What happened to Lil Tay? Fans concerned after worrying Instagram story

After over a year of inactivity, a concerning message has been posted to 11-year-old rapper Lil Tay’s Instagram story, leaving worried fans trying to figure out what could have happened to the young star.

Lil Tay, real name Claire Eileen Qi Hope, broke the internet in 2018 when she was just 9 years old, thanks to her outrageous videos in which she flexed cash, cars, and used extreme profanity.

The videos were so bizarre that they quickly went viral online, and the Canadian creator gained millions of followers across various platforms.

However, it soon became apparent that Lil Tay’s mother was using her boss’s car in many of the popular videos, and lots of the houses were actually up for sale, as she used to be a real estate agent. This discovery lead to Tay’s mother getting fired from her job.

After a video leaked of her brother Jason telling her what to do off-camera, the internet even rallied to “free Lil Tay” via several different hashtags.

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On July 5 2018, an Instagram story containing the message “help me” was posted to the account. There was no further activity until later in October, when someone who claimed they previously worked with Lil Tay uploaded a video of the young star.

In the caption they wrote: “This was Lil Tay the last time she was happy, 2 hours before Christopher John Hope, her abusive absentee father who hasn’t been in her life for years, handed her a court order forcing her to go to his home in Canada in which she was constantly abused by Hope and his wife.”

But in a later interview with Hollywood Life, Tay’s Father opened up on his side of the story, claiming: “When my daughter’s social media began to go viral this year, I disagreed with most of the social media activity. I took legal steps to stop things which I felt were dangerous to her physical and mental health and to her future.”

Concerning story posted to Lil Tay’s account

After over two years of silence, concerns for the young girl’s wellbeing were renewed when another story was posted to Lil Tay’s account.

The white text on the black background simply read, “we have bad news about Tay…”

Fans immediately took to social media to share the post with others, speculating over what could have happened. But with no other context given, it’s near impossible to know who posted the story from Tay’s account, and what exactly could have prompted it.

At the time of writing, the story has been up for over 14 hours, but there has been no follow-up explanation to the cryptic post.