Whenever you’re of a sure age, it could possibly appear not possible to maintain up with the ever-expanding lineup of younger hip-hop hitmakers.
Nevertheless, there’s one face within the rap viewers that you have in all probability seen sneaking into your feed extra instances than another recently. And it has a complete bunch of tattoos on it.
With iridescent hair and the third most well-known facial tattoos this aspect of Mike Tyson and Lil Wayne, 6ix9ine (aka Tekashi69) has one of many music business’s most distinctive seems. The controversial, usually troubled “scream rap” artist has additionally turn out to be one of many business’s most constant headlines, most lately for an incident at a South Florida gymnasium during which the rapper was assaulted and brutally overwhelmed by a bunch of males and hurried . to a hospital.
So who on this planet is 6ix9nine and why is his stage title just like your on-line banking password? Our clarification, beneath.
His starting
6ix9ine, né Daniel Hernandez, was born in 1986 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to a Mexican mom and a Puerto Rican father. A star baseball participant in his youth, he attracted curiosity from main league scouts. He grew up a religious Christian, though he barely knew his organic father, who struggled with a heroin habit. His stepfather was shot lifeless in 2010 a stone’s throw from their house. The homicide traumatized Hernandez, who acted at college and was expelled in eighth grade. His household lived largely in poverty after the dying of his stepfather.
His explosion
Hernandez began rapping in 2012 and launched music in 2014. His first tune launch ? The expectedly strange step quantity “69”. Invoice and Ted’s favourite tune would quickly turn out to be a part of his official stage title due to sure, the sexual place, but in addition the mirrored ying-yang image. Hernandez adopted “Tekashi” as a nod to the favored character in Katsuhiro Otomo’s well-known 1988 anime favourite Akira.
In collaboration with Slovak label FCK THEM, Tekashi69 attracted consideration on Soundcloud and social media over the following few years for its aggressive cadence and colourful look.
His profession took off in 2017 with the discharge of his first industrial single, “Gummo” (a tribute to Concord Korine’s insanely bizarre 1997 cult movie), a diss monitor geared toward former collaborators Trippie Redd and SosMula. Within the accompanying video, the rapper was flanked by about 100 9 Trey Gangsta Blood gang members in pink bandanas in entrance of Brownstones in Brooklyn. The tune peaked at quantity 12 within the US Billboard Scorching 100, and the video has already been considered 429 million instances.
6ix9ine adopted up “Gummo” with two extra singles, “Kooda” and “Keke” (that includes Fetty Wap and A Boogie wit da Hoodie), all of which might be on his well-liked mixtape day69, launched in February 2018. 5 months later, the rapper launched the only “Fefe”, which featured the red-hot Nicki Minaj overproduced by Murda Beatz and climbed all the way in which to No. 3 on the Scorching 100, finally crossing the one billion view mark on Youtube. In November, 6ix9ine’s debut album was launched, dummy boywhich additionally featured options from Kanye West, Lil Child and Tory Lanez, and was licensed platinum.
Largely resulting from a world of authorized bother (see beneath), 6ix9ine has solely launched one full-length album since 2020 TattleTales. It included the singles “Gooba”, “Yaya”, “Punani” and “Trollz”, which once more featured Minaj and have become a No. 1 hit.
His controversies and arrest
Hernandez was in jail as a minor for assault and promoting heroin, and his issues escalated nearly as quickly as his music profession took off.
In 2015, he pleaded responsible to felony costs of utilizing a toddler in a sexual efficiency after three movies involving a 13-year-old lady surfaced. The rapper denied figuring out she was underage and entered right into a plea deal.
The 12 months 2018 was a doozy. On June 2, Chicago drill rapper Chief Keef was shot at outdoors a New York Metropolis lodge, to which Hernandez later pleaded responsible to paying $20,000 to orchestrate. On July 12, he was arrested for allegedly strangling a 16-year-old in a Houston mall (the fees had been finally dropped). On July 22, he was kidnapped, overwhelmed and robbed shortly after capturing the video for ‘Fefe’.
And on November 18, only a week earlier than the discharge of dummy boyHernandez was arrested on federal racketeering costs, together with conspiracy to commit homicide, and confronted as much as 47 years in jail. In February 2019, the rapper entered a plea deal and testified in opposition to 9 Trey gang members. He was sentenced to only two years in jail, however was launched even sooner in April 2020 resulting from COVID considerations given his pre-existing bronchial asthma situation; he served the remainder of his sentence beneath home arrest till August.
Whereas in jail, Hernandez admitted to seven years of home violence in opposition to his ex-girlfriend (and the mom of the oldest of his two daughters), Sara Molina.
A number of rappers have convicted Hernandez for cooperating with prosecutors within the 9 Trey case, and he has had an extended record of feuds with individuals within the business, together with Meek Mill, King Von, 50 Cent, YG, Future, Lil Durk, Lil Treese, Lil Tjay and possibly one or two different Lils.
Three suspects had been arrested this week for alleged assault and theft.
Story initially printed March 23, 2023; up to date March 31, 2023.
