Lil Tjay is one of the hottest rappers from the Bronx.
But just because you got street cred in the US don’t mean you’re safe everywhere.
The rapper was recently ran up on by some goons in the UK.
Let’s take a closer look at what went down.
Lil Tjay is currently on his Destined to Win Tour doing shows across the US and Europe.
He was recently in the UK linking up with local artists
and expanding his fanbase across the world.
But like many US rappers,
Lil Tjay may have underestimated the amount of security he needed
cause the rapper got pressed by goons outside of a show in Southampton.
American rappers usually downplay how dangerous it can be in the UK
and don’t move with as much security.
Even though England has worse gun laws don’t mean that things can’t get real.
If you’ve seen our videos on UK drill rappers,
you know how wild it can be in the streets of London.
Southampton is no different and it looks like Lil Tjay learned that the hard way.
The rapper was performing at Club Switch.
Some local Southampton artists performed before him
and then Lil Tjay came out and did his show.
For some reason, Lil Tjay only did a few songs and cut his performance early.
This angered some people in the audience, who expected to see a longer show.
Lil Tjay was chilling outside the venue when a group of dudes ran up on him,
knowing he’d probaby have stacks of cash and expensive jewelry.
A fight broke out that was captured on camera.
Police and security guards eventually step in to break it up
and Lil Tjay is heard saying “Don’t Touch Me”
After video footage of the fight surfaced online,
there were rumors going around that Tjay got his chain snatched.
He hopped on Instagram to clarify it was all cap.
He shows himself wearing all his chains,
then films a police car driving by with sirens blaring and tells the camera
“if a n**** try to really take my chain, it would have been a lot of those."
A video of a random civilian who was in the fight also started going around,
sayin he got punched by Lil Tjay for no reason
when he was just trying to calm down the situation.
In Lil Tjay’s defense, he probably couldn’t tell who was trying to help
and who was trying to snatch his jewelry, so he just started swinging.
It don’t seem like any criminal charges have been filed, but it’s definitely not a good look for the rapper.
Even though he ain’t get his chain snatched,
it might make it harder for him to book shows overseas
if he’s getting involved in fights outside clubs.
In the future, Lil Tjay might want to step up his security,
even in smaller cities where he might not expect to have problems – like Southampton.
But Lil Tjay ain’t a stranger to violence.
Growing up in the wild streets of the Bronx, the rapper been involved in a lot of crazy situations.
He grew up in the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx
and was raised by a single mother and had two younger siblings.
Tjay was the problem child
and was always getting into fights and committing petty robberies.
One of these robberies landed him in juvie when he was just 15.
This is when he started rapping and wrote one of his early hits Resume,
which he later released on SoundCloud.
When he got out of juvie,
he started recording some of those other songs in a basement studio
and dropped them on SoundCloud too.
He was well known in the area
and was also friends with rappers like Kay Flock and Dougie B before the fame.
So, when he started dropping songs in 2016, his buzz spread fast through the city.
But even before Tjay got locked up, he dealt with the pain and loss
that comes with the street life.
He witnessed one of his day ones
Esmeryln Toribio aka Smelly, get killed after a fight over a dirt bike.
On August 14th, 2016, Smelly went to sell a dirt bike to a man named Hector Sanchez.
They met up around 8 pm in front of a building on E. 182nd Street near Valentine Ave.
Smelly was selling the bike for $80, even though it was worth close to $300.
Sanchez paid him $80 for the bike but like 10 minutes later,
Smelly came back with a group of dudes and demanded it back.
Sanchez refused and a fight broke out.
Sanchez pulled out a knife and stabbed Smelly 14 times in the chest.
He was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead that night.
Sanchez was arrested and charged with murder
but got off because he was able to prove he acted in self-defense.
Lil Tjay was there to see his friend get killed and it had a major impact on him.
He and his friends took the name Smelly Gang in his honor
and Tjay would shout him out in multiple songs.
Other New York drill rappers like Popperazzi Po have dissed Smelly and Lil Tjay in songs.
Even though Lil Tjay never responded directly with a diss track,
he’s also dissed dead opps in his own music.
Plus, when it was announced that Paparazzi Po’s father,
the famous drug lord-turned-snitch Alpo Martinez had died,
Tjay went on Instagram to celebrate.
He posted a pic of himself holding a big stack of cash with the caption
“smoking big Al pooooo”.
So even though Tjay is known for his emotional rapping style, he’s not one to turn away from beef.
The recent incident in London aint the only time that Lil Tjay
went head to head with a bunch of goons.
Early in his career he was attacked by a mob of dudes in his neighborhood
and got his chain snatched.
A video went around online showing Lil Tjay getting beat up and dragged down a staircase,
then kicked while on the ground.
In an interview with Melz TV, the rapper broke down what happened.
He claims that he was walking down the block when a car full of random dudes pulled up on him.
They asked if he was Lil Tjay and he was like yeah what’s up.
He admits he wasn’t being cautious and wasn’t moving how he should’ve been moving,
especially since he was starting to gain some clout.
They started to record him and questioned his gang affiliations,
asking if he was a cripp.
He shut it down immediately
and told them that he wasn’t about to answer that and to stop playin’ with him.
After that, a fight started but it was just him versus 10 or 15 dudes,
so he ain’t stand a chance.
He got beat up pretty badly and got his chain snatched.
But he wasn’t that upset about it and admits they caught him lackin,
but at least he took the beating like a man.
The incident ain’t really hurt his career and from there it was only up for Lil Tjay.
In 2018 he signed a deal with Columbia Records
and dropped his debut album True 2 Myself the following year.
The album debuted at number five on Billboard
and featured guest appearances from Jay Critch, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, and Lil Wayne.
But all while he was blowing up, Lil Tjay continued to get into beef.
In 2019, he was confronted by a rapper named Top 5 outside of a mall in Toronto.
Top 5 is a rapper with ties to Drake and OVO
who made headlines after being arrested for the murder of a college student.
The rapper is well known in the city of Toronto
and has been seen hanging out with some of the biggest artists in the world.
But he’s also known for being a shooter
and even bragged about this on a live stream with DJ Akademiks.
Tap into our video on Top5
for a full breakdown of the rapper and the crimes he’s accused of.
Apparently, Top 5 saw Lil Tjay at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto
and got mad that the rapper ain’t check in with him when he came to the city.
He posted a video of Lil Tjay to his Instagram with the caption
“Goofy @liltjay forgot to check-in ain’t nobody allowed near da ends without checkin in”
The video shows Top 5 yelling at Lil Tjay, telling him to come to the corner,
while Tjay and his friends just laugh and yell back.
At one point you hear Top5 yell
“we’ll blow this kid’s head off”
Nothing actually happened at the mall, but Top5 got on IG to explain what happened.
He said that he was at the mall looking for Gucci kicks when he saw Lil Tjay.
He started grilling him so Tjay asked him “what are you looking at?”.
They got into it and Tjay squared up ready to fight.
Top 5 told him to follow him outside, but when they got there,
Tjay aint want to do anything.
Top5 makes it clear that he had the burner on him
and if he had followed him to the corner, he would have shot him.
He also shouts out all the New York rappers who know how to check-in, like his homie A Boogie.
Luckily Lil Tjay just walked away, and the situation ain’t get too serious.
After that, the rapper kept dropping music and building his fanbase.
In 2020 he dropped an EP called State of Emergency,
which featured only NY drill artists including Pop Smoke, Fivio Foreign, Sheff G,
Sleepy Hollow, Jay Critch, and J.I. the Prince of NY.
Around the same time, he got involved in a fight with a security guard
that was captured on camera.
The video shows Tjay, along with a bunch of his homies in a standoff with a security guard
outside an apartment complex.
At one point the security guard had enough and picks up a sign and throws it at the group,
hitting a white BMW parked by the curb.
After that, it gets pretty serious and they surround the security gaurd.
TJay can be heard telling the man “chill out we got poles too”.
They start screaming at the security guard
and at one point you see one of Tjay’s friends with a gun in his hand.
At the end of the video, you can hear Lil Tjay saying
"this is why you don’t play with gang ‘nem we don’t play man."
But the video ends before anything serious happens.
Then later that year, Lil Tjay got arrested
after police searched his car and found guns and weed.
On December 26th, 2020, Tjay was filming a music video with Fivio Foreign in Queens.
Police responded to a 911 call of a disorderly group shooting a music video,
flashing guns in the courtyard of a building.
Police showed up and searched the cars on the scene but no one got arrested.
Four days later, the rapper was in a vehicle that got pulled over
for allegedly switching lanes without signaling.
Police said they smelled weed and searched the car,
finding four loaded guns and a large amount of weed.
So Lil Tjay was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon,
marijuana possession, and grand larceny.
No one in the car said the guns and drugs was their’s
so everyone got hit with the same charges.
But the rapper ain’t let the arrest slow him down.
In February 2021, he dropped the track Calling My Phone with 6lack
that debuted at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100,
his highest-charting song to date.
That became the first single on his second studio album Destined 2 Win
which featured guest appearances from Polo G, Fivio Foreign, Saweetie,
Tyga, Tootsi, Offset, and Moneybagg Yo.
So, if Lil Tjay can stay out of trouble, it’s nowhere but up for him.
But if he keeps getting into petty beefs,
it’s only a matter of time before something serious happens.
It sounds like he needs to realize how big of an artist he is now
and start hiring more security
so random dudes can’t just run up on him outside of a show.