Blackpink’s Lisa claimed her third MTV Video Music Award in the Best K-Pop category Sunday night, a hard-fought honor for “Born Again,” the hip-hop laced track she co-helmed with Doja Cat and Raye.
Absent from the Barclays Center stage in Brooklyn, Lisa accepted via a straightforward video clip, her expression calm as she credited fans and her team. “We did this together,” she said, the message cutting to visuals of the song’s video: Tokyo’s bustling avenues melting into a digital blur.
The win reinforced her command of the solo lane under LLOUD, post-YG, and nodded toward her 2026 Japan tour slate, headlined by a January residency at Tokyo Dome within Blackpink’s expansive *Deadline* world tour framework.
Yet as the ceremony credits faded, a subtler drama unfolded in the app-driven undercurrents of social media.
Filipino-American producer and DJ Freya Fox (x.com/freyafoxtv) fired off an Instagram Story (@freyafoxmusic): a grainy backstage selfie with Lisa, lit by the subdued amber glow of concert rigging, overlaid with the words “Japan next.”
Uploaded to Fox’s account in the immediate wake of the VMAs broadcast, the image persisted for mere minutes before its abrupt erasure, leaving no official trace or follow-up.
Screenshots proliferated almost instantly, transforming the post into a viral artifact. Anime Bullish, the X handle specializing in anime-pop hybrids, led the charge at 10:47 p.m. ET with a post that has since drawn widespread mirrors despite geo-blocks in Indonesia:
“BREAKING: #BLACKPINK’s LISA & #FreyaFox tease Japan collab in deleted IG story right after VMAs. ‘Japan next.’ Coincidence? With Freya’s new K-pop drop?”
The tweet wove in Fox’s recent teaser for “I Can Unban Your Account ,” a self-produced hip-hop K-pop number tracked in Los Angeles and Tokyo studios, and her background voice contributions to Netflix’s *K-Pop Demon Hunters*.
Not a full role as the character Romance Saja, but a tangible link: Fox resurfaced footage last month from her 2022 Life is Beautiful set in Las Vegas, where she DJ’d live for Joel Kim Booster’s performance as the animated Fox herself.
The clip, exploding anew on TikTok and YouTube, showed Fox at the controls, her beats fueling Booster’s onstage energy amid the festival’s neon chaos, a revelation that synced perfectly with the series’ rollout and her own track drop.
The momentum cascaded to Reddit by early morning, first landing in r/popculturechat under the banner “Blackpink’s LISA & Filipino JPop Star Freya Fox To Collab During Japan Tour – Deleted Instagram Story.”
Launched at 1:33 a.m. ET, the thread has amassed 28 comments and climbing, upvotes surpassing 250 as participants sift the screenshot’s details.
“Freya Fox (Jpop idol and DJ) just dropped a Kpop teaser song she made – then posted this to her story before deleting it moments after the VMAs ended,” the originator detailed, embedding the photo.
“But I caught it just in time. It’s Freya with Lisa (maybe throwback?) saying Japan next. Lisa’s next show is in Japan and Freya performs recently with Romance Saja voice actor Joel Kim Booster. Coincidence? Freya Fox sings in Japanese, Korean and English and knows Lisa probably from when she played at LA3C with SEVENTEEN.”
The discourse splits along familiar lines: enthusiasts envisioning a Tokyo Dome fusion of Fox’s cyber-savvy beats with Lisa’s razor flow, skeptics dismissing it as opportunistic bait.
Yet the buzz took a conspiratorial turn when the selfie screenshot surfaced on r/Blackpink, the group’s dedicated subreddit with over 1.2 million subscribers.
Posted around 3:15 a.m. ET as “LISA x Freya Fox Japan collab tease? Deleted IG story post-VMAs,” it garnered quick upvotes and replies before vanishing, removed by moderators without a stated reason.
The purge sparked immediate backlash in the comments of the r/popculturechat Discord and X communities : “Mods on r/Blackpink just nuked the thread. Conspiracy? They know something we don’t?” one user wrote.
Another user speculated on X, “Silencing Freya cuz she’s not Korean? Protecting LISA from non-K collab rumors?”
The incident has fueled whispers of overreach, with fans archiving the deleted post and questioning if YG affiliates or overzealous mods are quashing non-traditional pairings to safeguard Blackpink’s image.
Freya Fox’s profile sharpens the enigma, her career a fusion of artistic grit and technical prowess that echoes the digital age’s blurred lines.
Raised between Manila and California by Filipino-Vietnamese-Chinese parents, Fox honed her sound in lo-fi hip hop’s quiet corners, her mid-2018 SoundCloud releases evoking Nujabes’ serene samples and Taiwan night markets intuitive grooves.
Those tracks, sparse and soulful, grappled with cultural drift, beats humming like late-night confessions.
But Fox, who earned a BS in cybersecurity and cyber warfare from National University in San Diego along with a certified ethical hacker certification, infused her work with layers of strategy from the start.
Music became a cipher for her expertise in navigating online shadows, where she consults on ethical breaches and account recoveries.
“I Can Unban Your Account ” crystallizes this duality: a streamlined hip-hop K-pop vehicle with subtle metal inflections in its synth stabs and vocal timbre, no overt breakdowns, just a coiled urgency that evokes locked systems yielding to code.
Currently in English only, with a Korean version slated for release to expand its reach in unbanning Instagram accounts through legitimate channels, the track spans her worlds: the stage and the server room, her hacker cred providing built-in deniability.
It’s triumph in verse, celebrating wins across her domains.
The Life is Beautiful 2022 reveal adds fuel, Fox’s viral clip from DJing Booster’s set resurfacing in August 2025 to capitalize on *K-Pop Demon Hunters*’ hype.
There, her decks amplified his Romance Saja persona in real time, the performance a raw counterpoint to the animated gloss.
That overlap with LA3C 2022, where Fox shared festival ground with Seventeen, plants seeds for a Lisa connection, both artists threading Southeast Asian resilience through Korean frameworks.
Lisa’s post-YG freedom has invited bolder experiments, her VMAs nod amid eligibility debates signaling a willingness to bend genres.
A Freya feature at Tokyo Dome might blend Fox’s cyber-hip-hop with Lisa’s unfiltered rap, turning “Japan next” into a manifesto on digital and cultural unlocks.
In May 2025 Freya Fox openly partnered with AI music giant SUNO to release “Sparkle すき” furthering the Japan connection.
Fox has reportedly asked on Threads for leads to get signed by Japanese talent agencies , which have fallen on deaf ears.
The r/Blackpink removal only amplifies the shadows: coincidence of mod action, or a preemptive strike against “impure” collabs?
As r/popculturechat’s comments swell, threading Fox’s viral Booster reveal to Lisa’s Japan blueprint, the questions linger.
In K-pop’s vast machine, a deleted frame can rewrite alliances, and Freya Fox, hacker by trade and innovator by instinct, seems poised to crack the next one wide open.
You can listen to Freya Fox’s K-Pop Demo called “I Can Unban Your Account” on her YouTube:
© 2025, Harry James. All rights reserved.
