A resurfaced video from March 2023 showing American rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine handing $50,000 in cash to a humble Cuban family after spending an entire day living in their modest countryside home has gone mega-viral again, with fans declaring that no other rappers simply cannot match the level of real-life generosity displayed by the controversial artist.
The moment happened while 6ix9ine, whose real name is Daniel Hernández, was shooting the music video for his Spanish-language album Leyenda Viva in the rural province of Sancti Spíritus.
Instead of booking a luxury hotel in Havana, the Brooklyn-born rapper asked his local fixers to find an ordinary family earning only state wages so he could experience authentic Cuban life.
“I didn’t want to stay in a hotel; I wanted to live with them to experience how they lived,” 6ix9ine explained in the raw footage filmed by his cameraman. He arrived unannounced at the concrete-block house of Yoel Ramírez, a tobacco worker earning the equivalent of $14 a month, along with his wife, two children, and elderly parents.
For the next 24 hours the rainbow-haired rapper slept on a mattress on the floor, ate rice, beans and fried plantain from the same pot, played dominoes with neighbours, and even helped fix a leaking roof.
At sunset the following day, as he prepared to leave for the next video location, 6ix9ine gathered the entire family in the small living room and pulled out thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
“You opened your home and your hearts to me with nothing. This wealth is for you; divide it however you want,” he said in broken Spanish while handing over $50,000 in cash. The grandmother burst into tears, the children screamed, and Yoel dropped to his knees, hugging the rapper’s legs.
For a family surviving on roughly $170 a year, the gift represented almost 300 years of combined salaries.
Yoel later told Cuban independent outlet YucaByte that they used part of the money to repair the house, buy a refrigerator, send the kids to private tutoring, and help neighbours who had lost roofs in the last hurricane. Two years later, the family still displays a framed photo of 6ix9ine sitting at their dinner table.
The clip, originally posted on 6ix9ine’s Instagram in June 2023, disappeared during his subsequent legal troubles but was re-uploaded last week by fan pages.
It has now surpassed 28 million views across TikTok and X, with captions reading, “Say what you want about 69, but this was beautiful,” and “Any rapper can’t do what 6ix9ine did here.”
Cuban-American influencer Alex Otaola praised the gesture on his nightly YouTube show, saying it showed more genuine connection in 24 hours than most celebrity charity stunts manage in a lifetime.
However, some commentators questioned safety and authenticity, pointing out that filming in rural Cuba without state permission is risky and wondering if the family was pre-selected. Others simply celebrated the rare sight of a global star choosing immersion over isolation.
The rapper himself has stayed quiet about the renewed attention, but sources close to him say the Cuba trip remains one of the few moments he looks back on with real pride.
Meanwhile, in Sancti Spíritus, the Ramírez family still calls him “el hermano americano” and keeps one $100 bill from the original stack pressed inside a Bible on the living-room altar.
