Last Friday, rapper Tay-K’s sister, Kayla Beverly, shared a video on Instagram of her winding up a conversation with someone saved in her phone as “Taymor’s Attorney.”
After the call ends, she turns to a woman — presumably her and the rapper’s (real name Taymor McIntyre) mother — and says, “Your son coming home!”
The video sent shockwaves. McIntyre is currently serving not one, but two decades-long prison sentences (though they run concurrently, not consecutively): 55 years on a murder charge stemming from a 2016 home invasion in Mansfield, Texas that turned deadly; and 80 years for a murder in a fast food parking lot in San Antonio the following year.
So how is someone scheduled to be in prison for the rest of the century on the verge of “coming home”? Is his sister right, or does she have false hope? We dug deep into the details of both cases in an attempt to come up with an answer.
Before we go any further, a note. Complex repeatedly reached out to both Beverly and to Tay-K’s attorney John T. Hunter (it is likely, though unconfirmed at this point, that Hunter is the man on the phone in Beverly’s video), with questions about the current state of the rapper’s legal battles. Neither of them have responded.
First, a refresher. Tay-K is an East Arlington, Texas rapper who exploded into public consciousness almost a decade ago as a 17-year-old with his song “The Race.” The song had great lyrics, a catchy beat, and an almost unbelievable backstory.
After being arrested for the aforementioned 2016 home invasion, Tay-K, out on bond, was set to attend a hearing about whether he’d be charged as an adult. If he was, he might face the death penalty.
So he sent a tweet, cut off his ankle monitor, and absconded. While on the run, he wrote and shot a video for a song about his situation, “The Race.” The song’s opening: "Fuck a beat, I was tryin' to beat a case/But I ain't beat that case—bitch, I did the race."
On the day he was finally caught and arrested in New Jersey, the video dropped.
Instantly, the teen who rapped about being on the run while actually being on the run became a cause célèbre. The track was remixed by Lil Yachty, and McIntyre got shout-outs from artists including Lil Bibby and XXXTentacion.
The ensuing years were one legal loss after another. In 2019, Tay-K was found guilty of murder in the home invasion case and sentenced to 55 years in prison. He was also found guilty of three counts of aggravated robbery in that case, but those shorter sentences run concurrently to the 55-year one because he was a juvenile at the time of the crime.
The San Antonio case dragged on until last year, when McIntyre was found guilty of murder there as well, and sentenced to 80 years.
For the rapper, currently locked up at the John B. Connally Unit in Kennedy, TX, the convictions weren’t the end of the story. He appealed the decision on the home invasion case, but in early 2021 the Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas affirmed the initial judgment. Two years later, his attempt for a writ of habeas corpus in that case (a sort of last-ditch effort to introduce new evidence — details here) was also turned down.
The fight over the San Antonio case, however, is still going on. Tay-K filed an appeal in May, 2025. His main argument has to do with one of his alleged accomplices in the murder, Joana Reyes. Reyes took a plea deal, copping ultimately to a count of tampering with evidence. She testified that McIntyre fired the fatal shot that killed photographer Mark Saldivar.
Tay-K’s appeal hinges on Reyes’ other run-ins with the law, beyond the San Antonio incident. It claims that prosecutors misrepresented Reyes’ criminal record, lying about or denying past incidents while portraying her as a credible witness. This, the appeal goes on, left the jury with a “total misimpression” of her credibility.
Per appeals court records, that case is still ongoing, with Tay-K’s brief laying out his side of things due on July 1.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice records show that McIntyre is currently not scheduled for release.
A spokeswoman for the department told Complex via email that she “cannot speak to the context of [Beverly’s] video,” but that McIntyre “is in our system and does not have a release date.”
“He is not eligible for parole until 08/07/2049 and his sentence does not expire until 08/08/2099,” she continued.
The end result of all this is that Kayla Beverly’s comment last week that Tay-K is “coming home” remains a mystery. Nothing in any available record of his appeal or other cases indicates that a return home is imminent. We’ll all have to continue, as we have for nearly ten years, to keep our eyes on the now-25-year-old man who briefly had us all enthralled with the idea, and the sound, of being on the run.
