Meet 6DAD
By: Elizabeth Cyrus
Tags: Music

For those of you who don’t know by now this is the 6DAD AKA Dad of the 6 AKA Toronto City Councillor and former deputy mayor, Norm Kelly.

Norm Kelly, City of Toronto Councillor, Ward 40. Twitter Profile Picture.

How did an inconspicuous city councillor turn into a viral meme and now twitter famous sensation? Well there would be no 6DAD without the 6god: Drake. The Toronto native rapper who turned the city into an icon. Toronto’s ultimate exhilarator….. who spawned the most annoying man in recent times. Here’s how it started.

Kelly had always been active on twitter but his following grew when he stepped in as deputy mayor for the late Rob Ford. As @norm , Kelly was always on trend with millennials, tweeting gifs, recreating memes, cheering on the Raptors and of course showing high interest in Drake. Kelly would often tweet Drake.

Drake shakes hands with rival Washington player at a Raptors game.

Although he never got any reply from the rapper, his following slowly grew. During the summer of 2015 Drake was set to drop his new album and of course Kelly was cheering him on. Even creating memes of his own.

Right after the album drop Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill had a feud with Drake. It was then that Kelly dropped the tweet that would change everything.

Meek replied! ““Aye white man @norm what gives you the audacity to tell me I can’t come somewhere over me voicing my opinion! U sound like a thug lol.” to which Kelly replied ““Aye American @MeekMill. Didn’t say don’t come. Just puzzled why you’d diss a Canadian hero a week before coming to his city.” From then on rap beef between Drake and Meek Mill became twitter beef between Norm and Meek Mill.

Drake is an extension of the city, therefore not only was Kelly defending Drake he was defending Toronto. That summer the millennials named Kelly the 6dad. His twitter account skyrocketed to more than 100,000+ followers that week.

Norm. Ate. It. Up. More memes, more gifs, more tweeting. That fall he even performed with Drake at Ryerson University’s 6FEST. A free concert held by the students part of their frosh week. Miraculously the students were able to book Drake and Norm joined the fun.

From then on @norm exploded. Continuing to build his brand as fun loving dad of the 6. Norm Kelly’s twitter account now has over 700k followers. Capitalizing on his new name, Kelly started an online clothing line called the 6DAD

Screenshot: 6DAD website.

Hats, sweaters, t-shirts you name it. 6DAD has it all . The website claims that all proceeds go back to the community, benefiting Toronto based charities and non-profit organization. However, it’s not all sweet in the six for Norm. It has been three years. Once highly entertaining, now only slightly funny, people have grown tired and wonder is how exactly councilman Norm Kelly is acting as councilman.

While developing a now highly successful brand, as councilman, Kelly’s camaraderie for the youth seems to be all smoke and mirrors . An article in the Toronto Star by Desmond Cole calls attention to the fact that although Kelly gained the majority of his fame from, “black culture” and its music, slang, dress, he doesn’t seems to stand up for black youth in the politics of his own town. “Many have noted the grating irony that Kelly (you may know him as “6Dad”) isn’t using his growing profile to highlight discrimination against black people, who have created and sustained the hip hop culture he’s ridden to sudden fame.”

While claiming to be educated with Toronto rap and hiphop culture, in a interview with Vice ,Kelly could not name more than two Toronto rappers, The Weeknd and of course Drake. In an article from the Globe and Mail entitled “Twitter is not your job, Norm. Doing good for Toronto is.” UofT student Melissa Vincent recalls Kelly coming for a visit to her Urban Studies class. Vincent describes Kelly as superficial, dodging important political dealing with race and poverty and ending the lecture with a synopsis of how rap began.

Norm Kelly became a twitter sensation and capitalized on his meme status as the 6DAD quite successfully. However, keeping up with staying on trend is a whole other job in itself. Instead of taking his new found fame and using his platform as councilman for good, Kelly seems to be very superficial. If there’s one thing people like it’s genuineness. Something people are realizing Kelly doesn’t have. It’s hard to believe that @norm will be 6DAD forever.