There's a new deep dive into Tekashi 6ix9ine's most-likely brief career in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

In it, they pinpoint where it all went off the rails for Danny Hernandez, who not so long ago was working behind a deli counter in Brooklyn and showing little interest in rap music.  It was the moment he made Shotti of Tr3way his manager, in February of 2018.

"Danny’s associates question exactly how much managing Shotti actually did. “He wasn’t no manager,” Andrew tells me, then blows a raspberry. Grainge agrees: “That’s not his manager. That’s his friend.” Shotti could not be reached for this story, but several people tell me he thinks of himself as a contemporary Suge Knight. Soon, Danny adopted a strident gangbanger image. He began yelling “Treyway” in Instagram posts — a nickname for Shotti’s business platform, but also likely a reference to the Nine Trey nation. His music began to promote gang politics enthusiastically, especially “Blood Walk,” a remix of Rich the Kid’s “Plug Walk” that borrowed from Snoop Dogg: “I keep a red flag, hanging out my backside/Only on the right side/Yeah, that’s the Blood side. 

For his friends, it was an inexplicable turn. The gangster image in his previous videos was a front, as fake as pro wrestling. In reality, he was a struggling teenage dad who had earned his money slicing ham at the Stay Fresh Grill. The distinction, though — that Danny’s association with the Nine Trey Bloods was all an act to sell records — would quickly become murkier, and eventually beside the point at all."

Elliot Grainge, who signed 6ix9ine to his 10K label, tried to get Tekashi to move out West to escape Shotti, but it didn't work.

 “I don’t think he can be safe in New York City,” Grainge told me in August. “Not in Bushwick.” Danny, loyal to his “Day Ones,” turned him down.

6ix9ine's meteoric rise came to a crashing halt when he was arrested on six federal racketeering and weapons charges. He is locked up and facing life in prison and it seems unlikely he'll serve much less than a decade.

Rolling Stone asked 6ix9ine's close friend and co-writer Andrew “TrifeDrew” Green why 6ix9ine went along with Shotti's illegal antics: 

To some observers, Danny’s arrest wasn’t a surprise. “All the politics, all the beef, it was like… You can’t just be speeding down the highway without expecting to crash,” Andrew says.

But why would he feel the need to behave this way, I ask Andrew. Why on Earth would a platinum-selling recording artist stick up some kid on the street for a backpack?

“The internet,” Andrew says.

From what you can gather in the article, 6ix9ine didn't need Shotti to be famous. He had already done that without the help of Tr3way. But Shotti will likely be the end of him.