3/10
Favorite Track: "Locked Up Pt. 2" Least Favorite Track: "Nini"
In the age of the internet, there are a million and one ways to make yourself stand out. There are basic means such as making yourself a standout talent in your field, sometimes you are just fantastic at marketing, but over the past decade, doing ridiculous things to gain attention has become increasingly popular. Artists like Boonk have gone so far as to pass out in interviews or literally steal things on camera just to gain mainstream publicity, all to attempt to promote their music endeavors. I truly believe that the most masterful con artist of all though, is Daniel Hernandez, better known by his stage moniker, 6ix9ine. Hernandez has time and time again done and said insane things on the internet to keep his viral stream of followers interested, most commonly picking fights with every single rapper he can manage to irritate. This is a man that has given up every aspect of his life to the gimmick, and even irreversibly tattooed the number 69 all over his face and body, among other tattoos. His rainbow hair is a representation of how chaotic and zany his facade is, but at this point I begin to wonder: is it a facade?
His latest album, TattleTales, is one of the worst albums I have heard this year, no doubt about it. The instrumentation is boring and some of it is so bare it doesn’t even feel worthy of being a demo, and Hernandez’s vocal delivery, which is much more melodically influenced, does little to nothing to convince me he holds any of the vocal chops to pull off a singing career. The thing that intrigues me the most about this project, however, are the two songs “LOCKED UP PT. 2” and “GTL”. These songs show a never before seen side of Hernandez, and it jump started my thinking on how he feels about the fact that he has become endowed in the caricature he has created.
On “LOCKED UP PT. 2”, he creates some of the most unintentionally poetic lines I have heard this year, rivaling some of the sadness and melancholy I find in Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, but for completely different reasons. When Hernandez sings the lyrics “All this time I spent up in here/Got me thinkin’ ‘bout the things that I did/Got me thinkin’ like, “Why the fuck I did that”/Got me wishin’ I could take it all back”, it strikes me as one of the most truly heartbreaking and poetic sequences I have heard in a long time, and it is all because of the context that it is sung in. If someone wrote this in a relationship/love context, it would feel less impactful for me, as I have heard similar verses before in that context, but something more deeply heartbreaking is someone realizing that they have thrown away a chunk of their life for a facade they created, all because they craved success and fame.
We then see the other redeeming part of the record, in the form of “GTL”. Sonically, this track is sort of obnoxious, and I have a hard time getting behind the production. Yet again, what gravitates to me here is the lyricism. This track sees Hernandez rapping over a prison phone, characterized by the robotic voice at the beginning of the track saying “Hello. This is a prepaid call from Danny. To accept this call, press 0.” Then someone on the other end presses a button and Hernandez picks up and raps another set of incredibly sad and heartbreaking lyrics. “Havin’ dreams about living my life/I’ve been havin’ dreams about bein’ outside/I’ve been, hello, baby girl please don’t cry, no.” He continues to have a heart to heart over the phone with his daughter and girlfriend, falling deeper and deeper into the disappointing reality he has come to live in. The operator then tells him he has one minute remaining, and the call ends shortly afterwards.
I suspect almost none of the things I mentioned on this record are nearly as intentional as I would like them to be, judging by the caliber of the rest of the tracks on the record, but these two tracks are easily some of the most oddly cathartic tracks of the year for me. I tend to see 6ix9ine as less of a person, and more of a funhouse image of someone who has given it all up to gain fame and fortune, but for a lot of people once they obtain it, the luster is lost and they wish they would have chosen a more satisfying path. We forget time and time again that the people on our TV screens and Instagram feeds aren’t caricatures, and it is humbling to hear the most fabricated personality out there show real emotion and remorse for his seemingly frivolous actions. After all, is living a fake life really being alive?