Dionne Warwick intends to speak with Elon Musk over X updates

Dionne Warwick will be speaking with ‘young man’ Elon Musk over plan to nix blocking on X

Two photos: Elon Musk in a T-shirt and leather jacket; Dionne Warwick smiling in a dark sparkling dress.

Sept. 5, 2023 6:45 PM PT

Has Dionne Warwick lost that lovin’ feelin’ for Elon Musk?

On Monday night, the “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” singer stepped out at Todd Hunt’s “Postcards From Brazil, Volume 2” release party. People magazine caught up with the icon and asked her about Musk’s latest plans to update X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by removing the blocking feature. Warwick, widely heralded as a Twitter savant, was none too pleased with Musk’s plan and revealed she intended to have a word.

“I have yet to speak to that young man and I intend to because I am not quite sure what he’s doing or if he knows what he’s doing,” Warwick, 82, said. “So until that happens, I’ll reserve my answer to that question.”

The block tool on X, will eventually be removed, according to an August post from Musk, who wrote, “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs.”

The block button allowed users to prevent others from seeing or responding to any of their content. Many considered the blocking feature a tool used to protect themselves on the platform from harassment, hate speech and spamming.

“I’m going to find out what Mr. Musk has in mind,” Warwick told The Times’ Greg Braxton in December 2022. “I’m hoping to have a meeting with him. I want to ask him, ‘Where’s your head? Where are you going with this?’ Lots of people have jumped off, and I want to find out what he’s thinking before I decide to stay on. Or leave.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Warwick has had a few choice words with an influential man in the public eye. In the early ’90s, the “I Say a Little Prayer” singer summoned Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight to her home at 7 a.m. They arrived at 6:52 a.m. according to Snoop Dogg, who said Warwick told the young hip-hop stars if they planned to continue using the word b— to describe women in their lyrics, then they could call her that to her face then and there.

Her revered sass translated seamlessly to social media, and in December 2020, the veteran singer took to her new favorite social media platform, Twitter, to shut down rumors that she was not the mastermind behind her account.

“Well, hello,” Warwick said in a video. “This is for all you tweeters who have decided that I’m not tweeting my own stuff to you. I want you to know I am. And I’m getting very, very, very good at it.

“You see,” she continued with regal flair, “I have a wonderful niece. Her name is Brittani, and she said, ‘Aunt Dionne, you’ll have a lot of fun if you get on this with me.’ I said, ‘OK, teach me how to do it.’ And she did, and I am doing it. So that should quell all of you naysayers. And if it doesn’t, deal with it.”

Since Musk’s takeover of the app, though, Warwick has been shopping other social media platforms, and she posted her findings this summer.

“Well listen, I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed a lot of new apps popping up on social media: Spill, Bluesky, and the there’s one called Threads,” she began her video, continuing that she was going to take a good look at the new apps and then rate them with “Dionnes,” 1 to 5 Dionnes for each.

“We’re gonna start with Bluesky,” she said of former Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey’s new app. “It just doesn’t seem to have the same fun aspect the original Twitter had. So I’m only gonna give this two Dionnes.”

“Then there’s Spill,” she continued, moving on to the Black-owned microblogging platform founded by Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and Devaris Brown. “It’s taking a little bit of a chance. I like this one, and I like where it’s headed and, although very new, I can see myself sticking around to see how it develops. It’s colorful, it’s cool and it’s cultured,” she said, giving the app a three-Dionnes rating.

Then the Grammy-winning artist moved on to Threads, the Mark Zuckerberg-created app hailed as the most promising Twitter rival. “This one feels like it was made out of pure spite,” she said, chuckling. “I like it because I haven’t seen any annoying ads, not one, and yet it’s easy to use. I’m gonna give this one four Dionnes. I think it deserves it.”

Times staff writer Christi Carras contributed to this report.