What should we make of the expanding corpus of viral clips featuring the once disgraced rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine? Up until recently, he’s been mostly outcast from the mainstream rap world, only to appear in the occasional TMZ headline for doing something ridiculous and or ethically questionable. Perhaps because we now live in a world mediated by short-form video, 6ix9ine has become a favorite jester among streamers and content creators, racking up views for his unvarnished opinions and apparent inability to keep his mouth shut. More than simply being a car crash one can’t look away from, 6ix9ine’s viral run these past few months feels like a harbinger for how artists have to navigate more algorithm-driven levers of audience engagement. Despite the many reasons to hate him, 6ix9ine is uniquely built for success in this modern hellscape we’ve found ourselves in.
Already, 2025 has been defined by the rise of the live streamer, especially in hip-hop. “Tweaker,” the year’s first viral hit courtesy of basketball player-turned-rapper Gelo (remember him?), premiered on the streamer N3on’s Kick channel. Plaqueboymax was just nominated for a Grammy for a song he made on stream with Skepta and Fred Again. Ice Spice recently launched her own Twitch channel, and even global pop superstars like Justin Bieber have taken to the platform, further signs of the shifting cultural tides. More than holding captive audiences for hours at a time, streamers’ main output comes from clips — moments on stream that get spliced and repackaged for maximum contagion across social feeds. There are young people pulling in six-figure salaries by cutting together short videos from popular streamers, and 6ix9ine’s penchant for outlandish behavior makes him a prime candidate for clip saturation.
There’s his recent DJ Vlad interview, during which he describes the physical altercations and beefs he was famously involved in before going to jail. In one clip, he describes a brawl between his associates and Trippie Redd in cartoonish detail. He also defends allegations that he snitched, citing the recent wave of hip-hop snitching allegations. He talks about being locked up with Diddy, where he apparently asked the disgraced rap mogul why he wasn’t invited to his alleged “Freak Offs.” Each of these moments spread across my For You Page in the form of individual cuts, then as part of compilations with titles like “6ix9ine core.”
Seeing the goldmine of content, it was only a matter of time before streamers like Adin Ross and N3on would invite 6ix9ine on their respective channels. The clips currently making the rounds feature 6ix9ine on their streams doing gags like answering questions under a lie detector. In one, he appears to, in fact, cheat the lie detector, which is as apt a metaphor for 6ix9ine as you could ask for. He’s also joined the notoriously controversial streamer Jack Doherty, famous for crashing his Lamborghini live on stream while texting and driving, who spent the majority of his recent stream with 6ix9ine ruminating on the experience of being in jail for 24 hours after being arrested in Miami a few weeks ago. That the edgelord wing of the streaming world has glommed onto 6ix9ine isn’t in itself surprising, but given the prevalence of these clips, it’s hard not to believe he’s managed a kind of reputational reset.
For a generation of rap fans, 6ix9ine’s name was synonymous not only with snitching but with the allegations, and subsequent charges, of sexual misconduct with a minor — that he’s somehow able to downplay this during his DJ Vlad interview fills me a dystopian dread — and yet it would appear that the current era’s limited cultural memory offers up a window for a redemption arc as a content creator. Pretty much everything about the rap world in which 6ix9ine first blew up has completely changed. While the doom and gloom about hip-hop’s declining streaming numbers seems more focused on corporate value than actual artistry, it does speak to a changing landscape for musicians across genres.
Over the weekend, former Lil Yachty and Concrete affiliate Karrahbooo told fans that she’s planning to pivot towards streaming as a means of earning revenue in the face of what she described as a “720 deal” with Yachty’s label Concrete. The comments, delivered on the streamer DuB’s channel no less, were most likely half joking but speak to a reality facing a growing number of artists trying to make it work in a climate that seems to value an artist’s ability to garner viral attention — even the 6ix9ine kind — more than their actual art.
