It's the question on everyone's lips: Is Kylie Jenner secretly a pop star?
There have been rumors floating around for MONTHS that Kylizzle wasn't satisfied with conquering the makeup world, and has secretly started a music career.
It seems implausible that any Jenndashian could sneeze, let alone release an album, without the world knowing every intimate detail. Still, people really believe that King Kylie has created a musical alter ego — and the internet is going crazy.
It all started back in March, with the three-minute trailer for Kylie Cosmetics' line of lip glosses — and a mysterious song.
The video, which (kinda) tells the story of Kylizzle and her friends robbing and murdering men in the desert while applying lots of lip gloss, was scored with a twitchy, breathy-voiced electro song.
Fans freaked the hell out and demanded to know what the song was. Even I liked it, and I can't say KJ and I have much common ground. Anyway, Kylie has seriously wide-ranging musical tastes, so it wasn't much of a surprise when she announced that the song was "Three Strikes" by unknown band Terror Jr.
Getting featured in a Kylie Jenner video is THE DREAM for an underground band — but right away, things started to look suspicious.
To begin with, nobody — not even the hippest hipster — had heard of Terror Jr before this video… because the band didn't exist. They had played no shows, done no DJ sets. They had no social media presence whatsoever, and nobody had written, blogged, or even tweeted about them.
If that sounds seriously unlikely to you, you're not alone. If it seems borderline creepy to you, you're not alone in that either.
Terror Jr was a literal ghost — until March 31st, when Kylie Cosmetics dropped the Glosses video. After the makeup mini-movie was posted on Kylie's app and online, Terror Jr both created a Soundcloud account and posted the song, Three Strikes — the first time it was available anywhere. It's since been listened to almost five million times.
Terror Jr's Twitter and Instagram accounts were created immediately afterwards — again, on March 31 — and tellingly, they only follow one person.
Despite ostensibly being a three-piece outfit, both accounts only follow Kylie Jenner — something that Kylizzle-run Kylie Cosmetics also does.
It seemed insane, but people started asking if it was possible that Kylie Jenner herself was the one singing on Three Strikes. But no. The conspiracy theory began to pick up steam online, though it was mostly limited to low-level music blogs and speculation in Instagram comments.
A few months later, The Fader got involved and things started to pick up steam.
Likely because it's such a weird story — and because the song is actually kind of a jam — The Fader did some digging, and reached out to Terror Jr's label, Effess Records. "Terror Jr is a project from the guys who created Kiiara (Felix Snow and David aka Campa) and a girl named Lisa," said a spokesperson. "They've expressed to me it's their dream pop supergroup."
"A girl named Lisa" turned out to be Lisa Terror, whose online presence was limited to a single silhouetted image on Instagram.
I mean, it's not NOT a picture of Kylie Jenner. Fuel, meet fire.
And when the band released its first official photograph, those flames leapt even higher.
Some internet sleuths pointed out the freckles on "Lisa's" arms, which apparently correspond to freckles that Kylie herself has — while naysayers said that Kylie would NEVER show off short, clearly bitten nails.
But there's no denying that Lisa's pink wig looks AWFULLY similar to one that Kylie wore back in early February.
THE PLOT THICKENS.
Does this all seem like a lot of effort to expend on the soundtrack to a lip gloss video? OH MY GOD YES.
Kylie has never commented on the rumors that she's secretly launched a music career. As far as I can tell, she's never talked about Terror Jr at all, besides the initial song announcement.
The other two dudes in the band have also gone to crazy-ass lengths to hide their frontwoman's identity — all while Terror Jr has gone on dropping a series of surprisingly excellent songs. I mean, they're not opera — but the singing is good, the production is solid, and "Sugar" is a freaking summertime monster of a song.
Perhaps this is why Kylie hasn't wanted to plaster the earth with her involvement — Jenner is, at best, a controversial figure. There's a large contingent of people who would hate ANYTHING she does, just because she's the one doing it… perhaps she just wants the band (and her singing) to be judged on its own merits.
And then there's the other alternative — that Kylie knows this konspiracy is good for her brand, so she's deliberately fanning the flames.
I mean, here I am, talking about Kylie's lip gloss video again, eight months later. I've listened to Terror Jr's entire LP, "Bop City," looking for clues (I don't think I found any, but I do like the album, which I'm surprised at). She's getting major press for both her alleged singing career AND her makeup line, which is 100% the Jenndashian MO.
But more than that — this temporary anonymity seems to have set Kylizzle free. Teen Vogue reached out to Terror Jr for an interview, and they responded to every question using only grape emojis. This is something that Kylie, in ANY capacity, could never do — no matter how much I'm sure she probably wants to. Sometimes a mask, or a pink wig, can liberate you.
But the question remains: IS Kylie Jenner really the singer of Terror Jr, and therefore a low-key pop star?
Yes. Yes, she is. And I have the receipts.
Very early this morning, UK media outlets began reporting that Twitter had FINALLY CONFIRMED that Kylizzle was, in fact, the third member of Terror Jr.
Does that sound convoluted? I thought so, too — especially because all of the Twitter "sources" were screenshotted tweets that had since been deleted. So I decided to confirm the story myself.
I logged onto ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which is a non-profit that makes sure their members get paid for performance and use of their music. AND LO AND BEHOLD…
When I searched "3 Strikes," there she is — Kylie Jenner, performer.
Bam. There you have it.
The paper trail doesn't lie — Kylie is now a konfirmed pop star.
You can listen to Terror Jr's LP, "Bop City," on Soundcloud — or just watch the Glosses video on repeat. It really adds another layer to the whole thing when you know that Kylie is driving around, listening to herself sing.
What do you think about Kylie / Lisa Terror's music? More importantly, how do you think Kylie's musical career will impact her makeup line?
I'm gonna go ahead and guess that soon we'll have Sugar (lip scrub), and maybe opaque snow-colored Kyliner inspired by Little White Bars. Who knows!
