Sunday Evening (Prelude)
The Who:
The What, Where, and When
For science, I will be exclusively listening to Tekashi 6ix9ine’s music for a single work week, starting at 9:00 AM on Monday morning and ending at 5:00 PM on Friday evening. I normally listen to music I enjoy whenever I commute, work, shower, work out, and sometimes when I sleep, but this week I will not have that privilege. I will not be allowed to listen to any other music at any point; if I were given the choice, I wouldn’t be listening to 6ix9ine, and none of us would learn anything. I will be recording my thoughts in this article for you on a daily basis, sort of like a diary. There will be a lot of links, it’s meant to be sort of interactive. If you think this idea sounds stupid, it’s because you probably have better judgment than me.
The Why:
I was thinking about 6ix9ine last week, after that video leaked of him getting jumped in the bathroom of an LA Fitness, when a rather disturbing question popped into my head: What does it feel like to be a 6ix9ine fan? That is, what does it feel like to get a notification whenever 6ix9ine releases a new music video, to comment under said music video, to enthusiastically tell others about it, to defend 6ix9ine’s music, to defend 6ix9ine’s actions, to buy 6ix9ine’s merchandise, to put up a poster with 6ix9ine’s colorful little face on it, to genuinely enjoy being unironically interested in the music and the persona that 6ix9ine puts out into the world? I cannot think of a more obviously unlikable, indefensible, unrelatable artist within the industry, someone who’s existence stands as more of an accidental, obliviously infuriating mockery of hip-hop music and culture than him. For any coverage I do see that is in any way favorable of the man, it is almost entirely ironic, those participating listening to his music for the purpose of making fun of the ridiculousness of it all. Within any subsection of hip-hop, 6ix9ine exists only as an unwelcome intrusion, facing criticism for snitching on the Nine Trey Bloods gang that he initially joined for notoriety, for taking much of his style from his contemporaries, and for generally starting issues with other rappers whenever he gets the chance(don’t worry, I’ll discuss these issues later); for whatever amount of 6ix9ine exists outside of that absurd, controversial hip-hop persona, the man that is Daniel Hernandez would make you wish that his 6ix9ine persona was all that he was: Hernandez has picked up an unbelievable amount of charges and controversies, including both a guilty plea to a felony count of the use of a child in a sexual performance to a guilty plea to ordering the (thankfully unsuccessful) shooting of Chicago rapper Chief Keef. What I want to find out is who, upon seeing all of that mess, continues to listen to this man. I want to experience what a week of that die-hard 6ix9ine fan would look like, to force myself to eat, drink, work, and sleep to the sounds of GUMMO and BILLY. I want to figure out how someone can like a man I see as being completely unlikable. As it stands right now, I think I understand this type of music fan the least, and I am signing myself up for whatever this is to attempt to bridge that gap. Beyond that initial goal, I want to let whatever I feel on a day to day basis determine what else I talk about, to let the sheer exhaustion and resentment guide my way.
The How:
I’m pretty obsessed with keeping track of the music that I listen to, whether that be how I organize my playlists, the private stats about my listening habits that I can see on services like Last.fm or Spotistats(those are both my main account links in case you wanted to poke around there), and the public stats on things like Spotify Wrapped. I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t be extremely embarrassed if 6ix9ine showed up on that Wrapped list, and I don’t think I’d pursue this specific topic if it meant that it did. I also don’t want to allow myself to cheat by listening to other music over the next few days, whether that be by accidentally playing something else in my routine state of waking-up-delusion, or by intentionally trying to give myself a break. To fix both of these issues, I created a new Spotify account with a free trial that exclusively has every single 6ix9ine song saved, and nothing else. While I might listen to his non-album singles later and maybe his features, I’ll mostly be sticking to his three albums. While I do not want to give 6ix9ine the streaming revenue from this ordeal, Spotify already doesn’t pay very much and artists make most of their money from merch and tours anyways. I think whatever negative impact giving a deeply problematic figure a few pennies in streaming revenue will be outweighed by an in-depth article that is extremely critical of that problematic figure. There will likely be places where I can’t avoid other, non-6ix9ine music, like in college dining halls, coffee shops, a friend’s room, and other public or semi-public spaces. I’ll do my best to limit my time in these spaces until the work week is over, but I have no guarantees. Regardless, I will not be choosing the music I listen to in or out of these spaces, so I don’t see this as an issue.
I’m not excited for this week. I hope it goes by fast, but I know it won’t. I’m listening to my favorite artists while I still can. If, for whatever reason, you have read this far and decided to keep reading, I appreciate your attention but I want to inform you that I will be using the rest of this article to try to make you feel the same levels of frustration and disappointment that I am going to feel. Feel free to listen along, although I really wouldn’t if I were you. With a great deal of regret, I present to you: The 6ix9ine Work Week.
Monday Morning
Starting was a lot easier said than done. I genuinely had a hard time getting out of bed because I knew I’d be taking a silent shower, as I wouldn’t want to subject my roommate and suitemates to any of this. It hurt a little to log out of my main Spotify account and into the new one. With that being said, Day69: Graduation Day isn’t *all* bad, so I decided to start with it. My patience still exists, so I’ll try to enjoy what I can while I can.
Today is laundry day, so after I got out of bed to GOTTI, I gathered my dirty clothes and towels, put in my earbuds, and walked my laundry down. I figured I might as well start the album front to back, so, starting with BILLY, I ran through the whole thing as I did laundry and went to go grab coffee. None of those songs are good songs to walk to or to do chores to, in case you were wondering. You and I already know that 6ix9ine is a clout chaser, he wants that spotlight. His music is designed to be a topic, something to be talked about on how controversial or crazy or absurd it is, not as music. I don’t want to talk about 6ix9ine, partially because that is exactly what he wants to happen, but mostly because designating this as a topic worthy of discussion degrades the value of discussion itself, further discouraging meaningful conversation about those things that are, in fact, meaningful. I want to talk about my process of gaining a greater understanding of 6ix9ine’s audience, but to do that by necessity I have to talk about 6ix9ine. For the moment, I’ll bite on that bait, and I will talk.
Despite the unoriginality, the invasiveness, the sad attempts to tie himself to gang culture, or any other low hanging critique I can think of off the top of my head, the instrumentals on Day69 hit pretty hard. A quick look at the production credits shows why, including most notably Pi’erre Bourne, along with a few smaller producers who made beats for Drake, Meek Mill, Ski Mask The Slump God, The Flatbush Zombies, and Juice WRLD to name a few artists. If the beats were to be kept the same, and 6ix9ine were to be replaced by a more reputable artist, this project would probably be pretty good. Disregarding any critique of 6ix9ine’s lyrical content, his delivery and flow are also actually pretty good considering the context. He has a lot of energy, something that these rough beats deserve. If you had absolutely no understanding of any of the existing rappers he is taking that delivery from(Zillakami and Sosmula in particular), I’d understand why you might enjoy this to some extent. It would also help your enjoyment of the song if you didn’t speak any English at all. As much as I want to believe that all of his die hard fans are all having innocent fun, paying no attention to what he is saying, I’m pretty sure a lot of the appeal directly comes from the lyrics.
Speaking of, the lyrics are bad. The lyrics are really bad. I’ll just compile a few here for you to scroll through, as I’m not sure I could do them justice. Don’t think that this is an exhaustive list, and that since other lines aren’t brought up that they aren’t equally bad if not worse. I just couldn’t be bothered at this point. I’ve listened through this one project five times now and I might be done for the day after this.
These n***** say they heard of me, I ain’t heard of you
Get the f*** up out my f***** face, ‘fore I murder you
- BILLY
N***** iffy, uh, blicky got the stiffy, uh
Got the blicky, uh, drum, it hold fifty, uh
- GUMMO
In the hood, you a rat, you a dub, n****, fuck n****
I stay with the blicky, glttt-pow, are you dumb n****?
- RONDO
I think that that one’s kind of funny, but only because Hernandez faced up to 47 years in the trial of the Nine Trey Bloods, which he responded to by testifying against nearly all of the other defendants in the trial and reducing his sentence to only two years. If anyone were to be a rat, it would be him. All of these lyrics are vapid posturing, but this one stood out in particular because of how provably wrong it was.
You a fumble, n****, you don’t want it with my huddle, n****
Under pressure, you’ll crumble, n****
- 93
Again, in his trial, 6ix9ine very much crumbled.
Pull up to the party off a molly (Off a what?)
Pull up to the party in a ‘Rari (Skrrt, skrrt!)
Heard it’s n***** in there actin’ rowdy (Actin’ rowdy!)
So I’m ’bout to go do somethin’ ’bout it (Somethin’ about it)
Ima pull up with the .30 stick, with the coolin’ kit
- MOOKY
There is so little substance in any of these songs; it’s all so repetitive, so predictable. The ad libs aren’t great either. There isn’t anything specifically bad about MOOKY’s lines, just that this is how pretty much every song sounds. He has money, deals and does drugs, has expensive things, and is a member of a violent gang. I don’t have any problems with how the lyrics are “explicit” or “violent” or any other adjective a Fox News anchor would describe this as. I have a problem with how painfully simple all of his lyrics about these topics are. They can and have been written about in many interesting ways by significantly better rappers and artists, and 6ix9ine feels like he’s done enough by simply bringing these topics up.
There is something especially sisyphean about reaching the end of Day69 in this exact context. An album is supposed to be listened to in a single session, and then it stops. The album doesn’t stop here. By this point, Last.fm says that I’ve streamed 78 6ix9ine songs. When GOTTI ends, BILLY starts up again, just as the boulder rolls back down the hill just before Sisyphus pushes it to the top. My version of having that boulder finally stay at the top is one where GOTTI ends and there is just silence. You could say it isn’t fair to listen in such an isolated, repetitive context, but I’d gladly do this with any of my other favorite artists. To me, a work week of Denzel Curry or Frank Ocean or Mac Miller is just that, a work week. I don’t write whenever I listen to artists like them because it makes sense for me to listen to them; it doesn’t make sense for me to listen to 6ix9ine. The reason that I have to repeat Day69 is because right past the Day69 hill sit the DUMMY BOY and TattleTales hills, each of which are significantly larger than the Day69 hill. 6ix9ine only has three major albums, and there are currently 97 hours sitting between me and my release time. I have to repeat albums, it’s just a matter of which ones I prioritize. If the boulder has to roll down any of the hills a set number of times, I’d prefer it if it rolled down the smaller hill a lot more. From what I remember, DUMMY BOY and TattleTales are terrible in comparison to Day69, so I really have to ration here. If I exhaust Day69 early, I’ll be able to come back to it later in the week without dreading it as much. Once that boulder stays at the top of the third hill on Friday, I’m not sure whether I’ll prefer to listen to something else or if I’ll be so exhausted that I’ll prefer silence.
If it needs to be mentioned, 6ix9ine looks absolutely ridiculous, but I don’t think that his appearance alone is grounds for criticizing him. What I do think is grounds for critique is how that look is an over-extension of certain styles within the intersection between hip hop culture and gang culture, as if to say this were the final boss of rappers with shitty tattoos. I have a hard time believing that he got those tattoos and that hair and his rainbow grill for himself. It seems like he approaches his look and his persona in the same way that he approaches his lyrics and hip hop as a whole, as an unwelcome outsider with no respect for convention or culture. Several of the hooks on this album are direct interpolations of previous hip-hop songs, with BILLY ripping from RondoNumbaNine’s “Hang Wit Me”, BUBA ripping from XXXTENTACION and Ski Mask The Slump God’s “Take a Step Back”, and MOOKY ripping from Lil Jon’s “Damn”. Usually, I’d consider these to be samples/interpolations made in homage, but 6ix9ine doesn’t really have much of his own style or substance anyways; when he barely has anything of his own, bringing in something from someone else feels like he is running out of material already, which he is. Hernandez seems to only be in it for the controversy and the publicity, and it is absolutely working.
Anyways – The album has 5 features, those being Tory Lanez, Young Thug, Fetty Wap, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and Offset. I have musical and non-musical problems with a few of these, and I’m only really a fan of Young Thug and Offset. That being said, all 5 of these were a breath of fresh air, with all of their styles giving me the brief break that I need to rethink doing this project. I just wish the features were a bit more spread out, as the album gets really slow and repetitive in the middle and definitely could have used a feature as a wake up call there. As I said in the beginning, despite coming close, Day69 is not ALL bad. Somehow, there were a few parts I genuinely really enjoyed. I think BILLY and GUMMO are alright, with solid beats and alright deliveries. BILLY also has a few bars I thought were pretty good for 6ix9ine’s standards:
These n***** lookin’ for me, you could hit my jack
I done dropped my address, y’all know where 6ix9ine at
I don’t flock, yeah, nine to his back like Ibaka
Baka, not nice, with the f***** choppa
For all he talks about being a part of the Nine Trey Bloods, it’s a little refreshing to see him challenge those he has beef with to actually confront him. The Ibaka line is also pretty good, as Serge Ibaka wears the number 9 on his jersey, so 6ix9ine uses that as a metaphor for a Glock 9mm. KOODA, CHOCOLATÉ, and GOTTI were all actually pretty good. KOODA was 6ix9ine’s aggressive style at its absolute best, with a cold blooded beat and a great flow to match. The lyrics are what you would expect, but ignoring that the song is more than redeemable. CHOCOLATÉ is the closest we will probably ever get to hearing 6ix9ine on more experimental production, with the vocal sample, lead synth line, and 808s rumbling back and forth, occasionally lining up to provide a great backdrop for 6ix9ine’s unmoving, unstoppable, inalterable delivery. This is probably my favorite 6ix9ine song period, and the only reason I don’t listen to it regularly is because of the stuff he has done off wax(although I think you’d be hard pressed to find a 6ix9ine vinyl(Ok – I looked it up and they do exist, but I digress)). GOTTI is a smooth, brief departure from his usual style, instead using a laid-back, more emo-rap type delivery; it’s nothing amazing, but it is definitely nice to hear him use a different delivery and flow for once. It feels very similar to to me as Ski Mask’s “So High”, another song that similarly is a lot lighter than his usual stuff.
Another aspect I enjoyed was the aesthetic that pairs the harder delivery with a lighter brand of meme rap. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it. Some parts of a few of these songs(particularly RONDO, KEKE, and GOTTI), despite having absolutely awful lyrics, were significantly lighter in mood than the rest. I’d almost describe the sound as silly, as terrible and nondescript as that adjective is here. The best example is definitely the higher pitched, reverb-heavy xylophone on GOTTI, as if you ignore the lyrics it’s a pretty pleasant song. I would have much rather preferred the timeline where this guy with a silly rainbow appearance and a silly name comes onto the scene with inoffensive, fun emo-rap songs instead of what we have now. It’s the one type of song that the strictly musical part of his persona actually improves. The rainbow album cover to the right portrays 6ix9ine in the style of Adventure Time, although he had to change it a little bit after someone showed that he may have ripped the artwork off of someone else, which is hilariously on-brand.
As much as I know Day69 is better than his other work, I just can’t stand to listen to the album another time. I need something new. In a few days, I’ll be even more sick of DUMMY BOY and TattleTales and I’ll want to come back. Tangentially, while talking about album names, I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth the “Graduation Day” in Day69: Graduation Day is supposed to mean. There is no mention of it, or really anything honestly, in the album’s lyrics, and the genius annotation doesn’t mention the meaning of the title either. “Day69” can at least be interpreted as some sort of day of reckoning, where 6ix9ine comes in to change up the rap game. That interpretation isn’t great, but it at least has some sort of meaning, while the concept of graduation is completely inapplicable here, as this is his first album. I give up on trying to figure out that or anything else about this god forsaken album. I’m taking a break from listening to anything before moving on to DUMMY BOY.
Monday Evening
That break came in the form of a 165 minute long lecture, which I’d usually dread, but not today. The chorus of GOTTI was ringing in my ears, as if it were taunting me. It knows I have to come back to it, and I know I have to come back to it. My patience with Day69 is wearing thin, but I feel like I can handle a little bit more of it before moving on. I’ll set the scene for when I left class at 5:30: the sun had just begun setting, but it was still warm outside, warmer than usual. The mountains to the North started to get dark, with certain portions peaking out to catch the last of the sun for the day. Because of the recent streak of rainy days, the area was also the greenest it’s been in a while. As I biked back, with the wind in my hair, looking around at everyone enjoying such a beautiful day, this is what I hear:
Got this FN on my body, if you feelin’ froggy
Got my gang right beside me, ready to catch a hommy
If you run up, b****, I’m sorry, don’t be movin’ wocky
Got this b**** all on my body, b****, get off my body
- BUBA
If it wasn’t clear by now, FN refers to a gun, “froggy” means jumpy, and hommy is short for homicide. I really feel heard by these lines, like 6ix9ine can tell what I’m thinking right now, as I look around on my bike, you know? That’s what the sun grazing the mountains makes me think of. I feel ready to catch a hommy. A true artist, communicating with a true fan. Sure, enjoyment of songs is contextual, and I understand that you might think that my specific context of a privileged college campus is not the context 6ix9ine is targeting, that I can’t relate to him from my spot on my bike. In the logic of that argument, the perfect context for 6ix9ine’s music would be amongst the Nine Trey Bloods, amongst other gang members who can fully relate to the things he talks about in his music. I fully disagree with that; if that was the target audience for 6ix9ine’s music, he would not be attempting to be controversial, to be as inflammatory as possible in order to reach outside of his bubble. 6ix9ine survives on controversy, as there isn’t that good of a reason to listen to him otherwise. If 6ix9ine weren’t clout chasing, weren’t trying to reach someone like me, I wouldn’t expect him to do something like film himself giving money away to strangers. Oops. This is the type of family friendly controversy that an influencer like Mr. Beast would get caught up in, not a member of a gang.
All joking aside, I can think of a single positive effect that this process has had on me. The first listen through the album, it felt a little weird to be blasting KOODA in my earbuds in public. Nobody knew about it of course, but it still felt weird. At this point though, I don’t really feel that inwardly embarrassed about it. It took a little loss of respect for myself, but when that respect came from something so obscure as the pride I had for usually not listening to 6ix9ine, it’s probably for the best. This change came not because the music inspired something in me, but because I revised my view of myself to someone willing to give up the toxic pride that comes with being embarrassed when privately listening to something that someone else could see as embarrassing. Tomorrow’s shower probably won’t be quiet.
I tried to listen to DUMMY BOY while reading a book for a class, and it didn’t go well. The only 6ix9ine song that lets me do any amount of reading is GOTTI, and even then, it’s pretty close in value to listening to nothing at all. I usually listen to all kinds of hip-hop while reading without issue, but I cannot focus on anything when that man’s voice is yelling in my ear. I don’t have the time or the patience to cover my first impressions of DUMMY BOY tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Tuesday Evening
I am f***ing exhausted. Last.fm says I’ve streamed 6ix9ine’s songs 228 times. At ~2:30 a song that comes out to about 9.5 hours in two days, and the second day isn’t even over. These are pretty crazy numbers, so you can fact check with my Last.fm page if you want. DUMMY BOY was on repeat today, although my tolerance for it was a lot less than Day69 was, so I fell back to listening to Day69 when it got to be too much. I continued that reading that book I mentioned last night for almost 5 hours today; I think my brain and my body have grown to accept this type of music while reading, as I was a lot more receptive to it today. It feels disgusting to have standards this low. I am tapping my foot, nodding my head, and even starting to recite a few of the lyrics. With a few exceptions, most of which being from Day69, I don’t like any of these songs at all. Regardless, my body has been telling me to listen to something, anything, as if it’s my idle animation. That’s more or less how I feel when trying to think of something positive to say about DUMMY BOY. Yes, it is an album, it is art, but just barely. I don’t think that 6ix9ine’s music is so bad and insulting that it is not worthy of being called art, but I would be lying if I said that I would blame anyone for wondering that. If there were to be a person so controversial, so unlikable as to be capable of blurring that line between what is art in people’s minds, it would be him.
From what I said on Day69, you already have some understanding of the music, so I’ll be a little more brief on that end when discussing DUMMY BOY. The producers on it are more experienced than those on Day69, but I found the production quality to be about the same. Nothing special, but still a lot better than you would expect from a 6ix9ine song. The lyrics, yet again, are terrible. I’ll compile the worst ones like I did last time:
It’s ****** TR3YWAY!
King of New York, lookin’ for the Queen
- FEFE
The “King of New York” is a contested title within hip hop. I don’t think he is worthy of that title, you don’t think he is worthy, he doesn’t think he is worthy. I’m bringing this up not because I want to point out that it isn’t true, just that it’s one of his most transparent attempts at stirring up controversy.
I don’t even know like “Why I did that?”
I don’t even know like “Why I hit that?”
All I know is that I just can’t wife that
Talk to her nice so she won’t fight back
- FEFE
Did he really have to say, “so she won’t fight back”?
I got them big rocks in my ear, nuggets
I got my whole team flooded
- TIC TOC
I’m not sure why this one rubs me the wrong way so much, but I think it has something to do with the way he says “nuggets”. It sounds so out of place.
Y’all gotta move, give me some room, I’m ’bout to shoot
Boom! Everybody runnin’ out the room
Boom! Everybody beggin’ “Don’t shoot”
Boom! N****, who the f*** asked you?
You a bum, are you dumb? Try me, I got this gun
Run, n****, if I’m here, don’t come
- WAKA
It’s not even enjoyable to make fun of these lines anymore. You could write better than this. I could write better than this.
These ******s think I’m stupid, I ain’t stupid
Dummy boys fall in love with it, he stupid
All these ***s on my body, cut the bullshit
All these ***s, they ain’t loyal, y’all lookin’ stupid
I just left Starlets and I ain’t even cash out
Back out, straight to the trap house, I blow her back out
I’ll pull her tracks out, got her running like it’s track now
Like a Smackdown, rock bottom I’ma pin her down
- TATI
For the close readers, you may have noticed that 6ix9ine used an AABA rhyme scheme in the first four lines, except the A’s were all the word “stupid.” Incredible. In the last two lines, he says “got her running” and follows it up with “I’ma pin her down.” How many people within 6ix9ine’s team do you think read these lyrics and passed them along? None of them thought to flag these two lines down, or to at least spread them out a little bit? If 6ix9ine is writing sexist lines and rape-y lines and they still come out bad, why include that stuff at all? He should just write a few lines that don’t heavily reflect his history of sexual violence if they are going to be the same quality as the lines that do.
I left out a lot of repetitive lines and a few R-words, but my main issue with this album when compared to his last one is how much more he rips styles from other artists. He takes a lot more from Kodak Black and Chris Brown here, two similarly controversial characters with their own histories of violence towards women. He also rips a lot more lines on this album, repeating one of his contemporaries’ lines or even one of his own lines at least 10 times (I lost track and I can’t be bothered). That might not seem like that much, but when his verses are usually only 8 lines long, it takes up a significant portion of the album. To put things in perspective, I’ll compare this number to that of my favorite rapper, Denzel Curry: I scrolled through his whosampled.com page, and he only had 6 listed vocal interpolations. Denzel Curry has released hundreds of songs since he started in 2012, all of which with significantly longer verses than 6ix9ine’s, and his fanbase is large enough and obsessive enough to find these interpolations(or at the very least, they would look more than 6ix9ine’s fans). DUMMY BOY is only 13 songs long, and it relies on vocal interpolations more than Denzel’s entire career of hundreds of songs. Not all interpolations are created equal, either; I’ll also compare how each artist uses their respective samples, providing context of the few lines before and after each interpolation and highlighting the lyrics used. Here’s A$AP Rocky’s F***in’ Problems:
I love bad b*****s, that’s my f***in’ problem
And yeah, I like to f***, I got a f***in’ problem
I love bad b*****s, that’s my f***in’ problem
And yeah, I like to f***, I got a f***in’ problem
If findin’ somebody real is your f***in’ problem
Bring your girls to the crib, maybe we can solve it, ayy
And here’s KANGA, which 6ix9ine sampled it in:
Hit shorty from the back, got her back crackin’
Back crackin’, b-back crackin’
I love h** b*****s, that’s my f***in’ problem
Yeah, I like to fuck h**s, I got a f***in’ problem
Bang, bang, bang and a chicken wing, b****
Yeah, I know you love how I put it down, b****
There’s nothing new besides two “h***” that he adds in; he doesn’t even rhyme it with its surrounding lines, only splicing it in to fill time. He could have removed it without you noticing. Now let’s see how Denzel uses the classic chorus from the Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M.:
Cash rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar dollar bill, y’all
Cash rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar dollar bill, y’all
And here’s Denzel’s N64 which samples it:
Click Clack on the Glock, seventeen get me
Then put the Ghostface so we can empty the C.R.E.A.M.
Cash rules everything around me surrounding
The ditch where they dug the darkness that’s shrouding
Found me, Nemo, ego Kanyeezy
Bruh I’m from a city where n***** they con easy
Where they quick to pull that trigger, never a squeegee
Then make it on the late night news, n****, good evening
Denzel introduces the line in context by referring to a ski mask as “the Ghostface,” referencing Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killa, completing the double entendre by referring to the cash he would rob someone of as “the cream”. When using the actual vocal sample, it’s included in the sentence, with “around me” internally rhyming with “surrounding,” all in the first half of a sentence that moves on from the sample to his own material in the second half. I don’t want to spend my time and your attention fanboying over Denzel Curry; I brought this up to show you what 6ix9ine could have been if he put in some effort.
I noticed that I was a lot more brief with most people I interacted with today. I’m not sure whether that is specifically because of the content in 6ix9ine’s music, or just because I haven’t heard the songs I’ve wanted to hear in several days. 6ix9ine’s songs have a very specific quality to them, especially in how they imitate the style and the lyrics of so many of my favorite artists. That quality has the effect of a glass ceiling on my brain, where I can notice a particular aspect of a song I like being ripped off in a song I don’t like, and I can’t listen to the good song. The worst moments by far are the ones where, while not listening to 6ix9ine, my brain spontaneously thinks of a song, wants to listen to it, remembers that it can’t, and has to settle on a 6ix9ine song that sounds as close to the first song as possible. There isn’t a 6ix9ine song that sounds anything like Redbone, so I instead had to listen to the only calm 6ix9ine song in GOTTI. It’s not close at all, but it was the closest. Both of these phenomena are infuriating. I’m constantly on edge today.
I also got my bike stolen last night, which I found out by finding an empty bike rack with my lock cut clean through. It’s my own fault for using such a small lock to secure it, but that’s besides the point, at least for this article anyway. This didn’t ease my demeanor, although I couldn’t really get more on edge than I am today. I think today will end up being the worst day of the project, being long enough from the start to have been exhaustively beaten over the head repeatedly by Day69 and DUMMY BOY, but too far away from the end for it to motivate me. The worst part about it is how isolating it feels. In addition to not being able to escape this musical punishment, I also cannot practically physically leave my general area because my bike is gone. Just as I’m getting further from the artists I hold close, I get further from the places and people I hold close too.
Even when the artists I do like are featured on DUMMY BOY, they somehow sink down to 6ix9ine’s level. Most notably, 6ix9ine manages to get Bobby Shmurda, Nicki Minaj, and Kanye West on this album, the latter two of whom I generally enjoy and will save for last; I’ll go down the line briefly with the others: Lil Baby isn’t anything special on TIK TOK, Tory Lanez is okay on KIKA, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie reappears on WAKA to give us his second pretty good 6ix9ine feature, Anuel AA shows up twice and does well enough, Gunna does really well by his standards, and TrifeDrew is a nuisance. Back to Bobby, Nicki, and Ye: I understand getting the bag, I understand doing a quick feature for a quick buck, but how are they going to let themselves spit verses that are just as unmotivated, as uninspiring as 6ix9ine’s verses are? Kanye and Nicki have a few alright lines, but most of each of their two performances were awful. Saying that Nicki and Kanye phone it in here would be an insult to the act of phoning it in, which, coincidentally, Bobby Shmurda literally does from prison on STOOPID(prison call verses never really work, to no one’s surprise). Kanye and Nicki have shown themselves to be so much more than what they do on these songs, even when freestyling. For the uninitiated, anyone still reading who hasn’t listened to their collaboration on Kanye’s Monster, together they deliver two of the greatest verses of all time and you have to listen to it. Seriously. I even linked it here for your convenience. For them to go from one of hip-hop’s highest highs to one of its lowest lows is nothing more than disgraceful. This is like LeBron James losing a basketball game against highschoolers. Thankfully for the legacies of both Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, they have each racked up enough controversies to distract from this one. If you haven’t noticed by now, every single feature on Day69: Graduation Day and DUMMY BOY save SpinKing and TrifeDrew have been in a major, non-legal controversy or legal trouble or both. Both albums have a lot of features, so this feat is pretty hard to accomplish. Don’t worry. There will be plenty of time to talk about controversies later in the week.
With all this talk of terrible, awful parts of the album, I also wanted to cover the positives of DUMMY BOY, but I do not have the willpower or the energy to do it in as much detail as I would like. You’ll have to settle for the short, rapid fire version: I liked TATI, apart from the slurs and the rape-y lines. I also liked both Spanish songs, for the same reason I mentioned in one of Monday’s first few paragraphs: “If you had absolutely no understanding of any of the existing rappers he is taking that delivery from, I’d understand why you might enjoy this to some extent. It would also help your enjoyment of the song if you didn’t speak any English at all.” I cannot have the Spanish songs ruined by the lyrics because I do not speak any Spanish, and I have no knowledge of Latin trap, so I cannot tell if 6ix9ine is ripping off those styles either. What’s left is two relatively enjoyable songs, something that I’ve been rationing for later in the week. I’m not going to be translating it at any point this week so as to not ruin two of the few oases I have in the 6ix9ine desert. I didn’t like anything else on the album. Maybe a line here was alright, or the instrumental there was okay, but I didn’t genuinely like anything else.
This is the most exhausted and overworked I’ve been in a while. I went to class today having finished maybe half the book, and after class I skipped dinner to finish a project proposal and a presentation both due tomorrow for another 3 hour class. Having my bike stolen didn’t help, and having to listen exclusively to two 6ix9ine albums while writing up this mess during all of the other stuff I’m dealing with definitely didn’t help. Last.fm says I’ve listened all the way through 6ix9ine songs 282 times, or about 12 hours total. 6 hours. 6 hours a day. Imagine your day today, what you did, your commute, who you talked to, what productive thing you did today; imagine fitting 6 hours of 6ix9ine songs into that schedule. I don’t have the greatest claim to hold the complaining rock, given that I did sign myself up for all of this. What I do have justification to do, however, is portray my pain and my suffering as clearly as possible for your enjoyment and for your education on the discography and the discourse surrounding the great, the honorable, Tekashi 6ix9ine. I didn’t have the time earlier today to take that shower I hoped for yesterday, so I’ll take it now at 1:57 AM. I won’t play it loud enough to wake up my roommate and suitemates, but it definitely won’t be silent. There’s one more album to cover tomorrow, and then I can finally get to the more fan-perspective-centric, less 6ix9ine-centric parts of this project.
See you tomorrow.
Wednesday Morning
I’ll be significantly briefer with the songs of TattleTales, as nearly all of my earlier critiques apply here too. These songs are almost as bad as last time, so I don’t really see that much of a point in running through all the shortcomings of the entire tracklist again. There are a few okay vocal performances, mostly on TUTU and R.E.D., with a few others scattered around. GOOBA, the most streamed song by far, has one of the worst verses I’ve heard from any rapper in a while. None of the specifics matter. Same stuff, different album. The album cover is just as bad as last time, which was a departure from the more lighthearted Day69 cover. The song titles are all the exact same; I’m not sure why I hadn’t brought that up until now. To prove a point that doesn’t need any elaboration, here’s a list of all of his song titles up until this point(not including non-album singles): BILLY, GUMMO, RONDO, KEKE, 93, DOOWEE, BUBA, MOOKY, CHOCOLATÉ, GOTTI, STOOPID, FEFE, TIC TOC, KIKA, MAMA, WAKA, BEBE, MALA, KANGA, FEEFA, TATI, WONDO, DUMMY, LOCKED UP PT. 2, TUTU, GOOBA, WAIT, CHARLIE, TROLLZ, NINI, PUNANI, YAYA, LEAH, GATA, GTL, AVA, and R.E.D.. Every single song doesn’t have any difference from any of the others. There’s no good reason to listen to one over another on a lyrical basis alone. You’d think he’d get tired of it at some point, but that he hasn’t is one of the least surprising things about him. I can’t bring myself to analyze any more of this music. Just read what I said for the other albums if you really need to know.
{Thomas from the future}
I forgot to tell this one when it happened; this is about when I think it was. The day after I filed a campus report that my bike got stolen when I found it on tuesday (I didn’t really think I was getting it back, I just had no real outlets of frustration at that point), a cop called me on Wednesday to see if I wanted to talk to an officer make an “official” report instead of a campus one(I’m not sure the exact wording, but it was something like that), I respectfully declined. I didn’t want to put more of my effort into anything that wasn’t this project or my research report or my project proposal or my book, and I didn’t have the energy anyways. As much as I could tell that she was frustrated, I knew I was significantly more frustrated than her, and not because of my bike.
{back to Thomas from Wednesday}
That story about 6ix9ine getting jumped in an LA Fitness was the first time I had heard his name in about a year, despite hearing his name every day a couple years ago. If you weren’t aware, 6ix9ine completely fell off. It was the largest overnight drop in popularity of an artist I have ever seen. I don’t understand exactly why this is yet, as this album is more or less the same stuff from DUMMY BOY, which was a worse version of Day69. To provide a little bit of context to the release of this album to properly understand the scale of this fall-off, I’ll give a massively simplified timeline of 6ix9ine’s RICO case: in November of 2018, 6ix9ine both released DUMMY BOY and was arrested on 9 separate gang-related charges, which totaled to a potential 47 years behind bars; while he initially pled not guilty and was denied bail, in January of 2019 he pled guilty to all 9 charges and pledged full cooperation with prosecutors in exchange for a significantly lowered sentence; in December of 2019, he was sentenced to two years; due to concerns about COVID and his pre-existing asthma, a judge allowed 6ix9ine to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest, with it ending early on August 1st, 2020. Being released to house arrest effectively marked his return to music, making the singles run from May-August the second highest peak of his controversy/notoriety, only behind the craze in 2018 for FEFE. While these singles didn’t chart nearly as high as those from DUMMY BOY, the general meme and gossip culture around 6ix9ine was just as frenzied as last time. To be honest, I’m surprised there haven’t been any attempts on his life from his former gang members, especially considering that a wiretap caught Nine Trey godfather Mel Murda promising to “super violate” 6ix9ine after he initially testified against two members who stole around $750,000 from him. Mel said that before 6ix9ine testified in the main Nine Trey Bloods trial, so I can’t imagine what Mel is thinking right now. If it wasn’t clear, 6ix9ine testifying is the reason the album is called TattleTales. Regardless, this album shouldn’t have flopped because of how much discourse was surrounding it.
The four singles, GOOBA, TROLLZ(ft. Nicki Minaj), PUNANI, and YAYA were released in May, June, July, and August, all charting decently high. Now take a look at the stream counts of the singles as compared to the rest of the album(features in green):
In my view, the songs are all of similar quality, with 6ix9ine occasionally having a slightly better line than usual or a more interesting delivery. If anything, the four singles are four of the worst songs on the album. Usually there is some inflation for the streams of singles, but take a look at the same graph for the other two albums:
It’s not like TattleTales is so much worse than the other two, or that the album cuts are significantly worse than the singles on TattleTales. To me, the singles on his first two albums are the best songs from those albums, with that effect being reversed on Tattletales. So why the disparity in streams? 6ix9ine is undoubtedly a singles artist, but this is different. Day69 and DUMMY BOY lived beyond their singles, but Tattletales died on impact harder than any album I’ve ever seen, despite there being no musical reason for this. It’s not like he had one big controversy that alienated all of his fans; 6ix9ine lives on controversy. I think his fans finally turned on him; they just got bored of the controversy cycle and stopped caring.
Wednesday Evening through Thursday Morning
A research report snuck up on me. I worked through the night, and I feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m not even done yet, and I think I’ll barely finish before class starts later today. It’s my own fault really, I should’ve worked on it earlier this week. If it needs to be said, pulling an all-nighter to the sounds of 6ix9ine is truly an awful experience; I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. I wanted to split things up day by day, but I think it’s better to portray things as I went through them, and I did not have a break between Wednesday and Thursday.
It feels like I’m being robbed of so many great moments that operate on the intersection of music and life because of this. For example, at around 7:00 AM I went to a study room to continue working, and it started raining just as the sun came out. This is a situation that begs, that demands that I listen to something besides 6ix9ine, but I couldn’t. Back to work.
Thursday Evening
I finished the research report, and it turned out alright. I don’t feel anything from the music anymore. Even the songs that I liked coming into this are soulless now. I’ll listen until I can’t take 6ix9ine anymore, and then I’ll sit in silence until I can’t take silence anymore. No outcome is good. I’m skipping songs significantly more, as there are only about 5 songs I can still tolerate. I’m absolutely spent, but I still have just enough energy to write a little bit for the day.
I promised I would talk about the controversies. To understand the 6ix9ine fans, it’s important to run through his list of controversies, as these fans are ignoring or allowing every single one. As much as I want to talk about this stuff in detail, there’s just so much to talk about, so I’ll be brief with most of them if possible. These aren’t entirely sorted by date, moreso roughly organized by category.
I’ve touched on this earlier in the week, but 6ix9ine’s first major controversy was receiving 4 years probation and 1,000 hours of community service for engaging in sexual contact with a minor then posting it online, which is shockingly low considering the circumstances.
In his pretrial hearing for the Nine Trey Bloods trial, 6ix9ine admitted to “domestic violence from 2011 to 2018” against his girlfriend at the time. If you want to poke into the details you can on your own time, but I do not want to reread any of those transcripts nor do I want to make any of you read those details either. That’s more or less the case with a lot of these controversies, sometimes because it is too graphic and sometimes because I can’t be bothered and I don’t deem it necessary to understand the situation.
He violated his plea deal from the earlier underage sex tape case when he was arrested for a suspended license, then assaulting a police officer, then for choking a 16 year old(which I’ll talk about in the fan controversy section). He also failed his GED, which was another requirement of that plea deal. It’s worth pointing out that much of my information for the compiling of these legal controversies comes from the Rolling Stone article linked in this paragraph, which does an enviable job in talking about these matters.
You already know about the trial, but I didn’t mention the specific charges: According to NBC, “The rapper was specifically charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, one count of firearms offense – racketeering conspiracy, three counts of violent crime in aid of racketeering, three counts of firearms offense and one count of narcotics trafficking.” Rough. Arguably more controversial was him snitching to get out of these charges, but you already know about that one too.
This excellent article from XXL gives a full rundown of his beefs up to its publishing date, but to give XXL’s straight list, 6ix9ine has had public beef with 50 Cent, Adrien Broner, Bhad Bhabie, Casanova, Chief Keef(who 6ix9ine testified to ordering a hit on his life), Future, G Herbo, J Prince Jr., Jay Critch, the late Juice WRLD, Ludacris, Pi’erre Bourne(who 6ix9ine used a beat from without permission, although it was ultimately allowed), Rico Recklezz, The Game, Trippie Redd(who 6ix9ine similarly testified to ordering an attack on), Vic Mensa, YG, and Zillakami. Nobody just naturally has this many problems with so many different people they don’t normally interact with. This is intentional, done largely for publicity purposes: if you don’t believe me, Lil Tjay came out saying that 6ix9ine’s label offered him $3 Million just to have beef with him.
While researching, I was a little shocked with how many instances of issues with fans 6ix9ine had. You’d think that even if he sacrificed his relationships with everyone he knew for fame, it doesn’t really make sense to also get rid of the one thing keeping that fame afloat. I guess I should’ve known better considering his history, but still. He stomped out a fan who got on stage. He choked a 16 year old fan in a mall. He left fans at the stage after canceling on them because the crowd wasn’t big enough. He attacked a fan who was secretly filming him. He scammed his fans out of $4 Million in an abandoned NFT project, and then 8 months later he started another NFT project. I’m sure I’m missing a few, and I bet there are many more that didn’t see the light of day.
There are a couple less notable brawls, shootings, incidents, but I haven’t slept in 40 hours and I just want to go to bed. I have one more day, and then I’ll be done with 6ix9ine forever. Goodnight.
Friday Afternoon
All of today has been very calm. I don’t have Friday classes, so I get to sit here and write all day. I spent the morning and much of the afternoon polishing things up, making the thumbnail, the graphs, and a few of the other images I’m using. Sometimes I’ve been playing 6ix9ine while doing it, but most of the time I can’t make myself do it.
I also promised I’d talk about 6ix9ine’s feature list. If you were to put together a team of controversial features, 6ix9ine’s team would win the championship. I’ll run down the list with a short description for each, and then talk about it all afterwards. Skip the list if you want, it’s unfortunately pretty long:
Tory Lanez, featured on RONDO and KIKA, has a few minor beefs, but most notably he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot. It sounds unbelievable, it sounds obscure, but he pointed the gun at her feet in the middle of an argument and said, “Dance, B*tch!” That’s such a cartoonish crime to not only do but also get arrested and convicted for it, but he managed to do it. The online discussion was ridiculously toxic, no doubt moved by Tory’s album DAYSTAR, which was mostly Tory accusing her of lying, as well as him generally being pretty sexist. It started some pretty nasty “discussion” of Tory fans using the event as a general sign not to trust women, stuff that Tory definitely encouraged.
Young Thug, featured on RONDO, has a few lawsuits and a few drug and weapon charges. He also is currently in the middle of his own RICO case, although his charges are nowhere near as bad as those in 6ix9ine’s little RICO adventure. Thug also hasn’t testified against everyone else in the trial. Gunna, featured on FEEFA, is a part of Young Thug’s YSL collective and is a co-defendant with Thug in the RICO case.
Fetty Wap, featured on KEKE, has a few lawsuits against him, a few drug charges, and a drunk driving charge. Compared to the others on this list, that’s pretty clean as far as I’m concerned.
A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, featured on KEKE and WAKA, has drug charges, gun charges, and a lawsuit for clogging toilets(not kidding). He also took part in the jumping of hip hop legend, Lil B, at Rolling Loud LA.
Offset, featured on the remix to GUMMO, has a few gun charges, a few drug charges, a battery charge on another inmate, but that’s it.
Bobby Shmurda, featured on STOOPID, has a charge for conspiracy to commit murder, as well as a few gun and drug charges.
Nicki Minaj, featured on FEFE, MAMA, and TROLLZ, is married to a husband who got probation for failing to register as a sex offender. She and her husband were also both sued for intimidating and harassing her husband’s rape victim for coming forward.
Kanye West, featured on MAMA and KANGA, is one of the most controversial figures in hip hop history, especially lately. You all already know what’s up with Ye.
Akon, featured on LOCKED UP PT. 2 and LEAH, lied about his criminal history, saying that he spent 4 straight years in jail, embellishing it to build more of a persona around it. He also did a thing I’m going to quote from Wikipedia, mostly because its too weird and complicated to sum up quickly:
“In April 2007, Akon drew criticism for an onstage act which included simulated sex with Danah Alleyne — a 15-year-old girl at the time who is the daughter of a pastor and sister of Crime Watch host Ian Alleyne — at the Zen Nightclub in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago as part of a fake contest, despite the club’s statement to have a 21-years-and-over age requirement. The incident was filmed by Akon’s crew and later uploaded to the Internet. On April 20, 2007, local media channel CCN TV6, aired the video clip publicly. Amid criticism on the radio, television, and from the blogosphere, Verizon Wireless removed ringtones featuring Akon’s songs. Verizon also decided not to sponsor The Sweet Escape Tour where Akon was to be the opening act for Gwen Stefani. However, Universal Music Group did not take action against Akon, but rather simply ordered the video clip be removed from video-sharing site YouTube due to copyright infringement.”
– His Wikipedia Page
If you think I shouldn’t be citing Wikipedia, you vastly underestimate how sick I am of 6ix9ine and the hold that the project has on me right now. Take whatever conclusions you want from the paragraph. I can’t analyze much either today. I mostly just think it’s really funny that Verizon wireless removed his ringtones; imagine a headline coming out today that said that. Ringtone culture is kind of silly, corporate cancel culture applied to ringtone culture is sillier. It’s also very much a relic of its era. Akon is the gangster-poser, fake-jail controversial guy of the 2000’s, which is the exact same role 6ix9ine has in the late 2010’s and early 2020’s. It’s a perfect match. Akon was also talked about on FOX News by Bill O’Reily of all people for “degrading women”. Remember, this is the same Bill O’Reily who has paid up to $45 Million settled with 6 women for sexual harassment cases. Smooth, Bill. Just as Akon brought nasty people like O’Reily in for his misogyny in his lyrics, 6ix9ine brings in nasty people like Akon and Tory Lanez.
Lil Baby, Featured on TIC TOC, is clean. Anuel AA, featured on BEBE and MALA, has a gun charge but is otherwise clean. TrifeDrew, featured on DUMMY, is clean as far as I’m aware. There isn’t much information on him. SMILEZ, featured on CHARLIE, doesn’t have a wikipedia page, or really anything talking about him. Sad. Leftside, featured on NINI, only has one controversy and that is featuring on a 6ix9ine song. Lil AK, featured on GATA, is also pretty unknown and doesn’t have any controversy. Sleiman, featured on R.E.D., used to be in gang life but stopped after an assassination attempt on his life. Not quite the same thing as 6ix9ine getting kidnapped, but still closer than you’d expect.
Even for the few who aren’t guilty of a bunch of stuff, they were still willing to both be around and significantly help the career of someone who was. These artists are in a similar position to 6ix9ine’s fans; they both like his music enough to get involved, and they both financially support him in spite of all of his antics. There’s a reason Leftside featuring was a controversy. 6ix9ine just attracts this type of person, as anyone who cares about the bad things 6ix9ine did will not work with him. In the same way, I think to seriously listen and support his music has the same framework; if you kind of care, you generally don’t listen to him. Even with those who are on the edge of caring, those fans can’t ignore 6ix9ine directly doing f***ed up things to them too.
They thought he would only do that stuff to other people, to celebrities. Surely he cared more about his fans, the ones who maintain his fame and clout? To see, let’s look at how he treated his friends, the ones who he should similarly care about. Zillakami was a former member of the short lived rap group, SCUMGANG, alongside 6ix9ine. 6ix9ine reportedly stole a few thousand from Zillakami to pay for his bail, taunting him afterwards in interviews despite the fact that they were in the same group. From that invaluable Rolling Stone article I keep bringing up, here’s another quote from his producer: “According to Wizard, Zillakami accused Danny of stealing the money, and [6ix9ine] began taunting Zillakami in Instagram Stories and interviews. ‘If that’s true and you bailed me out,’ he said in an interview, ‘you’s a bitch’, because who bails out a rapist?’” Other than the self-report from 6ix9ine where he calls himself a rapist, he also stole his friend and collaborator’s money. He also fired his entire management team after a few disputes. He snitched on his gang on two separate occasions, getting kidnapped and robbed by them retaliating the first time, with no retaliation for the second time. (yet. (maybe.)) When collaborating with Trippie Redd, another artist, he used a beat Pi’erre Bourne had shown Trippie without permission and made a hit song out of it. That one’s just pathetic; the amount he could mess up in that interaction is so low but he still manages to max out those expectations. Every time he’s been a part of something, he’s done something that ends up with him no longer being a part of that thing. He’s had beefs with several of his former collaborators, artists have cut ties with him, and he was somehow too much for the Nine Trey Bloods. Even jail didn’t want him, sending him to house arrest early.
His relationships with collaborators, his relationships with fans, and even his relationships to his own songs aren’t genuine. From that earlier Rolling Stone article, here’s a quote in context from 6ix9ine’s former producer, Wizard: “Thematically, the material never strayed far from the gangster archetype, but they weren’t looking for range; they were looking for hooks. ‘He focuses on every bar, and he can see if something’s fire or trash,’ Wizard says. ‘If it’s trash, he’ll focus on it.’” He doesn’t care about how good his songs are. If 6ix9ine is capable of making better music, he still strays away from it because he knows it probably won’t get as many plays. He loves the hate. He lives for the hate. Here’s another quote from that article, this time from the CEO of Tekashi’s label: “We look at the data — 80 percent of the comments are hate. But if we showed you the analytics on who writes the hate comments, they’re the ones who go to the shows and buy the T-shirts!” His fans have just as little concern for him as he does for them; there are several instances of people trying to fight 6ix9ine. A fan tried to start a fight with him in a store, and ended up getting beaten to a pulp. Keep in mind, this doesn’t happen for nearly anyone else, and if it does, nowhere near as often. If you live by the controversy, you die by the controversy. Remember how 6ix9ine got jumped in LA Fitness? Since 6ix9ine started controversies with everyone else, it’s not surprising that everyone else wants to start controversies with him. He doesn’t care about his fans, so he drew an audience of fans who didn’t care about him. They only stopped following when 6ix9ine put them through what they helped put everyone else through.
I think I generally understand the average devoted 6ix9ine fan by this point: they abruptly left in between the release of the singles and the release for Tattletales for the same reasons as everyone else’s abrupt split with him. While initially tolerant and even encouraging of his controversy, they didn’t think he’d show the same disregard for his fans too. This is just the natural consequence of working with, endorsing, and encouraging 6ix9ine; his fans are just the most recent people to experience it. It’s hard to have sympathy for those who feel betrayed by the man: they signed up for it, allowed it, and paid for it. That’s why 6ix9ine fell off; his fans got tired of his fakeness, his instigation, and of him just like everyone else.
I’m writing this as I countdown to 5:00 PM, the end of the work week. I’ve kept a list of songs that I’ve had the urge to listen to throughout the week but couldn’t. Most notably, People Under The Stairs’ “San Francisco Knights”, Future’s “Fly S*** Only”, Open Mike Eagle’s “Dark Comedy Morning Show”, and Drake and 21 Savage’s “Jimmy Cooks”. I’ll take this time for myself and then talk about it later. It’s been a really long week, one that this project made unfathomably longer.
With that, The 6ix9ine Work Week is over. Thanks for reading all the way to the end. If this type of stuff appeals to you, given that you’re at the bottom of the page, feel free to tell me what you thought(whether good or bad), or about anything about hip hop and music in general. I really enjoy talking about this kind of stuff, and I’d really appreciate it.
Saturday and Sunday (Epilogue)
The last two days have been great. I’ve been listening to Tyler, The Creator’s new songs from his Deluxe that he just put out(since I couldn’t listen on Thursday). I think I’ve made a full mental and musical recovery. My brother, who also goes to college with me, does not use his bike anymore and thankfully offered it to me until the end of the year. I got a new bike lock, one that can’t be cut by little tiny scissors that leave funny shapes in the paper. I don’t know how my bike didn’t get stolen sooner considering how small that lock was. Most of yesterday and today were me going for bike rides while listening to my favorite music (both of which were taken from me for the week), as well as letting Minecraft put my brain to sleep. The last time I played was over a year ago if I remember correctly, but it was definitely needed to clear out anything left over from the work week.
As much fun as it would be to retroactively say I learned nothing, that’s not quite true. I already shared just about all the musical learning I did in the day to day of this piece, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Beyond all the literal, direct information within all the articles cited, and beyond the through-lines I traced between them, there was a lot I had to learn about myself in situations like these. This is simply not something I’ve ever been in before, both in frustration level and in how obscurely unique it is. How does it feel to not have any amount of control of the music I listen to? Can any artist, no matter how bad their music is, be listened to and tolerated at length? Is it possible, admirable or not, to properly separate the art from the artist? These questions have answers(bad, no, and it’s very, very complicated, respectively), but I could’ve given something that resembles those answers even before I did this project. I’m talking about how it feels. What it feels like to think that I’m going insane because I’m starting to like every 6ix9ine song I hear on Wednesday. What it feels like to realize my sanity when I then couldn’t fully, consciously listen to a single 6ix9ine song on Friday. Even if I didn’t learn anything, if my brain rotted the whole time, I still experienced something new, something out of the ordinary.
With that being said, and I can’t emphasize this enough, do not take inspiration from this story. If it wasn’t clear, please do not do the 6ix9ine Work Week. It was extraordinarily draining, and while it didn’t have any permanent negative effects, that was genuinely one of the most difficult, stressful weeks of my life. Some of that was unrelated to the project, but I really could not have picked a worse week for me to write this; for you on the other hand, this was probably one of the more entertaining weeks I could’ve picked. For whatever extra work this piece was to add to my week, writing about it was pretty much the reason listening to the music was tolerable. Sure, I talked about it in a somewhat lighthearted way, but this was truly an awful endeavor. I intend to be the first and last person to do it, for everyone’s sake. Do not do it, do not try, you will not have fun. You might learn something though.
I’m really glad I tracked my streaming data for this. Go here if you want to see all of it, but if not I’ll summarize it here: I listened to 666 total tracks(not kidding and not intentional either), or about 27 hours and 45 minutes. Out of 5 days, a whole day’s worth of time was spent listening to 6ix9ine. 291 streams were from Day69, 207 from DUMMY BOY, and 143 from TattleTales. I listened to a few singles, but the only one that stuck was Shooter. Speaking of singles, 6ix9ine just dropped another one. I listened to it and I refuse to talk specifics. KOODA, GOTTI, CHOCOLATÉ, KEKE, and BILLY were my highest streamed songs, which makes sense considering they were more or less the only 6ix9ine songs I liked going into this. Spotify pays about a fourth of a cent per stream; this means that to do this project, I indirectly paid 6ix9ine about $2.66. In this exact scenario and only in this exact scenario, I’m glad that Spotify doesn’t pay artists very well. I think that this piece provides enough value in its criticisms of 6ix9ine(most of which, particularly those that acknowledge his fanbase and his controversial nature are both for the purpose of being controversial itself, aren’t really discussed in more mainstream pieces) to outweigh that price. Regardless, it’s too late to turn back now. In fact, it’s just about over.
I think that’s about all I have to say. I’m not sure what I’ll write about next, but it’ll be a lot more enjoyable for me than this was. I’d like to thank you for reading through the epilogue, which I will reward by sending you off with the alternate thumbnail of the article. Knock yourself out.
