What Do Elon Musk and Azealia Banks Have in Common?
As recent events have confirmed, both love drama and short-shorts.
As recent events have confirmed, both love drama and short-shorts.
Text: SAMUEL ANDERSON
Whither Elon Musk? The billionaire explorer has gone dark on Twitter following an active weekend on social media in which he claimed that Tesla’s merch line would soon be launching “Short shorts,” spawning a fury of speculation about whether or not the Tesla and SpaceX founder would be investing in clout-forward fashion. (The tweets that followed, including “S3XY,” “What are your fav short shorts?” and “Paired with thigh-high sockboots,” only added to the inexplicability of the first.) Musk’s silence is all the more deafening in the wake of Azealia Banks's priceless, Instagram-Storied diatribe against Musk and girlfriend Grimes yesterday, which she allegedly sent from Musk’s currently empty L.A. home.
“Literally been sitting at Elon Musk’s house alone for days waiting for @grimes to show up and start these sessions,” Banks wrote. “I have no idea when she is coming back. I’m going to wait one more day then I’m going to go home.” She also called the couple “crackers” and Musk a “trash ass beta male pig.”
What the hell is happening? Taken together, the series of bizarre events seem borne out of a Tumblr algorithm, from Musk seemingly referencing the men’s short-shorts trend to the ever-controversial Banks’s specific yet dated choice in slur. But does any of it reflect reality or is it mere social media-based performance art à la Kanye West? Or does it, as some theorized online, suggest that reality doesn’t exist and everything is a simulation?
It is at least true that Banks may have business being at Musk’s house; in June, she and Grimes confirmed plans to collaborate. However, Grimes’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Art Angels remains without a confirmed release date, and Banks, Instagrammed in her trademark typewriter font, said earlier this summer that “Fantasea II” was canceled.
Record company drama aside, Banks’s Stories beg questions about why she was summoned to Musk’s house for said “sessions.” Does he have a recording studio in there? Does a busy man like Musk have any furniture whatsoever? Was there food in the fridge to sustain Azealia Banks for her days-long, possibly ongoing saga?
While it’s not clear whether or not Musk has any involvement in Grimes’s music career, he seems like a well-suited host to Banks’s contrarian spirit. Whereas Grimes generally maintains an air of shyness (aside from stepping out with Musk at the Met Gala in May) both Musk and Banks are boundless in their lack of filter; Banks regularly ignites Twitter wars and last week, Musk sent the market into overdrive by announcing plans to take Tesla private despite apparently not having secured the proper funding.
Given his current distractions, new Tesla merch may be far off. But if there’s any future for the Tesla short-shorts, we hope it’s in the form of a fashion collaboration between Musk and Banks. Because, while we're on the subject of “fav short shorts,” we know which ones we’d choose.