Singer Stella Lefty’s billionaire dad fuels ‘nepo baby’ controversy

Stella Lefty has gone viral twice this year – first for her music, and now for the debate surrounding it.

The 24-year-old singer's pop-country single "Boston" has climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, collected hundreds of millions of streams and helped propel her debut album released on Aug 21, "Long Way Home," into the spotlight. Lefty has also earned two MTV Video Music Award nominations.

But as her audience has grown, so has scrutiny of both her family background and the origins of her biggest hit.

Lefty, born Stella Lefkofsky, is the daughter of Eric Lefkofsky, the Groupon co-founder and Tempus AI CEO whose fortune is estimated at $4.8 billion, according to Forbes.

That connection has made Lefty the latest artist to be tagged online as a "nepo baby" and "industry plant," terms critics often use to question whether a performer’s rise was driven by talent, family connections or financial resources.

In Lefty's case, the discussion is not conventional Hollywood nepotism: Her father is a businessman, not a recording artist or music executive. The criticism instead centers on the significant advantages that enormous family wealth can provide, including time, training and the freedom to pursue a creative…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/entertainment/