Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Downfall of 6ix9ine

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

The story of 6ix9ine (real name Daniel Hernandez) is a wild ride through fame, controversy, crime, and betrayal in the modern rap world. Rising to prominence in 2017 with his aggressive style, rainbow-colored hair, and viral hit “GUMMO,” 6ix9ine quickly became known for his online antics, beefs, and gang affiliations. In 2018, he was arrested on charges linked to the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, a gang he had aligned with to boost his image. Facing decades in prison, 6ix9ine cooperated with federal authorities, testifying against his former gang members—a move that made him a controversial figure labeled a “snitch,” but also earned him a reduced sentence and a headline-making return to music in 2020.

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He thinks that if he makes a music video and puts a bunch of actual gang members in it, that that will give him street cred as a rapper and therefore lots of attention. And so he records a music video with this gang, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. And he puts this video on YouTube and suddenly, Kaboom, the video blows up. And now he's getting all that attention he wanted. Plus, he's making a lot of money, so that's nice. And so that worked. And he's like, I'm gonna do it again.

And he drops another video with the Nine Trey Bloods. Then he does it yet again. And so this is working pretty well for him, and now he has a formula. And if he puts on this gangster persona, his music videos will get tons of views. So, that's what he does. And he makes sure to let everyone know just how gangster he is. I'm gangster. I know I'm gangster. I know I tell everybody all the time, test my gangster, right?

Plus, he's always got to flex his money, because, you know, that's what gangsters do. This is a half a million dollars. Half a million. Look at the diamonds in them teeth. And so things are going really well for him. However, 6iX99 has a problem. He can't just keep telling everyone he's in this gang. At some point, he actually has to join this gang.

Otherwise, everyone will know that he's not really street. And so, he starts working on joining this gang. He's helping them in their organized crime, things like selling drugs, shooting at rivals. I mean, you get the idea. So even though he's making all this money from his music and his celebrity status, he's out here committing petty crimes and like robbing people. Like one day in 2018, he plans a robbery against a man and a woman leaving a building. And six and his gang friends are watching them like, yo, let's go rob them.

And so boom, the gang jumps out of the car and they got pew-pues. And bam, they ambushed the man and woman and they're like, give me all your stuff. While six, he sits back and watches and records the whole scene from the car. Which doesn't really sound all that gangster to me, but you know, whatever. After that, I guess Six just really wants attention from all this, and stupidly he uploads the video of the crime to social media. And so for this, and a bunch of other crimes he commits, bam, he gets arrested.

Along with other members of the gang, here's his mugshot. And this is where it gets really complicated for him, because bro is facing a ton of charges, racketeering, armed robbery, conspiracy to murder, and if he gets convicted, he's looking at 47 years in prison. And so there six is, lying in a jail cell, thinking about all of this. And after less than 24 hours in that cell, he finally gets an idea. He knows exactly how to get himself out of this mess and avoid prison. He'll just snitch.

He'll cooperate with the feds and blame everything on all the other gang members who were there committing the crimes with him. And that is exactly what Six does. He drops the gangster persona and he fully cooperates with the feds. He goes to court and he testifies against his fellow gang members, putting some of them in prison for over a decade. And because he cooperated and did all this snitching, Six himself only gets sentenced to two years in prison. However, due to the COVID pandemic, he actually gets, released early. And of course he goes right back to social media celebrating because remember, bro just loves all this attention. And not to mention he goes back to making

music and getting views and making tons of money. Until. Even though his career is back in a decent place, Six has lost a lot of street cred because he snitched and people love to call him a rat. And apparently Six hates it when people call him a rat. And one night in 2020, he's in Miami at a strip club and some random guy yells at him and this pisses six off. And so he grabs a bottle of champagne and he throws it as hard as he can, but it flies right past the guy and instead, bam, it hits a dancer right in the head. And so, boom, she sues him and she wins, $10 million. Oh, but his problems don't stop there. Remember the man and woman he and the gang robbed that day? Well, boom, they sue him too. And so in 2022, Six has to beg a judge

and say that, oh, he can't pay this man and woman. He's struggling to make ends meet. And having to pay all this money will bankrupt him and he'll never financially recover. But then, during all this, he goes and he posts this video to social media where he's carrying around all this money. One million 50. One million hundred. Five houses right here. Maybe two houses right there, you feel me? I do not cap. This is really my lifestyle. This is how I really live.

And so people are watching all this like, uh, weren't you just telling the judge that you're broke? I mean, even TMZ calls him out on this. So you owe like a million bucks in restitution. And I know that you have told the judge that you just didn't have it. I ain't got it right now. I ain't got it.

And, and that was prop money. Like I said, I ain't got it. And so, bro, has to admit it was all fake and that he was just doing it for attention because of course he was. And so now his career is suffering. He's getting sued left and right. He has a reputation as a rat and he's just not making the money that he used to make when he was first popping off. And that is when he gets the help of this guy, Steve. Steve is Six's friend and he's also a YouTuber and a live streamer and he really wants to help his friend Six make some cash.

And so he works on getting him a deal with the platform Rumble. And he starts vouching for him with the people at Rumble. He's like, you can trust Six, give him a deal. He'll pull through for you. And according to Steve, this works. And he gets Six a live streaming deal. Where all Six has to do is stream himself playing video games for an hour once a week. And in exchange for doing that, he'll get $2 million up front.

That's $2 million for playing video games. games one hour a week. That is a damn good deal. And so six agrees to this deal. But then he screws it all up because he just doesn't do it. He just like doesn't do the streams. Instead he takes the two million dollars and he just starts spending it on like stupid shit. The spending this on Birkins is a 300 clip. 300,000 just on Burkins. And this of course completely f***s over Steve. It makes him look really bad. And now I guess Six owes all this money to rumble. I'm not really sure how they sorted that out.

But then shit gets even worse for six, because he's about to face off with some real ass gangsters, some gangsters who never play around. The IRS. And so during this time that he's been doing music videos, getting on camera, and flexing all this cash, and showing everyone how rich he is, he's also just... Not paying taxes. Addressing the IRS situation. Listen, a lot of you y'all don't understand how to shit work because you're not on that tax bracket, right? What happened was that I didn't report my taxes for 2020, 21, 22, and 23. And so for four years, he was making millions upon millions of dollars and just not paying taxes on it.

And the IRS, well, they don't really like that too much. And they also don't fuck around when it comes to this. And so, bam, they seize a bunch of his assets. They seize his cars, they take his jewelry, including his famous shark chain, and they auction off all his stuff to pay his massive tax debt. Anyway, so this is just like a fraction of what this guy has done. Like, he's had so many lawsuits and accusations and charges against him. Like, I can't even fit it all into one story. He is very entertaining to watch, though.

I will give him that.