Gunna - Drip or Drown 2

The Guardian 80

(Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment)

After releasing a series of underground mixtapes and being nurtured by Young Thug, 25-year-old rapper Gunna was picked up for guest spots by Mariah Carey, Travis Scott and Future in 2018, and hit the US Top 5 via one of his collaborations with fellow Atlantan Lil Baby: the beautifully melancholic Drip Too Hard. He thus enters 2019 as one of America’s most-fancied MCs, and this debut solo album – thoughtful, affecting and quietly proud – justifies the hype.

The Young Thug influence is admittedly clear: while Gunna doesn’t have the same wizened vocal idiosyncrasies, he shares his rather disconsolate bearing. If you read the lyrics on their own, you’d think he was as triumphant as a turned-up pop rapper: it’s a roll-call of material success, including an endless stream of “foreigns”, continuing the ongoing rapper fetish for non-US cars that must have General Motors’ marketing department covered in anxious Post-Its. But delivered in that plaintive tone, he suggests a man either dismayed at the spiritual void in his newfound wealth, or one damaged by the struggles that came before it. “Sometimes a gangsta need a hug,” he admits on Who You Foolin’; “We locked in the ghetto forever” asserts Lil Baby on Derek Fisher, despite having revelled in diamonds and cars at the start of his guest verse.

Pitchfork 67

The drowsy Atlanta rapper polishes his style and submits some of his best songs, but the same thing that makes Gunna dependable also makes him predictable.