What is Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe"?

It is a two-minute autotuned rap song about Harambe the Gorilla that Elon Musk uploaded to SoundCloud on March 30th, 2019 under the fake label Emo G Records.

Where did Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe" come from?

Musk posted the track between tweets about the Tesla Semi while briefly changing his Twitter handle to "Jung Musk," with production by BloodPop and co-writing credits given to Caroline Polachek and Yung Jake.

What does Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe" mean?

It's a joke tribute to the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla killed in 2016, using lyrics like "Sipping on some Bombay / We on our way to heaven" to riff on the long-running "Dicks Out for Harambe" meme.

How do you use Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe"?

People typically share the SoundCloud link alongside Musk's "this might be my finest work" quote or drop the autotuned Harambe lyrics as replies in threads about Musk, Tesla or old internet memes.

Is Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe" still popular?

The song hit over 910,000 SoundCloud plays within 48 hours of upload and is still cited as a key moment in Musk's meme-posting history and the tail end of the Harambe meme cycle.

Elon Musk's "RIP Harambe"

2019viral audio / celebrity releaseclassic

Published September 25, 2026

On March 30th, 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk uploaded a two-minute autotuned rap tribute to Harambe the Gorilla on SoundCloud under the fake label Emo G Records1. The stunt paired a Twitter handle change to "Jung Musk" with a track credited to rapper Yung Jake, producer BloodPop and singer Caroline Polachek, and racked up hundreds of thousands of streams within a weekend2.

elon musk memes harambe memes parody song memes soundcloud origin memes celebrity nickname memes

Overview

"RIP Harambe" is a two-minute autotuned rap song credited to Elon Musk and uploaded to SoundCloud on March 30th, 2019 under a joke label called Emo G Records, a pun on the word "emoji"1. The track is a bouncy elegy for Harambe the Gorilla, the Cincinnati Zoo silverback shot dead on May 28th, 2016, and it recycles the years-old "Dicks Out for Harambe" meme energy into a straight-faced pop song1.

▶

Watch Video

other

The recording plays like an internet in-joke set to music. An autotuned vocalist sings lines like "RIP Harambe / Sipping on some Bombay / We on our way to heaven / Amen, Amen" and "RIP Harambe / Smoking on some strong / In the gorilla zoo / And we thinking about you"1. Musk announced the release between tweets about the Tesla Semi, calling it "my finest work" and later joking that he was "disappointed that my record label failed"1.

Although the SoundCloud upload was staged as a Musk vanity project, credits surfaced quickly. Tweets from Musk and producer BloodPop on March 31st indicated that BloodPop produced the track and that emoji artist Yung Jake and singer Caroline Polachek co-wrote it, with Yung Jake widely presumed to be the voice on the record2.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

SoundCloud / Twitter (viral spread)

Key People

Elon Musk

Date

2019

The Harambe meme itself dates to May 28th, 2016, when the Western lowland gorilla was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure, an event that fueled years of "Dicks Out for Harambe" jokes online2. "RIP Harambe" the song arrived nearly three years later. On March 30th, 2019, Elon Musk uploaded the track to an Emo G Records SoundCloud page, changed his Twitter display name to "Jung Musk" and posted a run of tweets promoting the release2. Rolling Stone reported the song passed 250,000 streams within the first day of its upload1, and per Know Your Meme it hit over 910,000 SoundCloud plays within 48 hours2.

How It Spread

Musk seeded the release himself, dropping the SoundCloud link between Tesla Semi updates on his own Twitter account while operating under the temporary "Jung Musk" handle2. The bait worked: within a single weekend Rolling Stone clocked more than 250,000 streams1, and Know Your Meme logged over 910,000 plays inside two days2.

Mainstream music and tech press picked it up almost immediately. Rolling Stone covered the upload as a surprise single tying together a Twitter joke, an old meme and Auto-Tune1. Additional writeups came from The Hill, The A.V. Club and GQ, each treating the track as a mix of celebrity stunt and unlikely pop curio2.

Reaction on Twitter was split between fans amused by a Fortune 500 CEO doing SoundCloud rap and users annoyed at the recycling of the Harambe joke, with Musk fanning both sides by joking that his "record label failed" the day after upload1. The track has stuck around as a reference point for Musk's meme-heavy online persona and as a late chapter of the Harambe meme cycle2.

Timeline

2016-05-28

Harambe the gorilla is shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo, seeding years of internet memes.

2019-03-30

Elon Musk uploads "RIP Harambe" to SoundCloud via the fake Emo G Records account and changes his Twitter name to "Jung Musk".

2019-03-30

Rolling Stone reports the track has been streamed more than 250,000 times within its first day.

2019-03-31

Tweets from Musk and producer BloodPop credit the song to BloodPop with co-writes from Caroline Polachek and Yung Jake.

2019-04-01

SoundCloud plays surpass 910,000 as The Hill, A.V. Club and GQ publish coverage.

How to Use This Meme

The track itself is the meme. Fans typically share the SoundCloud link with the "finest work" quote, drop the "Sipping on some Bombay / We on our way to heaven" lyric as a reply, or pair the audio with old Harambe photos and Tesla news screenshots to riff on Musk's mid-Twitter-shitpost persona.