk’s defense. She claimed that Musk was not the union-buster he had been painted as and that she had urged a vote for a union at Tesla. In the meanwhile, she was often seen out and about with Musk. She even showed with him and his boys at the July 2018 Hyperloop Pod Competition.

But the course of true love seldom runs smooth, and so it proved for the pair. In summer 2018 there was a mutual unfollowing on Instagram, and when Musk ditched Grimes on Twitter, the signs looked bad for their relationship. In October, though, it was all lovey-dovey again as the couple turned up at an event with the boys once more.

The two started to be seen together more and more. In January 2019 Grimes happened to be in China when Musk was there. Then they were spied in Musk’s Cybertruck and dining in L.A. They even turned up at the Jenner-Kardashian Christmas bash in December of that year, and in the same month, Musk was there to applaud Grimes as she played at an awards show.

But the couple had a surprise in store for their fans, which was unleashed when the singer popped a photo of herself on her social media. In them, she was nude and clearly pregnant. Later she made it official that she was expecting a child on May 4, 2020.

In March of that year Grimes told Rolling Stone magazine that Musk was the dad. She also shared her views on her impending motherhood. She explained that “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth” on her new album was “about getting pregnant — the sort of tragedy of agreeing to it, even though it’s this great thing.”

Grimes told the magazine, “For a girl, it’s sacrificing your body and your freedom. 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, to actually go through the act of unprotected sex.”

Given that the singer saw it as such a momentous decision, why had she decided to do it? Simple, she explained, saying, “I do actually just really love my boyfriend. So I was like, ‘You know, sure.’” But if she had no doubts about getting pregnant, the actual experience did have its downsides.

Captioning a selfie, the Art Angels producer told fans she was sorry she hadn’t been promoting her album properly. She wrote, “This whole thing has been a bit of an ordeal.” She complained that she had not been well prepared for the experience, writing, “I dunno if pregnancy is as visible or discussed as it should be. I just didn’t rly understand what I was getting into.”

The singer explained that she’d made an effort to get plenty of sleep when she was first pregnant, but that had “actually made me feel really bad.” Luckily, X was also a night bird. She wrote, “I think my kid will be nocturnal. Currently it is! It doesn’t move during the day, only at night.”

The ordeal of pregnancy proved worth it when X entered the world bang on his due date on May 4, 2020. Musk let the world know in a happy tweet, which boasted, “Mom & baby all good.” Typically for the tech billionaire, this was in reply to a question from a follower.

Now if that news didn’t set the internet alight, it would certainly burst aflame when it heard what the happy couple had called the kid. They announced he would bear the unique sobriquet of X Æ A-12. Grimes shared her thinking with her Twitter followers, claiming that “X” is “the unknown variable,” and Æ is “the elven spelling” of Ai, which she claimed represented artificial intelligence and love — it’s the Japanese word for it.

But A-12 needs some explaining too, right? Well, this came from an unusual source, to say the least: the Lockheed A-12 spy plane, which had been used by the CIA. The singer explained, “A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent.” He later clarified he’d mistyped, the later jet being the SR-71 “Blackbird”, as all good plane nerds know!

Mind you, Californian law had something to say about the name. Lawyer David Glass explained to People magazine in 2020 that legally in California, “You can’t have numbers, Roman numerals, accents, umlauts or other symbols or emojis [in a name].” So on his birth certificate, the child is X Æ A-Xii.

Many will recognize Musk as the stereotypical dad. He didn’t see himself as having much of a role in the kid’s early life, telling newspaper The New York Times, “Well, babies are just eating and pooping machines, you know? Right now, there’s not much I can do. Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now. When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me.”

Grimes didn’t seem to mind, finding a lot to love in her new status as a mother. She noted in a video interview with fashion magazine Vogue in 2020, “I think having a baby was a big rebirth for me, like artistically.” But the nomenclature was giving her a few problems. She noted, “Being a mother feels weird to say. For some reason, I don’t identify with that word.”

Strangely, it turned out that Grimes was not alone in this. X also refused to use the word “mother.” Grimes said, “Which is also really weird because X, he says ‘Claire,’ but he doesn’t say ‘mama.’ Which is so… I’m like, ‘How are you…?’ Like, maybe he can sense my distaste for the word ‘mother.’”

But what made Grimes find it so difficult to accept the title of “mother?” When it came to explaining, she was lost for words, saying, “I don’t even know why I have a distaste for [the word] because I respect… I just, I don’t, I can’t identify with it, weirdly.”

As the year 2020 neared its end, Musk told the world he’d moved to Texas. And Grimes soon turned up in the Lone Star State, too, with the pair of them seen together in Austin. In March 2021 Musk put a photo of the couple and X online, captioned “Starbase Texas,” which referred to the proposed city at his launch facility in the state.

But it wasn’t all happy families, sadly. In September 2021 Musk told Page Six that the relationship had been put on ice. Still claiming he and Grimes were “on great terms,” he explained, “It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas, and her work is primarily in L.A. She’s staying with me now, and Baby X is in the adjacent room.”

So Grimes has been left as a single mother for now. And she has already shown skills, going on Instagram Stories to share X’s experience with her haircutting. Flaunting the results, she claimed that she was “not sure this haircut went well, but he’s Viking now.”

In a separate image, the singer shared more of the experience of Salon Grimes. She is pictured snipping the infant’s locks with scissors. Apparently, Netflix show The Last Kingdom inspired the cut. Grimes hailed the show as a “masterpiece,” although we’re not sure the new ’do is quite on that level!

We don’t know whether X has watched The Last Kingdom yet, but Grimes confirmed to The New York Times in 2020 that he’s “into radical art.” She explained, “I’ve watched Apocalypse Now and stuff with my baby.” That’s definitely radical, but the singer thought it was good viewing for the infant, saying, “I don’t think it’s problematic to engage with them on that level.”

Another post on Instagram Stories showed that the youngster may have inherited some of mom’s creativity. Yes, it seemed that he’d been busy helping to make a mural in his nursery. An October 2021 photo of the infant daubing his door made its way onto the social media site, showing that “radical art” may indeed be in his blood.

But what about following in his father’s footsteps? Musk is currently planning to land humans on Mars as early as 2026. And knowing what he’s like, young X could well be among one of the first groups to go. Let’s hope Musk is a little more optimistic about his mission before then, though. He recently made a dark admission about the fate of the people who are keen to go — and it’s more unnerving than we ever considered.

For years, experts and science-fiction writers alike have dreamed up ways humans could populate the universe. And, for better or worse, it seems the stage is now set to make this leap a reality. Musk’s a keen believer in traveling outside Earth, of course, but he knows better than anyone the potential for disaster—or all-out tragedy.

Famously, Musk founded SpaceX, which has become the first private company to meet a number of space exploration targets over the last two decades. Yet all that pales in comparison to his ultimate goal: to launch a manned flight to Mars. Yes, we may not have long to wait before humans begin to settle on the Red Planet. But while there are plenty of volunteers clamoring to make the life-changing journey, some may soon learn to regret that decision.

The journey itself may have some brutal challenges, too, and that’s according to Musk himself. When speaking to fellow entrepreneur Peter Diamandis in April 2021, Musk painted a terrifying picture of the first trips to Mars. And if his bleak prediction is to be believed, the folks on these pioneering missions will need to be made of stern stuff.

Not that this has put Musk off trying, mind you. He’s long nurtured a passion for life on other planets. Back in 2001, the young, successful business magnate came up with the idea for a project named Mars Oasis – an initiative to grow plants in an alien atmosphere. But when he attempted to turn his dream into reality, he realized that the necessary technology was out of his price range.

Then Musk came up with an innovative solution: he would manufacture the rockets to reach Mars himself. So in 2002 he launched SpaceX – a start-up with the ultimate goal of reducing the cost of interplanetary travel. And under this banner, the company went on to achieve some incredible things.

Because SpaceX became the first private company to successfully propel a liquid rocket into Earth’s orbit in 2008. And two years later, the team added the launch, flight and recovery of Dragon, another first for an independent venture, to their roster. Then in 2012 the company achieved another milestone.

Yep, SpaceX successfully landed a craft at the International Space Station, or ISS, becoming the first ever private company to do so. Eight years later, it went one better, actually sending a team of astronauts to the facility. Plus they were the first Americans to land there for almost ten years, reported the Daily Mail website.

The same year that SpaceX sent astronauts to the ISS, Musk achieved another, more terrestrial, goal. In 2020 his company began operating Starlink, the biggest satellite constellation in the world. Currently in the beta tasting phase, this innovation eventually aims to deliver fast internet to businesses and households across the world.

Despite these successes, though, Musk never lost sight of his original goal: to explore the potential of life on Mars. And while experts at NASA hope to land humans on the Red Planet some time in 2033, the team at SpaceX plan to get there much sooner. So the company has developed Starship: a reusable launch vehicle designed to go on the ambitious mission.

And Musk hopes to send Starship on a test mission to Mars in 2024. If that is successful, he plans to launch the first crewed journey two years later, in 2026. But although the program has enjoyed some success, the head of SpaceX admits that a number of developments still need to take place before his dream can be realized.

Musk waxed lyrical about the benefits of his mission to Mars in an interview with Diamandis. He said, “Humanity is the agent of life and we have an obligation to ensure the creatures of Earth continue even if there is a calamity on Earth, whether it is man-made or a natural calamity… What comes first – a self-sustaining city on Mars or World War Three?”

The SpaceX CEO has been outspoken about the need for future colonies on Mars to be self-sufficient – and able to survive any disasters on Earth. In a 2016 question and answer session on the website Reddit, he admitted that he envisioned a Red Planet equipped with facilities ranging from “iron foundries to pizza joints.”

But that is far from the strangest comment that Musk has made about the future. And not all of his predictions feature the sort of peaceful utopia that dreams are made of. In 2016 he gave a talk at the Code Conference hosted by Vox Media.There he warned that humanity risked being reduced to little more than house pets for artificial intelligence.

“I don’t love the idea of being a house cat, but what’s the solution?,” Musk asked the audience. To save society from this undignified fate, he suggested, scientists needed to develop a type of artificial intelligence that would improve the human brain. Known as neural lace, the concept is actually already in development.

Although this seems drastic, Musk himself has suggested that we are all part-cyborg anyway. Making a comparison between smartphone technology and robot-like superpowers, he said at the Code Conference,“You can answer any question, you can video conference with anyone, anywhere. You can send messages to millions of people instantly. Just do incredible things.”

Perhaps the strangest of Musk’s ideas, though, is his belief that we are all living in a simulation, created by the artificial intelligence of another civilization. Speaking at the conference, he said, “There’s a billion to one chance that we’re living in base reality.” But for a man convinced that our very existence is questionable, he is certainly invested in pushing humans to the limits of their potential.

And Musk is so determined to send humans to the Red Planet that he’s suggested using thermonuclear weapons to heat it up. Thus would the groundwork be laid for colonization to take place? To drive home the point, the entrepreneur even tweeted the slogan, “Nuke Mars.”

Musk has even gone so far as to speculate what sort of leadership a Martian society might have. Speaking at the conference, he said, “I think most likely the form of government of Mars would be a direct democracy, not representative. So it would be people voting directly on issues.”

This comment, again, highlights how Musk sees his proposed Martian colony as a kind of futuristic utopia. But his vision certainly has a dark side, too, perhaps even a more realistic side. In April 2021 the SpaceX head spoke to Diamandis, who launched the XPRIZE Foundation, about Starship’s proposed missions – and just how dangerous they’re likely to be.

“Going to Mars reads like that advert for Shackleton going to the Antarctic,” Musk admitted. The early 1900s explorer Ernest Shackleton published a newspaper notice before one of his famous expeditions to the South Pole – it’s generally believed. In it, he sought men to join him on his mission – but he didn’t beat around the bush.

The advertisement reportedly promised “[a] hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.” But despite these bleak conditions, the story goes, thousands of men clamored to join Shackleton on his adventure.

Yet historians now doubt whether this advert ever existed, having been unable to find it in newspapers of the time. But regardless of proof, the anecdote has gone down in history as an example of courage – or perhaps foolhardiness – in the face of adversity.

It’s no wonder, then, that Musk has drawn a parallel between Shackleton’s perilous Antarctic expeditions and his own mission to Mars. Because anyone signing up for the latter will face even harsher conditions than the men who sailed off in search of the South Pole. And it’s a given that these challenges will be harder to overcome.

“You know it is dangerous, it’s uncomfortable and it’s a long journey,” Musk acknowledged in the interview with Diamandis. And like Shackleton’s men, many of the people who sign up for SpaceX’s Martian missions will likely not live to make the return trip. The entrepreneur added, “You might not come back alive.” Despite the dangers, though, he promises that it will be quite the journey.

“It is a glorious adventure and it will be an amazing experience,” Musk insisted. But he added, “Honestly a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning. It’s tough going over there.” Thus it should come as no surprise that travel to Mars is not without its challenges – but just how risky is it?

Some five years before his interview with Diamandis, when Musk began to announce his Martian plans, he also spoke out about the associated risks. During a 2016 presentation, he said, “I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There’s just no way around it.”

The journey to the Red Planet on board Starship is likely to take as long as six months, according to current estimations. And in that time, there are a whole host of things that could go wrong. Although Musk himself has not gone into any detail about the specific risks, others have not held back.

According to the website of Mars One, the aborted Dutch project that once rivaled SpaceX, the dangers of a mission to the Red Planet are akin to those faced by extreme mountaineers. It reads, “Mars is an unforgiving environment where a small mistake or accident can result in large failure, injury and death.”

But while Musk acknowledges that the mission may well be fatal at first, he insists that any risk is worth it to kickstart our life on another planet. In his 2016 presentation he said, “This is less about who goes there first… the thing that really matters is making a self-sustaining civilization on Mars as fast as possible… This is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure.”

“It would be an incredible adventure,” Musk added. “I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine.” And while speaking to the Coding Conference that same year, the entrepreneur admitted that ending your life in space might not be such a bad way to go.

“I think if you’re going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice,” Musk said. And there are plenty of people who seem to agree. Despite warnings about almost guaranteed fatalities, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to be among the first to colonize the Red Planet.

“You still have thousands of volunteers, if not millions of volunteers, who would want to go,” Diamandis pointed out during his interview with Musk. And with rival companies such as Mars One out of the running, it seems likely that SpaceX will be the ones to send these willing pioneers on their way.

And things were apparently always supposed to play out this way. Because back in 1953 the German scientist Wernher Von Braun published The Mars Project, a document which lays out the specifications for a future mission to Mars. Almost 70 years later, it remains one of the most influential texts ever written on the subject.

Yet Von Braun’s book also speculated on the societal forms that such a mission might lead to. And in December 2020 one Twitter user pointed out something strange within the pages of The Mars Project. The text references someone named “Elon” who will one day play a crucial role in mankind’s colonization of Mars.

Musk himself questioned whether this claim was genuine to begin with – but other Twitter users came forward to confirm it. The word “Elon” really does appear in Von Braun’s highly-regarded work. But, it seems, it’s used to refer to a title as opposed to the first name of a person.

“‘Elon’ referred [to] by Von Braun in the book isn’t the name of the person but rather the name of the position, something like an elected meritocratic president,” Tweeted Pranay Pathole. According to the British newspaper Daily Express, the passage in question reads, “The Martian Government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled ‘Elon.’”

So was Musk always destined to lead mankind to the Red Planet? He once jokingly gave himself the title Emperor of Mars, for instance. And if so, will any human fatalities, no matter how predictable they might be, rest on his conscience as he inches ever closer to realizing his colonization dream?

Opinion over Musk’s death-defying mission to Mars has been split. And while some have praised him for being realistic about the challenges involved, others have questioned whether he himself would be prepared to take the risk. Critics, meanwhile, have asked if we should even be pursuing space travel at all.

As some people have rightly pointed out, humans do not exactly have a good track record when it comes to taking care of planets. So should we really be planning on colonizing another one, even as our own environment struggles? While Musk’s deadly mission might ultimately help mankind to survive, it may well be at the expense of Mars – and any other destinations in his sights.