{"id":297050,"date":"2025-11-17T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T12:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/297050\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T12:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T12:37:07","slug":"6-7-6-7-or-67-why-the-phrase-traces-back-to-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/297050\/","title":{"rendered":"\u20186-7,\u2019 \u20186 7\u2019 or \u201867\u2019? Why the phrase traces back to Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

If you are around children or are on social media, by now, you\u2019ve probably heard the phrase \u201c6-7\u201d uttered.\n<\/p>\n

The youthful phenomenon, in which kids say \u201c6-7\u201d and move their open-palmed hands up and down for no apparent reason, was recently named word of the year<\/a> by Dictionary.com. Its origins trace to a song by a Philly rapper with gun-referencing lyrics, but the pop culture use of \u201c6-7\u201d is more playful \u2014 even becoming the focus of a recent episode of \u201cSouth Park,\u201d and companies such as McDonald\u2019s, Pizza Hut and Domino\u2019s have offered promotions<\/a> inspired by the two numbers.\n<\/p>\n

As the saying has gone global, many people still don\u2019t understand it \u2014 or that it\u2019s most likely Philadelphia-based.\n <\/p>\n

So what does \u201c6-7\u201d mean? And why has it become so prevalent? Here\u2019s an explainer.\n<\/p>\n

What does \u20186-7\u2019 mean?<\/p>\n

The phrase comes from a song by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla, titled \u201cDoot Doot (6 7),\u201d released last year. Specifically, the lyrics, often repeated in viral videos, go:\n<\/p>\n

\u201cShooter stay strapped, I don\u2019t need mine,\n<\/p>\n

Bro put belt right to they behind,\n<\/p>\n

The way that switch, I know he dyin\u2019 \u2026 6-7.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Multiple lyric interpretations exist, according to the user-aggregated music site Genius<\/a>. After the reference to a \u201cswitch<\/a>,\u201d or gun, some say \u201c6-7\u201d refers to the police code 10-67, widely regarded as meaning a dead body \u2014\u00a0but a spokesperson for Philadelphia police confirmed to the Bucks County Courier Times<\/a> that city officers don\u2019t use that code.\n<\/p>\n

It could be a reference to 67th Street or 67th Avenue in Philadelphia, or a street in Chicago, where Skrilla has family. The artist himself says the meaning is fluid \u2014 in a recent interview<\/a>, he said, \u201cThat\u2019s just what my brain thought of when I was making the song \u2026 It means a block \u2026 but that\u2019s not what it means to everybody else now. So it\u2019s just like, turn something negative to something positive.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

As widespread and broad as the saying has become, CNN notes<\/a>, \u201c6-7 means nothing, but using it can make a student feel like a member of a bigger, cooler group of their peers.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216,108],"class_list":{"0":"post-297050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-social-media"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}