New York City is mourning the loss of The Queen of Brooklyn.
Nenobia Washington, who went viral after an impromptu street interview with HotNewHipHop in 2015, has died. She was 38 and left behind a son named Tyeleck. Law enforcement sources confirmed the news to TMZ on Wed. Nov. 3, saying that police and paramedics responded to a call around 7:40 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 30. The influencer, who also went by BK TidalWave, was found unconscious and unresponsive in front of a building in NYC and was rushed to a hospital nearby, where she was pronounced dead. The sources said the investigation revealed Washington’s injuries appear to indicate that she fell from an “elevated position,” adding that it’s believed that she intentionally jumped from six stories up. According to TMZ, the investigation is still underway and the medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death.
Her family was reportedly given different accounts of what happened from people who say they witnessed the incident. Facebook posts from various people claiming to be her family members surfaced over the weekend, with conflicting stories that she was missing or that she had died. A post from her cousin Dupree Frederick on Sunday, Oct. 31 announced that she had died. “This is a sad sad day. I can’t believe I’m writing R.I.P to My fam/ Lil Cuzzin/Lil sis Nenobia R.I.P You will be truly missed. May God bless your soul,” Frederick wrote on Facebook, along with photos of her. “You will always be missed. This is fucking me up right now. Love you fam.” David Jackson, her child’s father, spoke to the outlet and said he was told that she fell from a window. Jackson denied the claims that Washington was missing prior to the incident, saying she spoke to their son the night before she died. Her son confirmed the tragic news on TikTok and asked his followers and her fans for donations.
“Guys, it is true. My mom did die. Me and my family don’t have the money to properly send her off so if you can, can you please donate some money so you can help us send my mom off,” he said in the video on Tuesday, Nov. 2, adding a GoFundMe link to his post. “We are looking to raise funds for Nenobia Washington aka BK TidalWave going home service. Nenobia brought laughter and tears, she was loved by many so we are going to make it as nice as we can for her,” the description on the GoFundMe page reads. “Once we have secured a location we will set the plans up so the people that would like to show their respects can.” The crowdsourcing page has already surpassed the $30,000 goal.
Social media users who have been keeping up with Washington since her viral fame in 2015 were shocked to hear about her passing. They reacted to the loss by sharing video compilations of the hilarious Instagram Lives she hosted over the years. Some wrote heartfelt comments online thanking her for being a source of joy and inspiration by being unapologetically herself online. Washington became a viral sensation after appearing on an episode of HotNewHipHop’s Word On The Street in April 2015, in which they were interviewing people about Jay-Z’s then-new streaming service Tidal. There is still nothing on the internet that’s more New York than that six-minute interaction.
The reporter was talking to someone else when Washington interrupted them and stole the whole show in an instant. She was a natural at commanding everyone’s attention, and she stood out for proudly repping her Brooklyn roots loud enough for everyone to hear. “Let me show you how Brooklyn I am!” she said at one point in the video, and later proudly revealed a tattoo honoring her beloved borough on her chest. Washington was unintentionally funny. She was simply being herself but the way she expressed herself was so deeply genuine and familiar to born-and-raised New Yorkers, and her energy made it difficult for anyone to look away. And that moment immortalized her.
The kind of authenticity that she possessed is hard to come by, especially online. She was raw and real and you knew by watching that interview that this is who she was wherever she went. That level of realness remained once she began to grow a following on social media, across platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Washington spoke her mind on Instagram about the things she liked and didn’t, especially when it came to music and artists, including Minaj, Ariana Grande, Doja Cat, and Lady Gaga.
Her fans have been compiling videos of her best moments and some of them start off with her dissing celebrities only to later share videos of herself enjoying their music. She had a deep love for Doja’s “Cyber Sex” and repeatedly sang along to it during her Instagram Lives. It happened so often that some fans on Twitter credit BK TidalWave for the song’s success—which is ironic considering she once called the rapper “trash” during a Live.
Unlike other viral stars, Washington didn’t turn her Instagram fame into a lucrative career or business deals like Jake Paul, TikTok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio or Addison Rae. Instead, she seemed content with the small community she was building and celebrated every milestone she hit with her Instagram follower count. In an era where influencers only share perfectly curated content, her no-frills videos managed to get thousands of people to tune in any time she went live. Despite people’s obsession with perfection on social media, she was proof that people still crave organic, unfiltered, off-the-wall content.
She also represented a part of New York culture that is currently fading away. Cities like New York are rapidly changing, and the borough pride that people born and raised in NYC possess is quickly becoming a thing of the past thanks to gentrification and transplants taking over every corner of the city. BK TidalWave represented the real New York. The way she spoke, the way she moved, the way she walked, her accent, and her devotion to Brooklyn’s greatest like Hov and Biggie perfectly encapsulates all that real New Yorkers are, and what outsiders envision New Yorkers to be like. Out of any other viral star, she deserved the opportunity to host her own shows, podcasts or to be given a bigger spotlight than the one she had. But even without that, she still became a legend in her own right in NYC and on social media. That video will continue to live on as one of the greatest, most entertaining interviews in pop culture history. And in a city full of lights, New York has just lost one of its brightest.
