Tekashi 6ix9ine’s successful comeback is really one of the strangest, most unpredictable stories to come out of rap music in the last few years. Just last year, 6ix9ine, facing possible life imprisonment on racketeering charges, testified against some of his former associates — generally considered, at least within the culture of rap music, to be the lowest and least moral thing that you could possibly do. But then 6ix9ine got out of prison in April, thanks to a judge’s order of the risk of COVID-19 exposure, and now he’s back on top. 6ix9ine’s comeback single “GOOBA” didn’t hit #1, but it came close enough that he publicly accused Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande of buying the #1 spot. And now he’s got a new song with Nicki Minaj.
Nicki — who recently scored her own first-ever #1 single when she jumped on Doja Cat’s “Say So” remix — was probably the first established mainstream rapper to embrace 6ix9ine back before he went to jail. Nicki and 6ix9ine had a big 2018 hit with “Fefe”; the single peaked at #3. Today, they’ve reunited on a new song that’s knowingly titled “TROLLZ.” In the extremely colorful video, Nicki wears pasties, and she and 6ix9ine eat candy and cereal. It’ll probably be huge.
As DJ Akademiks points out on Instagram, Nicki defended her decision to work with 6ix9ine in a since-deleted tweet: “You don’t have to defend me. I’m not of internet trolls, blogs, artists. I don’t jump on band wagons. Many will never know what it feels like to have a mind of their own.”
Meanwhile, as Complex reports, 6ix9ine jumped on Instagram Live last night to settle some scores. He called out a bunch of the rappers who had disparaged him for snitching, including Nicki’s ex Meek Mill (“Ever since Nicki left you, you are a nobody”), Future (“You rap about molly, percs, all this shit, never got locked up for no drug offense”), and Snoop Dogg.
6ix9ine accused all of them of hypocrisy, saying that they’d either snitched themselves or they’d worked closely with people who had. Later on, Nicki did a joint Instagram Live session with 6ix9ine, basically saying that entertainers aren’t in the street and shouldn’t talk about it. She also pledged that 20% of the proceeds from “TROLLZ” will go to the Bail Out Fund.
