The 67 meme took over the internet in December 2024 when Skrilla, a rapper from Philadelphia, released his song “Doot Doot (6 7)”. Since its release, the song has become an earworm, with many using the slang without knowing what it actually means. The public will never know the true meaning of the lyric, unless Skrilla confirms it, although theories have spread, some are more accurate than others.
The meme truly started to spread when the song was used in TikTok edits of LaMelo Ball, a popular point guard for the Charlotte Hornets. Ball is 6 feet and 7 inches tall, which was the main reason behind using that audio for edits of him.
The original lyrics that became popular state:
“So many dead opps, so many ashes (brr)
You ain’t catch that, I can’t pass this (come here)
Shooter stay strapped, I don’t need mine
Bro put belt right to they behind
The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin’
6-7.”
Many editors on TikTok may have interpreted the lyrics into a song about Ball switching past his “opps” and shooting a basketball instead of what it really is about: gang violence.
Skrilla’s song is full of African American Vernacular English, a dialect used internationally.
According to the International Center for Language Studies, “The genesis of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) can be traced back to the era of slavery in the United States. Enslaved Africans were torn from diverse linguistic backgrounds and forced into English-speaking environments. As a coping mechanism and a means of preserving a sense of community, they created a new dialect by combining elements from West African languages and the English dialects of their enslavers.”
Although AAVE is spoken by a large portion of the US population, it is often dismissed as a deficient form of English. However, those assumptions are offensive and incorrect. AAVE has significantly impacted the English language, with common phrases such as “cool” and “funky” being derived from the dialect.
AAVE is often misunderstood by people who aren’t of African American descent. Not knowing what something means can often cause someone to create a negative connotation towards it or make up a completely different definition. This may have happened with the 67 memes, which are often assumed to have no meaning. This idea, however, is incorrect.
Languagejones, a quantitative social scientist with a PhD from the Linguistics department at the University of Pennsylvania and a popular YouTuber, explains his theory about what 67 really means in a video.
“A lot of people don’t understand what Skrilla is saying in the song Doot Doot,” says Jones. “For some reason, what happens when people don’t understand what a black American is saying is that they make [something up]. They go by context clues, but they don’t usually have all the context. I’ve seen this over and over again everywhere from the propagation of new slang like ‘Bye Felicia’ to criminal prosecutors just making things up.”
In his video, Jones explains the context lyric by lyric.
Starting with “So many dead opps, so many ashes (brr),” Jones explains that “opps” is a common term for rival gang members, but is often used more by people not affiliated with gangs.
Jones then examines the line: “Shooter stay strapped, I don’t need mine,” explaining that “Shooter” is a definite noun, meaning it’s an occupation. The shooter is armed, but the narrator says they don’t need what Jones assumes is a gun, even though Skrilla never specifically mentions one.
Jones continues to the next line, “Bro put a belt right to them behind.” Jones interprets that the pronoun “Bro” is referring to the shooter and that the belt is a synecdoche for a firearm.
The next line Jones examines is “The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin’,” assuming that “switch” is another term for a firearm with “brrt” being an onomatopoeia representing the sound of the said firearm.
After examining the context of the song, Jones explains that 10-67 is a police radio call for a dead body. This assumption disproves the largely accepted assumption that the line is a reference to 67th Street in Chicago, which has a reputation inside the city for being dangerous. This theory was also already disproven by the fact that Skrilla isn’t from Chicago.
The phenomenon of the 67 meme is just another addition to the long list of popularized terms derived from AAVE. So, when the next big slang term replaces 67, don’t just assume it doesn’t mean anything. Do your research, because it may be more than just brainrot.
