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Elon Musk releases ‘RIP Harambe,’ a rap tribute to a slain gorilla

A child touches the head of a gorilla statue where flowers have been placed outside the Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Cincinnati. On Saturday, a special zoo response team shot and killed Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, that grabbed and dragged a boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit moat. Authorities said the boy is expected to recover. He was taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
A child touches the head of a gorilla statue where flowers have been placed outside the Gorilla World exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Sunday, May 29, 2016, in Cincinnati. On Saturday, a special zoo response team shot and killed Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, that grabbed and dragged a boy who fell into the gorilla exhibit moat. Authorities said the boy is expected to recover. He was taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) John Minchillo The Associated Press file

Elon Musk took his famed unconventionality a step farther Saturday by releasing a SoundCloud rap tribute to a dead gorilla, USA Today reported.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, posted the 1 minute, 56-second “RIP Harambe” via his fictional Emo G Records label, also posting the song to his Twitter account, which has 25.5 million followers.

In follow-up posts to Twitter, Musk wrote “I’m disappointed that my record label failed” and “This might be my finest work.”

“RIP Harambe, sipping on some Bombay, we on our way to heaven, amen, amen,” an autotuned voice sings, Rolling Stone reported. “RIP Harambe, smoking on some strong, in the gorilla zoo, and we thinking about you.”

Harambe, a silverback western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, was shot and killed in 2016 after a 3-year-old child fell into his enclosure, WLWT reported. The 17-year-old gorilla’s death spawned a deluge of bizarre online memes and tributes.

The fake Emo G Records label name apparently refers to an earlier Musk joke about online emojis, Rolling Stone reported.

In February, the SEC asked a judge to hold Musk in contempt over an “inaccurate” Feb. 19 Twitter post about Tesla’s production plans, The Hill reported.

He stepped down as chairman of the company in 2018 following a joke on Twitter about taking the company public at $420 a share, a reference to marijuana, according to the publication. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million fines to settle fraud charges.

This story was originally published March 31, 2019 at 4:31 PM with the headline "Elon Musk releases ‘RIP Harambe,’ a rap tribute to a slain gorilla."

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Don Sweeney
The Sacramento Bee
916-321-1028
Don Sweeney has been a newspaper reporter and editor in California for more than 35 years. He is a service reporter based at The Sacramento Bee.
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