Last week, on August 18, a video named “RATEKASHI - CHEESY SLIDE (Official Music Video)” appeared on YouTube. It features a cartoon rat rapping and wiggling around in a strip club, demonstrating his ‘cheesy slide’ dance. It is a clear mockery of 24-year-old rainbow-haired rapper 6ix9ine, who in 2019 notoriously snitched on his former gang to get out of a possible life sentence.

The video, and its unusually high production value, raises many questions. It is well-animated—90s Pixar caliber—the full package: a professionally mixed & mastered record, an expensive beat, an original dance, and a marketing blitz that included Youtube advertisements, original content for social media, and nearly a week featured at the top of WorldStarHipHop. For all the money thrown at it, as of August 28, it has only accrued ~249,000 views. For reference, 6ix9ine’s four official music videos since his release from prison in May have averaged 255 million views.

The video doesn’t feel like a good-natured parody. Apart from lyrics designed to make 6ix9ine look like a spineless worm—”Throw your right hand up and your loyalty aside!”—it loudly displays, at the end of the video, “FREE THE REAL” and the names of dozens of prison reform nonprofits. Whoever is behind Ratekashi clearly hates 6ix9ine, wants to make a mockery of him, and has a romantic notion of gang code. Weird subject for animation—could you imagine Pixar making a “stop snitching” music video?

6ix9ine has many enemies, but who would spend hundreds of thousands—if not millions—rather ineffectively—to release an animated takedown? Some fans speculated 6ix9ine himself is behind Ratekashi. While 6ix9ine portrayed himself as a cartoon rat in his welcome home video “Gooba,” I think that was more of a move to pre-empt future attacks like Ratekashi—and with 6ix9ine’s album due to release on September 4th, it doesn’t make sense for him to release a distraction.

So who is really behind Ratekashi? Who’s spending the big bucks to hammer Ratekashi into pop culture’s consciousness?

The trailhead begins on Ratekashi’s official website. While the website’s registration information has been purposefully concealed, the company credited at the bottom is Shadows Interactive. Shadows Interactive appears to be an animation & marketing company creating ‘virtual influencers’: characters such as Epiphenus, a stoner philosopher, or Astro, the ‘teenage hypebeast alien.’ Their characters have over 100 thousand Instagram followers each and super-clean internet presences. Shadows is clearly the creative engine that breathed life into Ratekashi.

[We Played 6ix9ine Out Loud in New York to See What Would Happen]

But Ratekashi is a hard pivot from Shadows Interactive’s previous characters. Who gave them the hip-hop edge? Enter Kirkland Alexander Lynch.

Reddit user misto404 did a lot of the heavy investigative lifting on Kirkland Alexander Lynch, so shouts out to him. Lynch was originally credited as the song’s writer on Genius, according to misto404. The other writers were Jordan Samuel Wilson, identity unknown, and Dylan Jack Flinn, the CEO of Shadows Interactive. Curiously, after the whispers of Ratekashi’s true identity began circulating on Reddit threads, the writer credits were removed on Genius (luckily misto404 took screenshots).

Kirkland Alexander Lynch has a background in the music industry, with previous experience at Sony and Universal. In May 2020, according to his LinkedIn, Lynch joined Shadows Interactive as Interim COO and Head of Music. Ratekashi’s YouTube channel was registered a month later, on June 15, 2020. Ratekashi appears to be Lynch’s first big project for Shadows Interactive.

Lynch once wrote an effusive article comparing Meek Mill, 6ix9ine’s nemesis and a prison reform advocate, to “royalty”—an article that was deleted right after Ratekashi came out! Lynch’s powerful position in the music industry, and his shared Philadelphia roots with Meek Mill, have led some to assume that Meek Mill is also connected to Ratekashi—and that Lynch is trying to cover up the tracks.

If so, that’d be hilarious. Meek Mill, so beloved after leaving prison in 2018, has squandered his goodwill by beefing with Nick Minaj and putting ‘greenlights’—an order to attack or kill someone on sight—on bloggers. You can’t be a holy advocate for prison reform while implicitly promoting gang activity under the aegis of ‘stop snitching’ and ordering hits…

Still, the Meek Mill connection is more conjecture, and impossible to prove at this point. For now, the trail ends at Kirkland Alexander Lynch and Shadows Interactive. Lynch, with his hip-hop background and adulation for prison reform advocates like Meek Mill, seems to have provided the vision for Ratekashi, while Shadows Interactive created him in their laboratory. An obvious attempt to add to Shadows’ viral arsenal of characters, while simultaneously clipping 6ix9ine for his breach of gang code.

Still, for all the money poured into this thing, 250 thousand views is peanuts. Ratekashi is a misguided attempt at branding an artist who already embraced his ‘rat’ label—6ix9ine’s forthcoming album is literally called TattleTales. Also—if you hate snitches so much, why would you create a dance song celebrating it?? STOOPID!!

Editor’s note: Countere will update this story as we receive more information. Got a tip? Email overlord@countere.com.