On September 11, a message appeared on the X account of viral internet personality Lil Tay announcing that there was “devastating news” regarding her well-being. The cryptic post comes about a year after a bizarre Instagram message claimed Tay and her brother had succumbed to a “sudden and tragic passing.” That post turned out to be a hoax — the following day, Lil Tay told TMZ that she and her brother were fine and her Instagram account had been hacked and later accused her father and former manager of faking her death. But this time, whoever is handling her social-media accounts claims she’s having a real health emergency. Here’s what we know.
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Lil Tay mysteriously went quiet in 2018 after going viral.
Born Claire Eileen Qi Hope, Lil Tay first rose to popularity in 2018, when she was 9 years old, with viral videos of herself wearing Gucci belts, driving a Rolls-Royce, speaking in a Blaccent, and brawling with other internet personalities like Bhad Bhabie and Woah Vicky. Since initially rocketing to fame with the guidance of her half-brother, Jason, she’s largely disappeared from social media, though several concerning incidents have brought her back into the public eye.
In June 2018, within months of Tay’s sudden explosion online, her Instagram account was suddenly wiped, with a single Instagram Story posted that said “help me.” A few months later, graphic and racially charged images showed up on the account, followed shortly by an image of what seemed like Tay’s passport, which, if real, would have made her 16 years old at the time (not, as was previously believed, 9). Then, an unidentified person posted on her Instagram account accusing Tay’s father, Chris Hope, of abusing her while profiting from her career. Her then-manager, Harry Tsang, denied the allegations, claiming Jason and her mother, Angela Tian, had also hatched a plan to accuse Hope of sexually assaulting his daughter. In a bizarre phone conversation arranged with the Daily Beast through a different representative named Charles Wong, in 2019, Tay said she was in a “bad situation” with her father.
In 2020, TMZ reported that Tay’s career had been stalled by a custody battle between her mother, who wanted her to pick up the trajectory she was on in 2018, and her father, who wanted her to pursue a more legitimate career in entertainment. Hope told the outlet that he loves and wants what’s best for his daughter, referring to “pending legal matters” that prevented him from offering further comment. More allegations surfaced in 2021, when a GoFundMe organized by Jason surfaced claiming that Hope and his new wife were physically and mentally abusing Lil Tay.
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The circumstances surrounding her “death” announcement were strange from the jump.
Following the initial announcement that she had died in 2023, outlets were unable to verify the news of Lil Tay’s death with her family members or with police in Vancouver, where she grew up before moving to L.A. Several friends of the family also questioned whether or not the post was accurate, with one producer telling the Daily Beast he was “really fucking confused” about what had happened. Her former manager, Tsang, claimed to have “an intimate understanding of the family’s situation” and told reporters he “cannot definitively confirm or dismiss the legitimacy of the statement issued by the family.” He also referred his TikTok followers to his psychic, who told the Daily Beast she did not “sense any soul crossing the line to another dimension.”
Meanwhile, the New York Post managed to get someone claiming to be Lil Tay’s father, Chris Hope, on the phone. “I don’t have any comment right now,” the person said. “I’m sorry — I can’t.”
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After 24 hours, TMZ claimed Lil Tay was alive and had been hacked.
Things got even weirder when TMZ claimed to have gotten in touch with Lil Tay herself, who seemed to be very much alive.
“I want to make it clear that my brother and I are safe and alive,” Lil Tay purportedly told TMZ, “but I’m completely heartbroken and struggling to even find the right words to say.” She added that the 24 hours during which everyone, including former collaborators like Woah Vicky, thought she was dead were “traumatizing,” and that she was “bombarded with endless heartbreaking and tearful phone calls from loved ones all while trying to sort out this mess.”
According to the explanation she offered to TMZ, Lil Tay’s Instagram was “compromised by a third party and used to spread jarring misinformation and rumors.” She added that her legal name is Tay Tian, not, as the post suggested, Claire. TMZ did not specify how Lil Tay provided her statement. At the time, the words “help me” appeared in her YouTube bio, though it wasn’t clear how long they’d been there. In a statement to the Cut, Tsang said he found “relief in the confirmation of her safety” but had some “reservations regarding the authenticity of the reported hacking incident.”
“It is plausible that the driving force behind these events might revolve around an attempt to surreptitiously solicit funds from dedicated supporters and unsuspecting bystanders,” Tsang explained in his statement to us. However, a Meta spokesperson appeared to support Lil Tay’s hacking story, reportedly telling TMZ that the company worked with the influencer to get her account back last week.
In the wake of the alleged hack, attorneys claiming to represent Lil Tay and her mother, Angela Tian, told outlets that Tian had finally won custody of her daughter along with a $275,000 payment from Hope for child support.
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On Instagram, Lil Tay appeared to accuse her father of faking her death.
The next month, a story appeared on Lil Tay’s largely defunct Instagram account, alleging that her “abusive racist misogynistic woman beating father” faked her death. Also on her story: a photo of what appeared to be her hand, holding a U.S. passport. Responding to the allegation, Hope told TMZ that “everything stated is 100 percent false.” Referring to a “long history of absurd and untrue statements made by the various people who have controlled the Instagram account,” he added: “The person who is responsible for that Instagram post, as well as anyone repeating the completely false and libelous accusation within it, are virtually certain to become defendants in a defamation lawsuit.”
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After releasing a new song, Tay claimed Tsang was involved in the hoax as well.
Around the same time, Tay released a new song, “Sucker 4 Green,” and appeared in an Instagram Live in which she played piano and guitar and spoke about the death hoax, claiming that her father staged it in an attempt to “sabotage me.” “He was working with this other con artist that claimed to be my manager,” she said, presumably referring to Tsang, “and they had a crypto coin together.”
In a subsequent interview with Rolling Stone, Tay and her mother again pinned the death hoax on Hope and Tsang, claiming that they teamed up in an attempt to promote a cryptocurrency coin that used her name. (They also denied that Tsang had ever formally managed Tay’s career.) Hope again denied the accusation, and Tsang claimed to have been in contact with Tay’s team about promoting a cryptocurrency coin in her name but said he suspects Tay’s brother Jason was the one who engineered the death hoax. Jason fired back, telling the reporter in a statement through Tay’s PR that Tsang “went to every publication possible to allege I hacked Tay’s page to fake her death whilst also peddling the fraudulent Lil Tay crypto coin.”
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Now, new posts say Lil Tay had open-heart surgery for a tumor.
For a while, it seemed as if everyone was ready to move on from the death hoax, and the most dramatic thing going on with Lil Tay was a feud with JoJo Siwa. But this month, just over a year after the 2023 death hoax, another bizarre social-media incident started to unfold. “We have devastating news regarding tay,” said a post on Lil Tay’s X account. Another, posted a few hours later, said, “Tay is currently in the ICU in serious condition” and was accompanied by a photo taken in a hospital hallway. In two more posts, one of which included a video of an ultrasound screen where a doctor can be heard talking, the account announced that “Tay has been diagnosed with a life-threatening heart tumor” and clarified that “last time, it was her absentee father who hacked into her accounts and faked her deaths,” but “this time, she is in the ICU.” The ultrasound video also appeared on her Instagram page, where the X posts were broadcast to her stories.
That weekend, the account announced that Tay was undergoing “major open-heart surgery to remove her heart tumor” and soon after released a video of what appeared to be Tay asleep in a hospital bed. “We are overjoyed to share that Tay’s open-heart surgery was a great success!” an update read. “We are off to a great start on the road to recovery.”
The Cut has reached out to a contact we believe to be Lil Tay’s representatives and will update this post if we hear back.
This post has been updated.