Sexyy Red wrote an emotional letter to the judge overseeing late producer Tay Keith’s unpaid royalties lawsuit on June 6, 2026—just days before his sudden death. The move caught the hip-hop world’s attention when TMZ obtained the correspondence, revealing a raw moment that proves sometimes the real story isn’t the lawsuit. It’s what happens in between the legal fees and courtroom calendars.
In the letter, Sexyy disputes the claims made in Tay’s case and says she was “appalled and furthermore hurt by the allegations made.” She wasn’t running from accountability—she was running straight into it, telling a judge exactly where she stood. Sexyy clarified that as an artist, she’s not “allowed to pay producers,” explaining that “all this is handled by the record label.” That’s the real architecture of the music business, even if it doesn’t make the headline. “Tay Keith and I are great working partners and even greater friends,” she wrote. “If the label owes him money, I’m sure they have started the process to get him paid.”
But here’s where it gets heavier: Sexyy also confessed that “there are several songs that Tay Keith and I have worked on together that I haven’t received payment for yet.” Suddenly the narrative shifts. She wasn’t just defending herself—she was admitting that both of them had gotten caught in the same royalty trap. The label owed him. The label owed her too. Tay Keith saw the vision in her before the world did; he reached out on Instagram in 2022 when people were dragging them both. He produced her 2023 breakout “Pound Town,” which went viral on TikTok and helped introduce her to a wider audience. Then Tay Keith executive produced her 2024 mixtape In Sexyy We Trust, which peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard 200. They were building something real.
The lawsuit, filed in March 2026, claimed Tay Keith produced 13 songs for Sexyy Red in 2024 and that the records profited from streaming, royalties, performances, and licensing while he received nothing and wasn’t shown any accounting of what the music earned. Sexyy claimed in her letter that Tay told her he was unsure why she was named as a defendant, and she asked that her name be removed from the case immediately. A rep for Tay Keith later said “naming Sexyy Red in the lawsuit was a legal formality.”
According to his camp, Tay and Sexyy were in the studio together as recently as the week before his death, working on new music. His representative said Tay considered her a sister. There was no beef. There was no falling out. There was just the machine—the label, the contracts, the royalty statements that never came. Rebel Music’s attorney stated they were in “the final stages of getting Tay Keith fully compensated before his shocking passing this week.” They said they were fixing it. Then Tay Keith died at 29.
The 16BARS take: Sexyy Red’s letter reads like a love letter dressed up in court language—two artists trying to survive the same broken system, hand in hand. The real tragedy isn’t the lawsuit; it’s that Tay Keith left the game before his share ever hit his account.
