Elon Musk tweets and stirs controversy again on the Internet in the wake of his SEC settlement.
On Monday, Elon Musk tweeted a Youtube link to the 1990s hip-hop video entitled O.P.P. captioned with “Naughty by Nature,” the group behind the popular rap song. It’s the first tweet the tech mogul made after his SEC settlement was announced last Saturday.
Nothing seems unusual about the tweet. However, the winking emoji at the end of the caption appears to suggest something else, not to mention it comes from Musk who loves to stir controversy on Twitter.
O.P.P. –which stands for other people’s property– was once considered the undercover cheater’s song, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its release way back into the 90s. However, the acronym has a different meaning in the business realm.

While this is not the first time that Musk tweeted a music video whose lyrics are clearly not related to his business dealings, avid Twitter followers of the Tesla CEO speculated that Monday’s cryptic message was a veiled reference to “operating profit positive.” And, why not? It should be noted that Tesla has just completed its third quarter and Musk promised that the company would deliver a profit this time.
Like the famed Helen of Troy who launched a thousand ships in Homer’s Iliad, Musk has once again started a barrage of tweets because of his rebellious nature. Many people were impressed by Musk’s wit, with some likening him to the fictional Marvel superhero Tony Stark/Iron Man.
On the other hand, one of Tesla’s shareholders and Florida financial analyst James Stephenson also responded to Musk’s tweet.
“Sure, could be operating profit positive,” Stephenson tweets. “To be clear, OPP is not an abbreviation commonly used to describe profit margin. But Naughty by Nature never had a hit song called Ebitda.”
At the moment, no one knows for sure what Musk really meant by his tweet. Both Tesla and the SEC declined to comment. The terms of Musk’s SEC settlement has not yet been finalized, but he’s facing a $20 million USD fine and the possibility of losing Tesla’s chairmanship for the next three years.
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