The Rapid Rise and Sudden Fall of 6ix9ine
15-19 minutes
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6ix9ine performing in Milan, Italy, in September. The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, has been arrested on federal racketeering charges.CreditMarco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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6ix9ine performing in Milan, Italy, in September. The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, has been arrested on federal racketeering charges.CreditCreditMarco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For the last two years, the Brooklyn rapper 6ix9ine has used social media to build a larger-than-life reputation as a proud public menace, a self-described “super villain” whose mere presence seemed to attract drama and gun violence.
That persona was an act, he said, but it put him on a path to hip-hop stardom. To gain even more credibility with his online audience, he partnered a year ago with Brooklyn men the police say are affiliated with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods street gang.
Now 6ix9ine, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, has been
arrested on federal racketeering charges, along with several of his former business associates. And though Mr. Hernandez, 22, often seemed invincible during his turbulent first year in music, the charges that he participated in narcotics trafficking, shootings and violent robberies — some of which he live-streamed to his massive Instagram following — could spell the end of his once-meteoric career.
The arrest also may have saved his life: Days before the men were indicted together, Mr. Hernandez, who had recently tried to split from the gang, was warned by the F.B.I. that his one-time associates may try to kill him, his lawyer said.
It was a fittingly dramatic twist for a young artist who at times seemed determined to sabotage his own rise. How Mr. Hernandez went from a lost Brooklyn teen, to a viral social media star, to an accused violent member of the Nine Trey Bloods is a cautionary tale for hip-hop, particularly as the genre scouts its next stars from the internet.
Mr. Hernandez’s rapid ascent — cataloged daily online — was tailor made for a new generation of web-savvy fans hooked on nonmusical content. The rowdy, scream-along tracks that 6ix9ine (pronounced six-nine) did make were more a symptom of his online success than the impetus for his fame: Mr. Hernandez only began rapping after he had achieved a taste of internet notoriety, and he appeared to pursue gang life to bolster his musical endeavors.
It was an inflammatory approach in a rap business stuck between an old school of hip-hop in which street cred still matters and a new wave of artists for whom clout on internet platforms has become a pathway to success. For some rap stars, gang life was an unavoidable means of survival, and music offered a way out. For Mr. Hernandez, who also goes by the name Tekashi69, it was reversed: Gang affiliations lent authenticity to a rap career rooted more in sensationalism than in biography or in raw talent.
For his critics, 6ix9ine represented the worst-case scenario of millennial hip-hop: a digital brand built around bravado and violence, with little notion that the act could have real-life repercussions.
“Social media creates this illusion that there are no consequences for your actions,” said the rap radio personality Charlamagne tha God, the host of the syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club.” “In the last year, you’ve gotten three clear-cut examples of what this can lead to: Tekashi69 is currently incarcerated,
XXXTentacion got murdered and
Lil Peep died of a drug overdose.”
He added: “All of these things that you all are glorifying, they’ve been killing our community for years. Now it just looks different on social media.”
In the courtroom, where Mr. Hernandez has repeatedly appeared since 2015, he has argued that the gangland character of 6ix9ine was just that — an exaggerated artistic act. In reality, Mr. Hernandez said, he was “Danny,” a nice kid from Brooklyn, who had struck gold by stoking beef and acting tough.
“The scumbag persona is just for shock value,” he said.
His lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, has contended that the associates who once lent 6ix9ine muscle and credibility were the real criminals in the picture. On Monday, Mr. Hernandez pleaded not guilty.
“An entertainer who portrays a ‘gangster image’ to promote his music does not make him a member of an enterprise,” Mr. Lazzaro said in a statement. “Mr. Hernandez became a victim of this enterprise and later took steps by firing employees.”
It may have been too late.
‘I didn’t really want to be a rapper or whatever’
Danny Hernandez was a first-generation New Yorker, born in 1996 to a Mexican immigrant mother and a Puerto Rican father. A difficult childhood was upended at 13, when his father was murdered a block from the family’s home.
“My pops died in eighth grade, and I just started bugging in school,” he told the No Jumper podcast, a popular hip-hop show, last year. “I was 13. I was waiting for my pops to come back home, and he never came.” Mr. Hernandez soon dropped out of school.
He and his brother worked odd jobs to support their mother and eventually turned to selling drugs on the street, he said. Across his teenage years, as he fell in and out of trouble with the law, Mr. Hernandez began inventing an alter ego inspired by Japanese anime: Tekashi69.
Prosecutors say security camera video near Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan shows a violent robbery that 6ix9ine participated in.CreditU.S. Attorney's Office, via Associated Press
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Prosecutors say security camera video near Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan shows a violent robbery that 6ix9ine participated in.CreditU.S. Attorney's Office, via Associated Press
With brash stunts and offensive overtures, Mr. Hernandez amassed a curious legion of followers. His first viral “moment,” he recalled, was an Instagram photo of himself on a city street, wearing a robelike sweatshirt emblazoned with racial and sexual slurs. He eventually had the number 69, with its sexual connotation, tattooed on his body more than 200 times.
Though long a fan of hip-hop and heavy metal, which he would later combine in a compelling package, it was only after 6ix9ine achieved a fan base on Instagram, where he eventually collected more than 15 million followers, that he pivoted to music.
“I didn’t really want to be a rapper or whatever,” he told the No Jumper podcast. “I just thought of making music because everybody was like: ‘You look mad cool.’”
But his relentless search for shocking material soon landed him in trouble.
Just before his 19th birthday, Mr. Hernandez was arrested on charges of using a child in a sexual performance. He eventually pleaded guilty. According to a statement he made to the police in March 2015, Mr. Hernandez met a man at a recording studio who seemed to have “a lot of money” and followed him to a gathering in Harlem.
There, the group filmed a video with a 13-year-old girl that was posted to Mr. Hernandez’s Instagram, in which other men had sex with her while Mr. Hernandez touched her and mugged for the camera. He later told the police he believed the girl was 19.
“I was doing it for my image,” he said.
As part of his plea deal, Mr. Hernandez agreed to stay out of trouble for two years, get his high school equivalency diploma, attend therapy, and avoid posting any sexual or violent images to social media.
It was after this brush with the law that Mr. Hernandez turned increasingly to rap.
By spring 2017, 6ix9ine’s cartoonishly extreme music videos and punk persona had caught the eye of the young rapper Trippie Redd, who
collaborated with 6ix9ine and introduced his music to Elliot Grainge, the founder of a small Los Angeles-based label, 10k Projects. (A representative for the label declined to comment.)
By that summer, Mr. Hernandez was on a relatively conventional career path. He had retained an experienced manager and the same entertainment lawyer as
XXXTentacion. He had signed with Mr. Grainge’s company to distribute his music and booked a tour of Eastern Europe, where his YouTube videos had already made him a cult figure.
Had Mr. Hernandez stayed on that track, he may have avoided the precipice on which his career — and life — now balances. Instead, Mr. Hernandez returned to Brooklyn after his tour with a pile of cash and struck up a partnership with a local member of the Bloods.
Pulled up with the stick out there on IG.
. Then came all the FeFe, I never was the manager; and me and Bix like Suge and Pac shyt
