NEW YORK– Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was sentenced Friday to an additional three months in prison for violating the terms of his probation in a New York gang case by assaulting a man and possessing drugs.
The 29-year-old artist from Brooklyn, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, admitted to the violations during a hearing in Manhattan federal court, where Judge Paul Engelmayer expressed frustration that Hernandez continued to get in trouble. The rapper was sentenced to 45 days in jail late last year for violating the terms of his probation.
“From time to time, your actions suggest that you believe ordinary rules do not apply to you,” said the judge, who said a new prison sentence was necessary to send a message to Hernández.
Hernandez, who rose to fame with the 2017 release of his song “Gummo,” gave a lengthy speech in court, describing several episodes in which he and those close to him were harassed and threatened because of his cooperation with authorities in the gang case.
“Strangers left a coffin containing an animal in front of my house to send me a message,” he said. “Three masked gunmen held my mother at gunpoint.”
Hernandez pleaded guilty in 2018 to his involvement in a violent New York-based gang, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. He was sentenced to a lenient two-year prison sentence in 2019, followed by five years of supervised release for his cooperation in the racketeering case against gang members.
He was even released from federal prison several months early, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Friday’s sentence was related to the discovery of small amounts of cocaine and ecstasy at the rapper’s Miami home during a police raid in March, and his punching a man who taunted him at a Florida mall in August for cooperating against gang members. His lawyer had requested six months of home confinement for these violations.
