The Azealia Banks, Elon Musk, and Grimes Drama Is an HBO Miniseries Waiting to Happen

Azealia Banks spent her weekend wandering around Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s mansion, and I am obsessed.

Seriously, nothing else matters to me anymore. Azealia Banks spent days inside the home of one of the most eccentric men in the world, because she was invited to work on a collaboration with his girlfriend, indie pop darling-turned-Musk defender Grimes. Banks waited for days to work with Grimes, only for the music to never happen. And while she was there, she may have accidentally uncovered securities fraud! This story has layers.

https://twitter.com/Grimezsz/status/1024097495117225984

As all good stories in the internet era do, it started with a tweet. When a fan asked what was happening with her collaboration with Banks, Grimes said she needed Banks to come to LA to finish it. And come she did, without her boyfriend, as requested.

What followed was apparently days of Banks in Musk’s mansion with no musical work, which gave her nothing but time to observe — and post updates to her Instagram story, of course. “Staying at Elon Musk’s house has been like a real episode of Get Out,” she explained in one.

Banks threw a lot of allegations at Grimes and Musk, including a particularly strong jab that instead of dating Grimes, Musk should have hired an escort for the Met Ball. She was also not thrilled by Grimes buying her a ticket out of LA after days at the mansion, and implied that she was only brought out for a potential threesome.

The Grimes stuff, to be frank, just sounds like another Banks beef about a potential collaboration gone wrong. What makes this extraordinary is that Banks got a front-row seat to Musk’s behavior during a crucial moment.

See, Musk tweeted last week that he has the funding to take Tesla private. This claim caused Tesla’s stock to soar. (Essentially: Musk announced something that, if true, would make a very wealthy man even wealthier.) But his tweeting in the days after was erratic, to say the least.

According to Banks, this is because Musk was on an acid trip, both for the initial funding tweet and the aftermath. Grimes was unable to work with Banks because she was busy comforting a now-panicking Musk, and trying to get him from stop tweeting on acid.

Let me repeat, just so we’re clear: A billionaire and his indie pop girlfriend left a controversial rapper in their mansion alone, giving her the capacity to witness and report that he was allegedly on acid when he made a potentially massive announcement about his company.

You literally can’t write this shit. If I wrote a pilot for FX with this plot, they’d tell me it’s unrealistic and absurd. Real life is officially stranger than fiction.

But that’s not where it ended! Business Insider reached out to Banks via Instagram DMs for an interview, in which she told them that, though she “wasn’t trying to eavesdrop,” she heard Musk panicking “because he in fact didn’t have funding secured.” This is a major bombshell, as there are currently both lawsuits against Musk and SEC investigations into Musk over his tweet. Which means, yes, Banks could be called as a witness in an SEC investigation.

Side note: Banks also told Business Insider she could run Tesla better than Musk does, to which I say: yes, please, someone immediately make Azealia Banks CEO of Tesla, this is all I want in the world.

Days later, Musk tried to insist he doesn’t know Banks, but that’s the kind of statement you release while she’s posting to her Instagram story from your mansion, not after. (Unless you’ve been preoccupied with, let’s say, an acid trip.)

https://twitter.com/kevinpokeeffe/status/1029057183789404164

HBO, FX, Netflix, you guys should be bidding on a six-part miniseries about this saga right now. Keke Palmer as Banks, Dove Cameron as Grimes, Jimmi Simpson as Musk. Banks herself even approves of my idea! This story needs to be told, because it’s the only story I care about anymore.