I knew from the summer time I had to write about this at some point. “6 7” became some of the year’s most ubiquitous phenomena, a meme so ambiguous that Dictionary.com, which named it word of the year, couldn’t quite define it. The phrase comes from Philly rapper Skrilla’s “Dood Doot (6 7)” track. His bars:
“The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin’
6-7, I just bipped right on the highway”
Initially, there were rumors that “6-7” referred to “10-67,” a police code for report of death, which piqued my curiosity about the hysteria. In the latter half of 2025, it elevated from basketball player Taylen “TK” Kinney, saying it while doing a hand motion into Kim Kardashian and Jimmy Fallon skits. Few of the people running the meme into the ground know who Skrilla is, but his improbable moment, born from a line depicting murder on the highway, became a part of 2026 Americana — I guess right alongside Thanksgiving being derived from 1637’s Pequot Massacre. Seemingly, everything in America has a bloody origin.
Before writing, I asked my friend and colleague Lawrence Burney for advice. Since he wrote an informative piece about the term “bip” being co-opted by multiple regions, I wanted to get his sense of whether he thought the term “6-7” was an ad-lib to the previous lyric about murder-by-switch or whether he thought it could be attached to “bipped right on the highway.”
His answer surprised me: he revealed that Skrilla hadn’t even originated “6 7,” attributing it to Philly rapper YSN UTH. He dropped a song called “6 7” this year, and seemingly first used the term in 2022. Listening to UTH’s music quickly demystified the term’s function. Every time he mentioned “6 7” was around bars depicting things that eight-year-old Nathan from Iowa probably shouldn’t be thinking about.
The first instance, on 2022’s “Turkey Butts” with Fatchop and YSN KEY, is hard to understand fully. It sounds like he raps, “6 7, don dada, get whacked,” but the second line is underlaid by people screaming at the video shoot, though the next bars after are “switches goin’ off, niggas gettin’ back.” He and YSN Spazz use it multiple times on “Home Invasion,” including a “green light 6 7” ad lib. And on May’s song “6 7,” he raps, “you heard ‘6 7’ nigga that’s my block / we in the TRX with a fully chop.”
In an interview with media outlet Enterprize Philly, he notes that it comes from 67th street in Philadelphia. In an April interview with media personality Khadejia, UTH shouted out the “6700” block but was coy about what “6 7” meant to him, calling it “deeper than rap,” adding, “we got real blood in with this shit.’ In both videos, he showed a crimson “6 7” tat on his wrist.
Skrilla, who is from the Kensington part of Philly, has told POW Mag that him saying “6 7” is a shoutout to “where all my youngbulls from,” specifically naming rapper Doodie Baby. I wasn’t able to find any tweets or footage of either Skrilla or UTH explicitly mentioning the other, but the latter is adamant that he be recognized as the originator.
What we have is a blooming onion of quandaries: the term “6 7” has transcended Skrilla, who seemingly borrowed it from an artist who wants his just due. And, on top of that, America’s sweetheart term comes from someone who references it alongside gun violence. LeBron probably doesn’t realize that the term he used originates from some “deeper than rap” action in Philadelphia. But that’s what happens on social media, where finding the genesis of cultural ephemera can be like seeking a needle in a haystack, so no one even asks questions anymore.
The “6 7” is a consequence of our nonsensical, nonsequitur brainrot culture, next to grilled chicken memes and pictures of professional athletes with Druski’s head photoshopped on them. We’ve doomscrolled to the depths of what journalist Ivie Ani calls “late stage social media.” Now, memes no longer have to make sense, but just might have legs if they make enough people chuckle. The term “Diddy party” refers to the disgraced mogul’s penchant for abusive, coercive sexcapades, but TikTok-obsessed teenagers have zapped the term of any gravity or care for survivors, presumably because “Diddy” is fun to pronounce.
What’s happening with “6 7” is as trivializing as “Diddy Party’s” morbid virality. The ad-lib has been repeatedly uttered alongside bars about gun violence, from a Philly drill rapper repping 67th street, but it’s been sanitized beyond any inkling of that context. The moment harkens to “Notti Bop,” a viral hit that had kids all over the country doing a chest beating dance, unaware that it originated to mock the death of Notti Osama, who was fatally stabbed in 2022.
“Doot Doot (6 7)” has helped drive momentum for Skrilla’s music career, but it’s unclear how long it will last, and how much money he can tangibly trace to its virality. So even if “6 7” went viral from a YSN UTH song, it’s questionable if he’d have been able to wrangle the hype and monetize it. That would put him in the position of Kayla Newman, the Chicago woman who coined “on fleek” in high school but then sought the public’s support in receiving recompense after brands like IHOP, Taco Bell, and Forever 21 used the term without crediting her. She told The Fader in 2015, “I gave the world a word. I can’t explain the feeling. At the moment, I haven’t gotten any endorsements or received any payment. I feel that I should be compensated. But I also feel that good things happen to those who wait.” She was right: several years later she launched a GoFundMe and received enough funds to launch a cosmetic line.
But the rewards were immediate for young Tennessean Hailey Welch, who said “Hawk Tuah” on a video and quickly parlayed it into over $65K in merch sales, a podcast, a Jimmy Kimmel Live skit, throwing the first pitch at a Mets game, as well as public appearances at a Zac Bryan show, and a Shaq DJ set. Even when it comes to who gets to capitalize on social media virality, race and class elements are at play.
And “6 7’s” co-opting is more alarming than just stolen IP. If the term was said alongside a bar about domestic violence, or animal cruelty, or any other universally reprehensible act, it may not have reached the stratosphere that it has (even in Trump’s America, I choose to believe that). But unfortunately, gun violence in Black and Brown communities (a topic I discussed last week) will seemingly never be off limits.
The trauma, grief, and turmoil of the gun violence that songs like “Doot Doot” and “Home Invasion” depict are too often stripped away by people detached from, and desensitized to, Black death. The trouble in “6 7’s” signal crossing isn’t with the suburban middle schoolers who made it a trend. But it is on their elders, complicit in an environment where only violence toward certain communities is taken seriously.
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