It was a cold and drizzling San Francisco morning when I packed my mics up in the Haight, a run-down neighborhood of spooky old Victorians, faded tie-dye awnings, and twisted, haunted neon shop signs burning in the fog. I was about to interview Grimes, and the aesthetics of my neighborhood felt a little too suspiciously on point — psychedelic everything, graffiti here and there imploring me to “follow the white rabbit,” and a storefront window literally emblazoned with the name “blade runners.” This was the spiritual home of Gibson and Stephenson and Lana Wachowski, the transhuman mother of raving freaks and freedom fighting mystic cyborgs, and one of my earliest mentors (we have never met (I have simply watched the Matrix many times)). Now, absorbed in their philosophy, I was on my way to explore the real-world fruits of all their dreaming. Did one of them write this? What year was it, really? Had Grimes’ experiment already worked?

Knock, knock Neo.

I’ve known “C” a little over a year, but I’ve known Grimes — or, of Grimes — for well over a decade. I lived in Brooklyn when I first heard her music, and she was a huge part of that soundtrack. Even then she stood apart, but today she’s standing more or less alone. In the machine city, Grimes is by far the most visible and committed member of the artist class, at once their kind of unofficial ambassador, while also an unofficial translator for the engineers constructing a technology many artists fear. But Grimes has chosen to channel this fear, and shape it into art, recently leveraging new AI models to open source her voice. Now, any artist in the world can record new tracks, in a sense with Grimes’ collaboration, which Grimes has never even seen (Pirate Wires broke this all down yesterday, including a wide sampling of the incredible music now being released).