Grimes Reveals She Had A Second Child With Elon Musk Named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk

Electronic musician Grimes, perhaps at this point known as much for her extracurricular shenanigans as her music, has gotten up to what may be her biggest shenanigan yet — having a secret second child with Elon Musk.

Vanity Fair broke the story after journalist Devin Gordon, while at Grimes' Austin, Texas home to interview the singer for a cover story, overheard the cry of a newborn. By Gordon's account, Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) seemed reluctant to discuss the matter, but it soon became unavoidable.

"I suggest we pause for a moment to discuss the surreal professional ethics at play, which are that I can’t pretend I don’t know she’s got a secret baby with the world’s wealthiest man hiding upstairs," Gordon wrote. "Especially when she invited me here. It’s a calming period that breaks with a sitcom punch line: full-blown infant screams upstairs, followed by the voice of a woman pleading SHH. Now we both start laughing. Did she really think I wasn’t going to hear a baby?"

Evidently, Grimes and Musk welcomed a new child into the world in December through a surrogate process. The child is named "Exa Dark Sideræl Musk," or "Y" for short, and is the younger sister of X Æ A-12. According to Gordon, the inspiration for the name is this:

Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second). Dark, meanwhile, is “the unknown. People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.” She texts me a voice memo with the pronunciation of Sideræl--“sigh-deer-ee-el”--which she calls “a more elven” spelling of sidereal, “the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time.” It’s also a nod to her favorite Lord of the Rings character, the powerful Galadriel, who “chooses to abdicate the ring.”

Among the many questions raised by the existence of this secret child is the status of Grimes and Musk's relationship. Last September, the pair made headlines after Musk declared them semi-separated. Grimes seemingly released a bitter breakup song about the separation right around the time Y was entering the world.

According to Grimes now, however, she and Musk are in a quasi-partnership. “I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid," she said. "We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time…. We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it." Also, she clarifies that "breakup song," "Player Of Games," was actually about fearing Musk would one day leave her for his notorious ambition of building a society on Mars.

However, the status of their relationship clearly remains fluid, as Grimes tweeted the pair were broken up again after the publication of the Vanity Fair piece in a thread on Twitter.

Me and E have broken up again since the writing of this article haha, but he’s my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now, I think Devin wrote that part of the story rly well. Sique – peace out

— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (⌛️,⏳) ᚷᚱᛁᛗᛖᛋ (@Grimezsz) March 10, 2022

Suffice to say, the profile is a doozy, but the "secret second child" grabbed social media's attention, particularly due to the child's offbeat name.

Grimes naming her 2nd baby pic.twitter.com/1CxWjIWK9B

— Vulture (@vulture) March 10, 2022

Grimes’ secret baby upstairs during her interview pic.twitter.com/pD0oj9qppV

— Rose Dommu (@rosedommu) March 10, 2022

grimes and elons new baby: pic.twitter.com/yNMg9LcQgH

— yolanda fister (@yolandafister) March 10, 2022

Grimes didn’t “have” a second baby, X Æ A-Xii divided like an amoeba

— Paul McCallion (@OrangePaulp) March 10, 2022

Grimes also hinted that she and Musk aren't finished having babies yet, telling Gordon that the couple always imagined having "three or four" children, and if their quixotic naming trend continues, they'll soon have a brood to rival the cast of NieR: Automata