CD Review: 6ix9ine – “TattleTales” (2020)

I'm so sorry

If I had to talk about a character trait of mine that I see as bad, it’s a high tolerance for nonsense. Ever since I was young, I have been more obsessed with the “Why?” of something. Most people would look at Cats (2019) and see a garbage fire. Not me, I run straight to it, looking it up and down, trying to understand every component to understand how it came to be. To me, there is something to be said about art that’s created that is absolutely wrong. While there are things I hate deep down in my heart, the labyrinth to get there is full of these trick questions that make it difficult to ever reach the conclusion.

Maybe it’s because I’m an artist and the idea of creating art is perceived as difficult. I know how hard it is to pull an idea out of the back of your head, morph it into something you believe to be beautiful. It could be that I myself know what rejection feels like and having this fear that nobody understands you. 

Or it could just be that failure is much more interesting than success sometimes. Think about it, most Olympics games only have one winner. Think of those dozens of competitors who trained their lives for that five minutes of potential fame, to prove that you’re better than athletes you were bred in a lab, who have means that you don’t have. While there’s something attractive about them, I’m as attracted to the Tommy Wiseau cases, those who clearly have enthusiasm and belief that what they’re making is great. I sympathize with it.

I’m not necessarily attracted to trash like some pundits. However, I do occasionally find a few stories that are so disjointed that I have to give them a chance, to see what their intent was going for. In my head, I may be able to rewrite things well enough to get us to the finish line. I love the idea of seeing these failures have a moment to feel like they’re recognized, that they have fans out there. It’s also just that I’m a big picture guy, who looks at everything and tries to make sense of why the head is attached to the body. The idea that anyone sets out to fail is ridiculous, and I’m personally drawn to those who bravely and defiantly challenge themselves in the face of that criticism.

What does that have to do with the rapper 6ix9ine? To be totally honest, not all that much. If it explains anything, it explains a tolerance to look at something that’s failed so spectacularly on a global stage and try to answer the question if it really is as bad as people say. How could a record that bombed as bad as Kreayshawn's possibly reach new depths of uninspired dreck? I think that’s what keeps me going. It’s all a hypothesis of “Is this really that bad?” before transitioning to tests, coming to the hypothesis that “Yes, it is.” After all, you’re looking at someone who watched that Channel Awesome video of The Wall (1982) at the risk of major depression. If anything, it explains Doug Walker’s delusions much clearer than the Change the Channel document.

Trust me, most of the time when you call something bad, it’s just a bit janky. Very little is truly as abysmal if there’s clearly an effort put into it, to understand the core value of media. The question that one has to ask when approaching anything is: what’s the bigger point? Is there something to the way that the music flows, or how the lyrics click together to present a more cohesive vision of an artist? I may have not liked Eminem’s “Music to Get Murdered By,” but I understand the aesthetic well enough to know that he’s going for something substantial.

I suppose we should back up and talk about why I chose 6ix9ine on this particular occasion. It wasn’t solely because I wanted to participate in an endurance test. Maybe I’m trying to understand the highs and lows of modern rap, but even that is not it. 

This is frankly a week where I just didn’t feel inspired. I looked at the new releases and found myself uninterested in trying to engage with an album that could be good, but likely was going to get a lukewarm review out of me. It’s not often that I’ll find a Bright Eyes record where I feel evangelized. More often I’m just shrugging, and this week nothing sounded like it was worth the investment. BUT, as I’ve been doing for months now, I had to review something. So… why not just do “TattleTales” and take the hit?

Sure, I would tarnish this website with images of 6ix9ine, making people forever look at me and wonder “Why would you take this seriously?” I have no good excuse other than I felt like looking at low hanging fruit if just to challenge myself. I wasn’t in the mood to be mild on a good album, so why not try and find something substantial in an album so vile and nonexistent in purpose? 

Before we get there, I think that I should share a bit about 6ix9ine for those who saw the pictures and kept on walking (how does it feel to be better than me?). I don’t even need to read his full Wikipedia page to understand who he is. He has a six-part “Legal issues” section that includes: “Choking incident at shopping mall,” “Robbery, assault and kidnapping incident,” “Domestic violence and alleged sexual assault,” and “Trial of the Nine Trey Gangsters.”

I’ll avoid his life story from there, but what you can guess is that he is that wild card that you assumed all rappers were in the 90s. He seemed like the kind of guy who would knock you out just for laughing at the wrong time. He seems like a cartoon, what with his rainbow hair and artwork that insists that he has colorful teeth. He was looking to serve jail time in 2018 for several years but got out early due in part to both ratting on people and the coronavirus.

This guy is the antagonist of rap that in the right hands would be fun. Whereas you get those like Machine Gun Kelly underperforming in diss tracks, 6ix9ine clearly strives to be the most profound attacker in the league. He doesn’t like subtlety. He prefers music videos where, while the sound isn’t turned down, the lyrics are buried under girls shaking their butts as he laughs at you. There is no deeper purpose except to make you mad. As he says multiple times: “are you dumb, stupid, or dumb… huh?” That’s the level of playground bullying we’re dealing with here.

Some people come out of jail with a clearer head, able to find positivity and reason to help the community. All that 6ix9ine has done is revel in the fact that he knows you hate him. Maybe his awfulness is intentional and you just don’t know it. He’s asking you to look away while yelling real loud, managing to have one of the least impressive rhyme schemes that I’ve encountered while reviewing rap records. Okay, it’s not that the words don’t rhyme, but you almost want to take points off from lack of effort:

Exhibit A comes early in “TUTU” (yes, they’re all capitalized because this dude is ANG-RY!):

I get money when I want to
I get bitches when I want to
Tote this pistol when I want to
Money dance step, hit the one-two
Oh you paid? Well, bitch, I'm paid too
Don't talk to me, I talk to you
If it's fuck me, then it's fuck you
Yeah, it's middle finger, fuck you

Sure, most of the lyrics have a bit more cleverness than that, but he’s your bargain-basement braggart that gets pleasure more out of how the music makes you feel than trying to go for a deeper, lasting attack. The snare and percussion have the same chop-a-chop feel as he practically freestyles the rhythm over every song. He’s manic, believing that you’ll watch him as he recklessly endangers your ears with lines that range from calling you stupid to believe that he’s better than you because he has more money and bitches.

To give him some credit, he does have a trace of a deeper purpose at the start of the album. While the title “TattleTales” feels like it will cover his time in prison, it’s only once or twice. “LOCKED UP PT. 2” is about his experience in jail and him finding any modicum of reason to confess his personal insecurities. It comes back in the penultimate song “GTL,” which finds his voice distorted by a jail phone. It’s because “GTL” was recorded from inside, and it gives the feeling that he may be an artist. 

Meanwhile, “LOCKED UP PT. 2” is evidence of how much he is show over substance. His voice is auto-tuned, and it sounds like he’s dribbling lyrics out like a lobotomized patient. It should be his most endearing moment that makes him a hero to the listener. Instead, it’s a mix of ideas that never come together, finding him trying to overcome any personal emotion so that he can put on a tough guy attitude for the rest of the album. 

That much is true, and thankfully the auto-tune goes away. However, it’s not a way of building some cohesive subtext on the album. All it does is serve as the start of a compilation of songs, often clocking in around two minutes. It’s got a punk rock vibe because of that, but it’s disappointing to report that every song plays on the similar ideas of being a bully and expecting that to be super cool. By the time he gets to “LEAH,” where he talks about a girl his mom will like, you frankly don’t care. He’s been too much of shit-heel to this point that you don’t care about the man inside of this drastic garb.

I suppose if he has any charm, it’s his ability to really feel like an instrument when he yells his raps over the verse. “GOOBA” is clearly where all of his energy went, and even then it’s designed to annoy you. He’s laughing at you by the end, even making fun of the idea that he got out of jail for ratting on people. And yet, he still doesn’t have the hindsight to not include “TROLLZ” where he goes long on internet trolls, which he likes to think he’s one of.

I suppose taking this album seriously makes him laugh. 6ix9ine doesn’t want you to take him seriously, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Whereas you can admire the ramshackle craft of Ol Dirty Bastard for having his songs fall apart, I can’t say the same for 6ix9ine. This is the type of album that makes me ask “Why are you even doing this?” He’s 24 now and I think it becomes depressing to think that this is the persona he wishes to adopt for the rest of his life. He’s already out of steam with “TattleTales,” and songs like “YAYA” test the idea of how quickly Alzheimer’s can be experienced once a song ends. 

This isn’t to say that I will be listening to a lot of trash albums in the future. Frankly, I’m not built like that. Still, whereas I can appreciate The Shaggs barely being able to play their instruments in time, I can’t appreciate 6ix9ine running one joke into the ground, the melody never changing and no depth or character growth happening throughout the whole album. There is some passion there, but it’s one that exists for maybe three minutes at a time. It’s doubtful that 6ix9ine feels that way once the song is done. He just loves hearing himself make fun of people.

I don’t dislike “TattleTales” because it’s lazy, but because of how cynical it comes across. If you’re going to make art that is designed to drive us mad, try and make it work like a watch, reminding us for years at how you got us. Make clever wordplay get lodged in our brains so that we never forget you. Simply saying that “Cry baby, they crying again 'cause they can't do what I can” (“WAIT”) won’t get you far. There’s a reason that people still talk about Eminem’s disses from the late 90s. If the meanness didn’t get you, then the funny wordplay did. It’s all dated, sure, but it still works. Can you name any reason to remember a song off of “TattleTales” other than that he was a really mad guy? I don’t think so. Frankly, I think thinking that he thought any of this out is probably more thinking than he ever did. I’ll stop now, before he mistakes my apathy for something more hostile or, as he would say, dumb stupid or dumb.

Fun fact: I consider every other artist that I referenced in this piece better than 6ix9ine and are worth checking out if you want a better use of your time.