6IX9INE, AGENT OF CHAOS
Contemporary fame is a function of mind share. Talent helps, but it’s not necessarily a prerequisite. The ability to cause conversation, to stir pots, to cause tizzies is far more crucial.
By that metric, there is no more effective US performer than 6ix9ine. Trolls seek attention by any means, but 6ix9ine is more sophisticated than that — he is somehow both popular insider and aggrieved outsider, agitator and victim. He is a rapper, but his real skill is seeking out loose threads and yanking on them until whole personas come undone. (Those of others, not his own — that always stays intact.)
6ix9ine’s relationship to social media is fluent and triumphant and almost hard to fathom — it’s a match of artist and medium on par with Tom Cruise in the 1980s, The Beatles in the 1960s, Babe Ruth in the 1920s. He’s a chaos agent, spewing toxic missives from his phone to people who feel compelled to respond, almost none of whom can match his savvy or his LOL-shrug nihilism. His music is good, sometimes very good, but his slippery way into other peoples’ psyches promises to make him indelible.
Such has been the case in the almost two weeks since he released a new single, Gooba, and went live on his Instagram to announce his return following about a year-and-a-half in federal prison. At one point, more than 2 million people tuned in, the largest number ever for an Instagram livestream.
It was a majestically funny, self-aggrandising performance, full of seething hostility and blithe boasts. 6ix9ine, also known as Tekashi69, danced to Bad Boys, the theme from Cops, while swinging a pair of handcuffs. (In April, a judge granted him compassionate release because of the coronavirus; he’s completing his sentence under home confinement.) He emulated his enemies’ weeping over his success. He taunted rappers who claimed to have a firmer grip on New York than he does: “If you don’t got this watch right here, you a little boy to me. I’ll kiss you on your forehead.” (The watch, he said, cost US$1 million, around 32 million baht.)
Most crucially and controversially, he defended his decision to testify against his former associates, the gang members in the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods who rode along with him early in his career and helped him establish credibility before turning on him and subjecting him to various travails — financial, emotional and violent.
Dominos began falling almost immediately, especially from hip-hop’s older generation, for whom 6ix9ine’s success can still seem curious, or even dangerous.
Meek Mill unleashed two strings of tweets critical of 6ix9ine’s defiance of the code of silence: “I gotta crush you for the culture you chump!” 6ix9ine responded in a comment: “Imagine having a new born baby come into the world & be pressed about a Mexican with rainbow hair.” (Meek did not fare well in a prior attempt to take down a meme-fluent rising rapper — Drake — with a complaint rooted in the ethics of an earlier time.)
Snoop Dogg chimed in, and 6ix9ine accused him of having snitched on Suge Knight, posting a video of himself watching an interview with Knight where he makes the same allegation. Snoop took the bait, replying with a rant: “Better leave the Dogg alone. Go find you a cat.”
This is light work for 6ix9ine, the sort of troll activity that’s so effective because it confuses turmoil for righteousness. Meek Mill and Snoop Dogg’s indignation and gruffness are merely instruments 6ix9ine plays to entertain his own audience.
But there is vanity at stake here, too, as was clear when 6ix9ine took on his next antagonist, Billboard, accusing the trade publication of chicanery in tabulating its charts.
Gooba debuted at No.3 on the Hot 100 this week, and 6ix9ine wanted answers, or at least to suggest that there were worthwhile questions that needed to be asked. He posted two videos in which he suggested that Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s Stuck With U had catapulted to No.1 through a combination of illicit sales numbers and Billboard dismissing millions of YouTube plays of Gooba.
(As for Gooba, it’s OK. Prime B/B-Tekashicore. Barking and yelping. Nerve-rattling production. Not as good as Gummo or Kika. Better than Fefe, though. In the video, he gets licked by a Dalmatian. He throws up a middle finger and sticks his tongue out. His teeth look great. “Are you dumb, stupid or dumb?” he wonders. He shows off his ankle monitor. “Tell me how I ratted, came home to a big bag,” he shrieks. It is a fair line of inquiry.)
Again, it worked — Bieber replied to defend the integrity of the song’s sales. Then Grande responded with her now-familiar brand of elegant shade, expressing extreme gratitude for her success and addressing 6ix9ine, not by name but by chart position.
“i ask u to take a moment to humble yourself. be grateful you’re even here. that people want to listen to u at all. it’s a blessed position to be in,” she wrote on Instagram. “congratulations to all my talented ass peers in the top ten this week. even number 3.”
More bait, more to nibble on. 6ix9ine reacted in a video where he emphasised the challenged circumstances in which he grew up — “My mom used to collect cans, right, on the street. I used to bus tables, be a dishwasher” — before cutting to video of Grande when she was a Nickelodeon child star. It felt like a Daily Show bit.
Finally, he came for Billboard itself. “You can buy No.1s on Billboard. I want that to register in your head,” he griped, even name-dropping Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s senior vice-president of charts and data development. Billboard replied with an unusually detailed statement delineating how it had arrived at its chart data. 6ix9ine posted a photo of himself on Instagram holding a fistful of credit cards, promising to buy enough copies of his song next time to reach No.1.
This is a moment in which the famous have largely essayed to spread joy and calm (even if their methods are sometimes constitutionally flawed). There is maybe no better time to sow chaos. Defences are down. People are leaning into sincerity. Those who are eager to please, to be seen as beacons of integrity and hope, are ripe for unmooring.
6ix9ine’s ability to do so while still presenting as the victim is his most efficient sleight of hand. To his supporters, he’s a disrupter and, moreover, proof that disruption is a justifiable mode. To his antagonists, many of whom didn’t realise that’s what they were until he targeted them, he is a nuisance but a provocative one who’s just informed enough that he can’t be ignored.