- In August, Lil Tay shocked the internet when an Instagram post announcing her death turned out to be a hoax.
- Nearly two months later, as the source of the hoax remains unclear, she dropped her debut single.
In early August, a post appeared on 15-year-old influencer Lil Tay's Instagram account falsely claiming she and her brother, Jason Tian, had died. The news quickly went viral, but the teen told TMZ a day later that she was very much still alive and that her account was hacked.
While it remains unclear who posted the death hoax, rumors have swirled that Lil Tay's family is exploiting her and that her brother has been mostly managing her social media accounts. (The rapper appeared in a recent Instagram Live claiming her father, Christopher Hope, was the one behind the hoax, per Billboard.)
On Saturday, nearly two months later, Tay released her debut single, "Sucker 4 Green." The timing of this following her death hoax has fueled mass internet speculation that it was all engineered to boost her music career.
Lil Tay's mother and management team did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The bright dance-pop number "SUCKER 4 GREEN" has already amassed 2.5 million views on YouTube in a day. In the video, Lil Tay is shown dancing in front of fancy cars and with a group of men wearing suits. "YALL BITCHES THOUGHT THE SHOW WAS OVER," she wrote in an Instagram post about the track.
A swarm of users on X (formerly Twitter) have begun to make jokes and devise theories about the curious timing of the song drop.
"Lil Tay after dropping the publicity stunt of the century and coming back with a banger," one X user wrote in a post with a video of basketball players dunking.
"LIL TAY???? I TOLD Y'ALL IT WAS A PUBLICITY STUNT," another X user wrote.
Other users deliberately accused her of faking her own death. "This what she played dead for," one X user wrote in a quote reply to the music video.
The replies on the music video are full of quips about how Lil Tay made it "out of the coffin," or "the afterlife," or "the grave" to release this song. One top comment described the leadup to Lil Tay's song release as the "weirdest roll out of all time," referencing the fake Instagram announcement in August.
Some users said, "PR stunt or not," the song is "iconic," and the young social media maven deserves praise. Another commenter called her a "legend" and said she "died and RESPAWNED" as a way to promote the music.
Lil Tay's career has been plagued by rumors and controversies since she first went viral in 2018 at the age of 9. She posted rap videos showing her handling large amounts of cash and collaborated with other controversial influencers like Jake Paul, along with a brief feud with Danielle Bregoli, better known as Bhad Bhabie. In one interview, Tay called herself "the youngest flexer of the century."
Shortly after, reports that a behind-the-scenes family battle to control her career began to emerge, which led Lil Tay's social media accounts to be wiped clean. Since 2018, her account has been mostly inactive except for sporadic, cryptic posts.