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Elon Musk drops an auto-tune rap about 2016 meme Harambe

You better lose yourself in the Musk tweets.

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
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Elon Musk/Twitter

Elon Musk : space travel entrepreneur, electric vehicle evangelist, meme connoisseur... rapper?

I know that it's April Fools' Day in some parts of the world already, but this is beyond a joke -- Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, dropped a surprise on his 25 million Twitter subscribers: a full-fledged, auto-tuned rap song about a gorilla-turned-meme that died in 2016.

Musk tweeted out a Soundcloud link to the song, dubbed "RIP Harambe", part of a seemingly fabricated music label named "Emo G Records" on Saturday.

The song, featuring a heavy use of auto-tune, begins with the salute "Harambe, we love you" and features the lyrics "R.I.P Harambe, sippin' on some Bombay, we on our way to Heaven, Amen, Amen". I can't see it lighting up the Billboard Hot 100 but perhaps that's exactly the point. That being said, at time of writing, the song has been streamed 480,000 times.

Subsequent tweets by Musk suggest the song was produced by BloodPop and co-written by Caroline Polachek and emoji artist Yung Jake.

Harambe, a Western lowland gorilla, was shot and killed after a 3-year-old boy fell into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016. The killing of Harambe ultimately enshrined the animal as one of the year's biggest viral sensations as social media users flooded sites with memorials. We suggested the Harambe meme be left in 2016 -- but it seems Musk wanted to bring it roaring back to life.

If we're bringing 2016 memes back to life, there are a few that might be applicable here. Crying Jordan, delete your account and even fake news could work?

Musk's Twitter use has come under fire from the Securities and Exchange Commission in the past year due to a series of tweets where he suggested taking Tesla private. As a result, he was required to have all tweets regarding Tesla preapproved before posting them online, but in March, the SEC wrote that it was stunned to learn Musk had not been seeking approval for numerous tweets made about the manufacturer since the ruling.

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