Grimes and Elon Musk’s Upsetting Online Conflict, Explained

What is going on with Grimes, Elon Musk, and their son, Lil X, and why is it happening on Twitter? (We know Musk renamed Twitter to X, but since he also named his son X, we’ll be calling it Twitter for the sake of clarity). Over the past several months, Musk has brought his son Lil X along on various public appearances, including to a live presser in the Oval Office alongside Donald Trump on February 11. But Grimes, the mother of Lil X and two of Musk’s other children, has made it clear on social media that she does not want the 4-year-old placed in the public eye in this way.

Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, and Elon Musk began dating in 2018, and officially broke up in 2021, though their relationship remained “fluid” for a while after, according to her Vanity Fair interview. The two share three children, X AE A-XII (nicknamed Lil X), Exa (nicknamed Y), and Techno Mechanicus, who was born in September 2023. That same month, according to the Independent, Musk filed a custody lawsuit against Grimes, and she filed a countersuit. Since then, the back-and-forth between the parents has played out on Twitter.

Here is what we know, with the most recent updates up top.

February 2025: After X appears with Musk at the Oval Office, Grimes responds to a tweet, indicating that she wasn’t aware that her son was going to be there and that she disapproves. “Lil X was very polite today! You raised him well. He was so cute when he told DJT ‘please forgive me, I need to pee,’” the user tweeted. Grimes clarified, “He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank u for alerting me. But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.”

January 2025: Musk continues to bring Lil X along on public appearances, and Grimes responds to a Twitter user who accused, “You have a kid with Elon who parades him around like Michael Jackson’s Chimpanzee.”

Grimes replied, “I have made it clear I do not approve of that in every conceivable way I know how. I am desperate to solve it. It is a personal tragedy to me. But currently I don’t know how to do that.”

November 2024: Grimes posts a long message about the custody battle to Twitter, and accuses Musk of withholding her son from her for months.

“Spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights,” she wrote, “having my Instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn’t have my kids and fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me, with a fraction of his resources (or iq/ strategy experience), all the while I didn’t see one of my babies for 5 months. And this is only what can be said publicly, since most of my experience these last years should remain behind closed doors.”