Harry Tsang moved to Los Angeles about eight years ago. He was ready to make the switch from his previous base of Orlando to operate on a bigger stage. At 32 years old, he prides himself on his experience in the social media business—“I’m among the oldest, basically,” he said. Within a couple years of his move, he began managing Woah Vicky, a blonde 17-year-old social media personality who made sport of defending her claim that she was Black. The maneuver brought Vicky a short run of 2017-vintage celebrity, and it brought Tsang in touch with Lil Tay, a 10-year-old from Vancouver who called herself “the youngest flexer” and covered herself online in hundred-dollar bills and designer clothes.
“Danielle Bregoli Brawls With Woah Vicky and Lil Tay!!!” a TMZ headline read in 2018. Vicky had been in a feud, she said, with Bregoli (another social media personality better known as Bhad Bhabie) and they met up outside the Americana mall in Glendale, California, to escalate the dispute. Lil Tay came along, and her star began to rise; she associated online with rappers Lil Pump, Chief Keef, and XXXTentacion, and met up with storied hip-hop producer Rick Rubin. In September 2018, Tsang said, he flew to Vancouver to work out an arrangement with Lil Tay’s father to become her manager, joining the gaggle of adults jousting for a hand in her future.
For a numbing, amusing, concerning few months, Lil Tay was a persistent social media phenomenon. She said she grew up broke in Atlanta and dropped out of Harvard. She recorded rap music and sent brash provocations at other online personalities to form absorbing, if obvious, contrasts of stature, age, and race. She was also the central figure in a series of battles among relatives, hangers-on, and manager types. “There’s a lot of, quote, unquote, former managers,” one of the latter recently told me, “but no one really represented her to the fullest, like I did.”
After Lil Tay and her half-brother Jason Tian moved to Los Angeles to build her career, Jason developed some notoriety of his own. In May 2018, a video circulated of him feeding his sister lines to recite for her persona, and New York reported in 2019 that he operated her Instagram account. Jason was at the time a 16-year old rapper and YouTuber, but appeared to find a new lane as Lil Tay’s Svengali as she became known for a series of staged stunts and controversies. In 2021, allegations that Lil Tay’s father, Chris Hope, abused her appeared on her Instagram. Hope denied the claims and sent Instagram a cease-and-desist letter; there’s no mention of abuse allegations in the available Vancouver court records for a long-running custody battle between Hope and Lil Tay’s mother, Angela Tian. Jason raised more than $17,000 on GoFundMe on the basis of his claim that Hope abused Lil Tay. (Jason and Lil Tay have different fathers. Angela and Hope’s relationship ended in 2008, according to court records, the year after Lil Tay was born.)
“Her brother was the creator behind the character,” the former manager told me. “I do believe that he has some narcissistic traits. I think he was very egotistical and obviously consumed by fame, popularity, and a position of power.”
All of this has largely been forgotten in the years since. Lil Tay’s particular strain of celebrity had been fleeting to begin with, and by now an uncountable number of other microfame eras have passed. Then, earlier this month, a post on Lil Tay’s Instagram account announced that she and Jason had both died. A frenzy ensued, harking back to the siblings’ heyday.
Lil Tay’s father sounded confused when asked by the New York Post whether someone could confirm his daughter’s death, telling the tabloid, “Um, no, not that I’m aware of.” Tsang muddled matters further when he told The Sun, “Given the complexities of the current circumstances, I am at a point where I cannot definitively confirm or dismiss the legitimacy of the statement issued by the family.”
“That Harry Tsang guy gave that dumbass statement,” the former manager told me, “which was a bunch of words saying nothing at all.” Tsang told me that soon after the purported death announcement, he called Duane Laventure, whom he described as the family’s “handler.” “When I was on the phone with him, he refused to comment,” Tsang said. “And then from that point on I knew something was up.” (Laventure didn’t return a request for comment.) Reports that a Lil Tay cryptocurrency was released shortly after the announcement compounded the sense that something had been staged.
“I pray its not real kid,” Alex “Loyalty” Gelbard, another former Lil Tay manager, wrote on Instagram alongside a picture of himself and her.
A full day passed before Lil Tay told TMZ that she and her brother were, in fact, alive and that she had merely been hacked. A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, later told the outlet that she was being truthful about not being able to access her account and that the company helped her get it back. (Meta didn’t return a request for further comment.)
This did not settle the matter for those who have been in Lil Tay’s orbit. “I believe the reported hacking incident may not have occurred,” Tsang told The Daily Beast, adding, “the actions of Lil Tay’s brother, renowned for his propensity for extreme measures, lead me to hypothesize an alternative motive behind this occurrence.” He guessed that it was a publicity stunt designed to “illicitly extract funds from devoted supporters and unwitting bystanders.”
“Based on my experience of working with her brother,” the former manager told me, “he will do anything and everything to gain attention. And that’s exactly what I believe he did.”
“Crazy 48 hours,” Gelbard wrote on Instagram. “I’ve seen a lot of things done irresponsibly to leverage things, but this went too far. A hustle is a hustle but EVERYONE has to have a limit.” (When reached for further comment, Gelbard said, “I’m just cautious because of everything happening right now. I lost my own IG during all this.”)