Last August, while reporting a story about Grainge, Danny’s label boss, I had a five-minute conversation with Danny via FaceTime. He never attended high school, not even for a day. Along with his older brother, he worked odd jobs in Bushwick, but was repeatedly sacked. Not long after, Danny began acting out, and was expelled from the eighth grade. He’d taken a trip to the grocery store and invited Danny along, but Danny decided to stay home. In early 2010, when Danny was 13, his adoptive father was shot and killed outside their apartment, on a busy street, in the middle of the day. Danny eventually learned the truth about his stepfather, but it didn’t affect their relationship and Danny continued to describe himself as “half Puerto Rican, half Mexican.” They were close, and Danny referred to him, even afterward, as his “real” father. His mother, who was born in Mexico, told him that his adoptive Puerto Rican father was actually his biological dad, according to a radio interview Danny gave on The Angie Martinez Show. Then: lifelong friends.ĭanny’s biological father had abandoned the family when Danny was an infant. Danny would quash the internet beef, explain that it was all a misunderstanding, and maybe even apologize. He wasn’t threatening at all in real life - around five feet six and 130 pounds, with a boyish demeanor and an impudent smile. Then, when they ran into him in person, he’d disarm them with kindness. He’d find someone on social media, leave nasty comments, and dare them to fight him. Almost always, a first interaction with him was negative. Many of his closest friends had once been enemies many of his enemies were once his closest friends. But just more than 12 months after that video shoot in Brooklyn, Hernandez would be in a jail cell facing 32 years to life on charges that included armed robbery and attempted murder.ĭanny liked to needle people endlessly. People who knew Hernandez well agree that, before he met Shotti, he hadn’t been involved in gang life at all. Later, authorities allege, he would threaten Tekashi’s life. He produced the crowd of menacing young men in the video, and in time would become Tekashi’s unofficial manager. Shotti was allegedly a member of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, a subset of the violent prison gang founded at New York’s Rikers Island jail in 1993. “Shotti,” that would be the most consequential part of that summer day in Brooklyn. But it was his introduction to Kifano Jordan, a.k.a. That surge in popularity would lead to the uncovering of Hernandez’s pre-fame life, including a guilty plea for child-sex charges, a case that would define Hernandez in the public eye. “Gummo,” powered by the bizarre, unforgettable 6ix9ine image, was a viral sensation that went platinum in just a few months. The “Gummo” video launched Hernandez on three parallel trajectories - one that made him famous one that made him notorious and one that may end his career. 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!” “We look at the data - 80 percent of the comments are hate. “He is the Donald Trump of the music industry,” Elliot Grainge, the CEO of Tekashi’s label, 10K Projects, told me last summer. You didn’t have to like him you just had to have an opinion. It’s a playbook that’s been used before - 50 Cent, for example, dissed his way to rap’s throne in the early 2000s - but the speed at which 6ix9ine found himself with an audience of millions could only have happened in the smartphone era. He became hip-hop’s troll prince, a master at sparking outrage and bottling it into a feverish popularity. In his brief career, Tekashi 6ix9ine captured America’s attention with an escalating series of provocations and controversies.
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