Lil Tjay has recognized the one year anniversary of being shot seven times and surviving the assault with the release of his new single, “June 22.”
On June 22, 2022, the Bronx rapper was shot at a Chipotle shortly after midnight in Edgewater, NJ. 27-year-old Mohamed Konate — who was quickly apprehended by the police — also shot two of Tjay’s companions who were with him.
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On “June 22,” Tjay takes an introspective approach toward the moments leading up to the nearly-fatal shooting and in its accompanying music video, he relieves the tragedy.
“Opps know It’s crazy, they could vouch, now we out,” he raps on the song. “Meet the bros up in the whip and we in route/I go to sleep, I wake up hearin’ someone following my car/Bitch, who following my car?/No one following my car.”
Lil Tjay (real name Tione Jayden Merritt) was shot once in the neck, once in the arm, and five times in the torso. He was very close to death, but emergency surgery ultimately saved his life.
In an interview with Rolling Stone Tjay opened up about the scary ordeal and recalled a phone call he received from 50 Cent — who also famously survived a hail of bullets early in his career — while he was recovering in hospital.
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“Every artist needs pain or something to feed off of. This right here, you shake this shit off,” he recalled 50 telling him over the phone from a jet. “You got the length for greatness. You going to be bigger than ever.”
Earlier this month, Lil Tjay was arrested for reckless endangerment, capturing the whole process on Instagram Live for all of his fans to see.
According to the rapper’s lawyer Dawn Florio (via TMZ), the incident went down in New York on June 6 when Tjay was shooting a short clip for a music video. Apparently cops arrived on the scene in Manhattan and hauled him off to jail.
While it’s unclear exactly what prompted the arrest, Florio made it clear that it was not for gun possession.
“Nah. Do not touch me, bro,” Lil Tjay is seen telling officers on IG Live while standing next to his car. “What am I under arrest for?”
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One of the officers then tells the Bronx native to turn around, but he refused. “No, n-gga,” Tjay responded. “No, bro. Hell no. What’s in the car? I don’t know what’s in the car. Don’t touch me. There’s no firearm in the car.”
He was then restrained by multiple officers, handcuffed and taken off.
The following day, NYPD told TMZ that the arrest was prompted after allegedly seeing Tjay perched on the sunroof of a moving vehicle while waving an “apparent firearm.” It turned out to be a fake gun, and Tjay was ultimately charged with criminal possession of a weapon for it.
