X AE A-XII Musk, the son of Grimes and Elon Musk, was born in early 2020. That was the pair’s first child together, but now we know he wasn’t their last: In a new Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed (initially on accident) that she and Musk had a second baby together, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
Grimes rose to fame as a fiercely independent solo artist championed by the Internet—then she fell in love with Elon Musk. She speaks to V.F. about internet criticism, her new album, and the secret arrival of her second child, “Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.”
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— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) March 10, 2022
In the feature, writer Devin Gordon notes he heard the “unmistakable” sound of a baby crying in another room while talking with Grimes in her home. He then geared up to “ask the strangest question of my career” and asked Grimes if she had another baby. Grimes replied, “I’m not at liberty to speak on these things. Whatever is going on with family stuff, I just feel like kids need to stay out of it, and X is just out there. I mean, I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff… X is out there. His situation is like that. But, yeah, I don’t know.”
Gordon continues to write, “She’s rattled, and I’m mortified by even accidentally making a woman — a new mother, no less — feel exposed and vulnerable. 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. Especially when she invited me here.”
Grimes then shook her head and confirmed the new bundle of joy, saying, “She’s a little colicky, too [laughs]. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Due to health complications during Grimes’ first pregnancy, she and Musk had their second child via a surrogate. Later, Grimes texted Gordon, “Her full name is Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.” She’s also referred to by her nickname, Y.
Gordon explains the name:
“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.’ […]
Grimes is prepared for Y to dislike her name or get tired of it — Grimes got tired of Claire a long time ago — and if she ever decides to change it, her mother will be first in line to help her choose a new one. She’s already got dozens of ideas. She might even change it herself before this article comes out. In addition to Y, she and Musk occasionally call her Sailor Mars, a nod to the Sailor Moon manga series. Exa Dark Sideræl was actually something of a compromise, and she worries it’s a little boring.
‘I was fighting for Odysseus Musk,’ she writes. ‘A girl named Odysseus is my dream.’”
Grimes also described the status of her and Musk’s relationship; The two were reported last September to be “semi-separated.” Now, Grimes says, “There’s no real word for it. I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. 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. […] This is the best it’s ever been… We just need to be free.”
Furthermore, it appears Exa Dark Sideræl Musk won’t be the Grimes and Musk’s last child together, as she noted, “We’ve always wanted at least three or four.”
Read the full Vanity Fair feature here.