Claim: Billionaire Elon Musk has endorsed Ghanaian artiste Black Sherif in a viral video
False! The video that supposedly shows Musk giving the endorsement has been falsified.
Full Text
A Twitter user claims that billionaire Tesla boss, Elon Musk, has endorsed Ghanaian artiste Black Sheriff.
A video accompanying the tweet that has been viewed more than 69,000 times shows the billionaire making the comments in an interview-like setting.
It claims that Elon Musk said; “My favourite musician is Black Sherif. I can largely relate with his songs because they are my kind of songs. Even yesterday I was jamming to his song in my car. He’s my definition of a good musician. I hope to see him soon.” But this claim is false.
Verification
A reverse image search revealed that the interview, hosted by TED’s Head Curator, Chris Anderson, was first published online on May 3, 2017.
Elon Musk was on a TED platform to talk about a new project he was working on and SpaceX titled, “Elon Musk: The future we’re building — and boring.”
At no point in the 40-minute-long video did Musk reference or single out Black Sherif for endorsement.
In fact at the time the interview was conducted and published in 2017, Black Sherif was yet to start his music career.
Black Sherif, 20, who has risen to local and international stardom began his career in 2019 with the release of his single, “Money.”
The 10 seconds clip used to make the claim appears to have been taken from 29.49 mins. to 29.59 mins. of the original video and the voice altered to suit the disinformer’s interest.
A careful assessment of Musk’s voice in the original video and the supposed Black Sherif endorsement video shows a wide disparity confirming that the original clip was altered.
For Instance, the pace of the voice in the altered video has been rushed a bit, while the one in the original video, the voice of Elon Musk sounded natural and relaxed.
Conclusion
Based on the above discovery, it is clear that Elon Musk has not endorsed Black Sherif in any public interview.
