Grimes and Lil Uzi Vert want the brain chips

Elon Musk’s failures are usually more memorable than his successes — the Cybertruck’s shattering windows, SpaceX rocket prototypes exploding on the launching pad, and the dumbest, slowest subway known to mankind. But despite the bumpy track record, there will still be a significant cohort of his followers who trust the guy enough to implant one of his upcoming Neuralink brain chips into their heads. Naturally, Grimes and Lil Uzi Vert expressed their interest in the procedure on Twitter over the weekend.

Uzi tweeted, “NEURALINK [bat emoji] [diamond emoji],” on Saturday night, which Grimes replied to with “Let’s get brain chips.” Both publicly gung ho for the procedure, Grimes said they should hold off until 2022. “It’s experimental surgery but if it succeeds we’ll have the knowledge of the gods haha,” she wrote.

Grimes, already with significant personal investment in the Musk project, would be one of the likeliest artists to take a chance on the brain chip. She’s always seemed intent on progressing beyond the Anthropocene, so why not take the riskiest step to get there? Last week, Uzi unveiled something of a precursor to Neuralink: a new $24 million pink diamond, implanted into his forehead.

Details are still relatively scant on the Neuralink implant, but Musk is talking a big game about its benefits. Beyond the “knowledge of the gods,” he’s said the Neuralink would allow users to stream music directly to their brain. Musk also has, in incredibly vague tweets, suggested that Neuralink could treat neurological conditions like Parkinson’s — and even “retrain” the part of the brain which causes addiction and depression. “This is both great and terrifying,” he said of the development. Human testing is expected to begin this year, and it’s clear that Grimes wants to see how that shakes out before getting one of her own.

For Uzi’s part, he just needs to focus on maintaining the forehead diamond in the crucial early months. But in an interview with Rolling Stone, a representative for his jeweler Eliott Eliantte assured that it’s “as safe as any other piercing... as long as you maintain it well and have good upkeep.” It was still the jeweler’s first forehead diamond request, and they weren’t sure he was serious until the payments rolled in. A brain chip certainly feels like the only logical next step.