Things may not be what they seem in the world of 6ix9ine.
The controversial rapper, who is now releasing music once again, chopped it up with TMZ Live on Tuesday when he was asked about recent clips of him showing off stacks of money on the internet. After calling himself the “king of New York” in an Instagram post last week where he boasted an apparent $2 million in cash, high-end watches, and a handful of sports cars, 6ix9ine is now saying the money was purposely fake.
“I ain’t got it right now, I ain’t got it,” 6ix9ine said. “And that was prop money, like I said, I ain’t got it. Like I said, I’m an entertainer and obviously we talking about it so I did a pretty good job at entertaining people. You know how you have a degree in law, I have a degree in entertainment.”
In an early March court filing regarding a lawsuit he faces following the robbery of Seketha Wonzer and Kevin Dozier, 6ix9ine claimed his accountant “knows exactly what my exiting assets and sources of income are” and that he was “struggling to make ends meet” while unsure if he’d “command the kind of advances I was paid before my arrest, and my career stalled.”
TMZ reports that 6ix9ine owes $1 million in his case. “If the court awards the compensatory damages and punitive damages sought by Plaintiffs at this inquest, it will surely bankrupt me in a way from which I will never recover to the permanent detriment and hardship of the family members who rely upon me,” the filing reads.
Wonzer, a.k.a. Skyy L. Daniels, a victim of 6ix9ine’s robbery at the office of 50 Cent’s website This Is 50 office in 2018, offered Complex an exclusive quote on Tuesday. “The money that [6ix9ine] showed, I can’t prove whether it was fake or real. But I can prove that all civil litigations were honored in my favor. I can prove that I am the woman that he robbed at gunpoint and sent five of his closest friends in to do his dirty work, [and] he testified against them in court,” said Skyy, who already won a civil suit against 6ix9ine over the robbery; the lawsuit is now in the penalty phase. “As far as him showing millions of dollars, he owes all that to me. I want every dime of it, whether it’s fake money or real money. … I need all those watches that he showed, I want all those cars. I want my entire judgment with interest, paid in full. And I’m not going to stop until victory and justice has been served against this rainbow rat. And it was Skyy, a woman, who took all his cheese.”
6ix9ine also touched on King Von in the TMZ discussion, asking why he had to “diss me after he’s dead.” On his new song “GINÉ,” 6ix9ine raps, “Your man got shot, he not coming back,” which has been taken as Tekashi reigniting his beef with Lil Durk. Von mentions 6ix9ine by name on the posthumous track “Facetime” off his 2022 album What It Means to Be King, explaining if he got “caught” he’d “do the time,” unlike 6ix9ine.
“Why not crucify his management, his label, his team, saying ‘Listen, why continue with the beef if your artist died from beef?’” 6ix9ine wondered.
On the latest episode of DJ Akademiks’ Off the Record podcast, Tekashi also shared that he felt the late Pop Smoke, King Von, and Nipsey Hussle were “caught lacking.” He maintained that all three fatally shot rappers “died lacking.”
“Everybody gonna say they should’ve, would’ve, could’ve,” he said, as he seemingly attempted to defend his decision to cooperate with authorities. “My respect to the West Coast…you never lacking, right? So what happened to the n***as that lacked? Let’s bring up Nipsey Hussle. You think he said, ‘Yo, n***as will never come up to me.’ … Yo bro, it happened to the best of them.”
The same Instagram video with the fake cash drew attention from other MCs, as some thought 6ix9ine was taking shots at Fivio Foreign with his “king” comments. But as 6ix9ine tells TMZ, his plan was never to “come at nobody,” but rather to just “drop music” and “come out with positivity.”
“I want to be very clear,” he said. “I came out, I didn’t mention anybody. Fivio jumped out the window first, he could’ve just stood quiet. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear it, but the moment Tekashi responds, like ‘Oh my god, he’s chasing clout.’”