Lil Tay rose to prominence at an early age as a social media personality and rapper. While she claimed to be 9 at the time, the self-acclaimed “youngest flexer of the century” caught public attention at the age of 10, posting content that flaunts her alleged wealth. Tay also gained views and fans on YouTube and Instagram with videos of her rapping, drawing attention for using crude language.
Over the years, Lil Tay has become a target of public scrutiny for various reasons. Particularly, her explicit lifestyle. Unfazed by the controversies surrounding her rise to fame, Tay has become an internet phenomenon. She seems to have returned to her controversial lifestyle after her 2023 death hoax. In 2025, Tay claimed she broke the OnlyFans record with her new account on the platform. Read on to learn more about Lil Tay’s interesting journey to fame.
How Old is Lil Tay, and Where is She From?
Named Claire Eileen Qi Hope at birth, Lil Tay was born on July 29, 2007, in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Her father, Christopher J. Hope, is a lawyer, while her mother, Angel Tian, worked in the real estate industry. Tay’s Parents never married, but they shared custody of her. She has an older half-brother named Jason from his mother’s side. The family has been in the public eye for conflicts surrounding Tay’s social media career.
Although she’s originally from Atlanta, Tay moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, as a child and spent her formative years there. She later moved with her mother and half-brother to Los Angeles, California, after contacting talent agents there. Her career was still growing at the time, and Tay needed help to build it. She was homeschooled in Los Angeles, but her father later revealed that she often missed her classes.
Lil Tay’s Social Media Career Began in Early 2018
After moving back to the States, Lil Tay began taking music and dance lessons. With her brother’s help, she developed the Lil Tay persona, which she used to set up her social media accounts in 2018. The youngster leveraged her passion for music to launch a YouTube channel and an Instagram page, where she shared rap and lifestyle videos with her fans. She worked with renowned content creators and music producers, including Jake Paul and Diplo. While her talent is obvious, Tay came under fire for including profanity and racial slurs in her rap lines. She also posted videos depicting herself as very rich, wearing designer clothes, and posing in luxury cars.
Tay first garnered fame on social media platforms before getting millions of views on YouTube for her rap videos and luxurious lifestyles. She was popular for about three months before going off the grid. She later shared that her absence was due to her parents’ battle for full custody and control of her social media career. While her father filed for full custody of her, the Superior Court of Canada granted it to her mother. Controversy and conflict have continued to follow Tay’s family over issues related to her career. In August 2023, she changed her legal name from Clay Hope to Tay Tian, adopting her mother’s last name.
She Was the Subject of a Death Hoax in 2023
Five years into her absence from social media, Lil Tay and her brother became subjects of a death hoax. The false statement about their deaths was posted on her Instagram account in August 2023, gaining widespread media coverage. However, there were no records of the deaths from the appropriate authorities. The statement was later deleted, with Tay telling TMZ that her account was hacked. As such, she and her brother are still alive. She later revealed that her estranged father was behind the death hoax after losing the custody battle. Tay released the music video for her single, Sucker 4 Green in September, a month after the death hoax.
In September 2024, one year after the death hoax, Lil Tay got her fans worried one more time with news about her health. A post on her socials claimed that she was in the ICU after being diagnosed with a life-threatening heart tumor. She later backed the post up with photos of her in the hospital, confirming that she had a successful open-heart surgery. She allegedly stayed in the hospital for almost two weeks before returning to her online fans. Shortly after her surgery, Tay released a new single titled Growing Up.
Lil Tay Launched Her OnlyFans Account in 2025
https://www.tiktok.com/@liltay/video/7534106558452550925
Lil Tay patiently waited for her 18th birthday on July 29, 2025, to take her career to the next level. Just a minute after her 18th birthday, she made several videos ahead of her OnlyFans page launch. A few days before her birthday, she dropped the details about the adult content platform on her Instagram page with a message that she was financially unstable. She launched her OnlyFans account on August 3, 2025, and shared a screenshot of her earnings on social media, claiming she bagged over $1 million within three hours of going live on OnlyFans.
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