Entry · catalog no. 1219
Zone 6
/ /zoʊn sɪks/ /ZOHN SIKS
proper noun · East Atlanta, Georgia — Edgewood, Kirkwood, Reynoldstown, East Atlanta Village, East Lake · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
The Atlanta Police Department's sixth patrol zone, on the east side of the city, covering Edgewood, Kirkwood, Reynoldstown, East Atlanta, East Lake, Grant Park, Little Five Points and neighboring areas. In ordinary use it is simply a way of saying east side, the way a New Yorker says a borough. The zone is an administrative line drawn by the police, and the people inside it took the number and made it a place name.
“He grew up off Glenwood, straight out of Zone 6.”
2.
In Atlanta rap, a claim of origin and standing, invoked the way other cities invoke a borough or a ward. Naming your zone situates you precisely and asserts that the neighborhood, not the city's brand, produced you.
“Every hook on the tape ends with Zone 6 in it.”
Origin & Attribution
The number is a bureaucratic artifact: the Atlanta Police Department divides the city into numbered patrol zones, and Zone 6 is the east side precinct. Black East Atlanta residents adopted the police's own map as their vocabulary, and the convention runs citywide, with Bankhead claimed as Zone 1 and the south side as Zone 3 and Zone 4. Zone 6 became nationally legible through Gucci Mane, who grew up in East Atlanta, took Mr. Zone 6 as a name, released the DJ Drama hosted mixtape Mr. Zone 6 in June 2010 and the album The Return of Mr. Zone 6 in March 2011, and by 2016 was putting the phrase on a joint tape with Future. Writing this off as a rapper's branding gimmick misses the point: it is a Black neighborhood in a heavily policed city taking the state's classification of itself and turning it into a home address.
2010
Gucci Mane releases the Mr. Zone 6 mixtape, hosted by DJ Drama, on 19 June
2011
The Return of Mr. Zone 6 puts the phrase on a major label album, released 22 March
2016
Gucci Mane and Future release Free Bricks 2K16 (Zone 6 Edition) on 14 November
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
East Atlanta, Georgia — Edgewood, Kirkwood, Reynoldstown, East Atlanta Village, East Lake · 2010s
Spoken by
Black Atlantans on the east side; Atlanta rap artists and audiences; now understood nationally through rap
$ZONEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady16 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2010
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Atlanta Police Department, Zone 6 precinct and neighborhood listing, City of Atlanta
reference · online
■
Gucci Mane, Mr. Zone 6, mixtape hosted by DJ Drama, 1017 Brick Squad, 19 June 2010
recording · audio
■
Gucci Mane, The Return of Mr. Zone 6, 1017 Brick Squad / Warner Bros. Records, 22 March 2011
recording · audio
■
+ Cite a sourceGucci Mane and Future, Free Bricks 2K16 (Zone 6 Edition), Freebandz / 1017, 14 November 2016
recording · audio
See also