The 2010s File Feature
Wit It
"Wit It" — Gunna The Ascent of Atlanta Trap in 2019 By early 2019, the Atlanta trap sound had fully colonized mainstream hip-hop. The wave that had been buil…
01 The Story
"Wit It" — Gunna
The Ascent of Atlanta Trap in 2019
By early 2019, the Atlanta trap sound had fully colonized mainstream hip-hop. The wave that had been building since the early 2010s through the work of Young Thug, Future, and Migos had crested into something like total dominance, and a new generation of artists was emerging through the networks and co-signs that those pioneers had established. Gunna, born Sergio Giavanni Kitchens, was among the most promising of that cohort. His smooth, melodic delivery and his facility with the slow, gliding vocal runs that characterized the post-Young Thug approach to rap had already earned him significant attention, and his debut album Drip or Drown 2 arrived in March 2019 as a formal introduction to an audience that had been tracking his progress through features and mixtapes.
Drip or Drown 2 and the YSL Roster
Drip or Drown 2 was released on March 22, 2019, through Young Stoner Life Records, Gunna's label home within the YSL ecosystem built around Young Thug. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, a strong commercial performance for a debut project that confirmed Gunna's readiness for the mainstream. The release generated significant streaming volume, pushing multiple tracks onto the Hot 100 simultaneously, a pattern consistent with how streaming-era album releases functioned by that point in the industry. Wit It was among the tracks that charted from the project, debuting on March 9, 2019, at its peak position of number 75 on the Hot 100. A single chart week is a common trajectory for deeper album cuts in this streaming environment, where first-week numbers can be substantial without sustaining into subsequent weeks.
Production and Aesthetic
The production on Wit It is characteristic of the YSL aesthetic: spacious, melodic, built on synthesizer textures and 808 bass patterns that provide a cushion for Gunna's floating vocal delivery. His approach to the beat is notably unhurried, riding the production with a patience that creates tension between the forward momentum of the rhythm and the deliberate ease of the performance. That tension is central to what makes his style effective; the contrast between the kinetic energy of the drums and the glacial confidence of the vocal delivery produces a characteristic feeling of suspended forward motion that became one of the defining textures of late-2010s Atlanta rap. The production on this track was crafted within the established aesthetic of his label and producer network, reinforcing the visual and sonic identity that had already begun to coalesce around the Gunna brand.
The Drip Aesthetic and Its Cultural Moment
The "drip" concept that Gunna and his cohort had helped codify by 2019 was both a style philosophy and a sonic identity. Luxury fashion references, slow flows, heavy jewelry imagery, and a generalized posture of effortless coolness had become the dominant aesthetic template for a significant portion of mainstream hip-hop. Gunna was among the most effective practitioners of this aesthetic because his delivery embodied its values so completely; his vocal style communicated ease and confidence without effort, which is exactly the paradox that the drip concept requires. Wit It sits within that aesthetic as a fully realized expression of it, a track that communicates its values through sound as much as through lyrical content.
Early Career and Subsequent Trajectory
Looking back at Wit It from the vantage of his later career, it represents a moment of arrival. Gunna went on to achieve multiple number-one albums and became one of the most commercially consistent figures in the genre, but the March 2019 release of Drip or Drown 2 was the record that established him as a headliner rather than a supporting figure. The chart performance of Wit It and its album companions confirmed that his audience was ready to follow him into that expanded role. His subsequent work deepened the aesthetic established on this album while extending its commercial reach, and the foundation laid by Drip or Drown 2 remained visible throughout his career's development.
Turn It On
Play Wit It as an entry point into the broader Drip or Drown 2 project, and you get an immediate sense of what made Gunna's early work so immediately appealing: a sound that felt simultaneously specific and perfectly calibrated for the moment.
"Wit It" — Gunna's singular moment on the 2010s charts.
02 Song Meaning
"Wit It" — Themes and Context Behind Gunna's 2019 Track
Confidence as Aesthetic Principle
The dominant emotional register of Wit It is confidence, and that confidence is primarily communicated through form rather than content. What Gunna is saying matters less than how he is saying it: the slow glide of the delivery, the unhurried cadence, the sense that every syllable arrives exactly when he intends it to. This performance of effortlessness as a form of power is a longstanding tradition in African American vernacular music, running from jazz cool through funk and into the various strands of hip-hop that prioritize swagger over aggression. Gunna locates himself in that tradition knowingly, using the sonic language of ease to make confidence sound not merely assumed but inevitable.
Luxury Imagery and the Drip Economy
The lyrical universe of Wit It is populated with the luxury references that had become central to the Atlanta trap aesthetic by 2019. Fashion brands, jewelry, expensive cars, and the general atmosphere of high-end consumption appear as both subject matter and signifying system, a way of communicating values through cultural reference rather than direct statement. The drip aesthetic has its roots in longstanding traditions of conspicuous display in hip-hop culture, though Gunna and his contemporaries brought a particular refinement to those references, matching the understated cool of their delivery to the understated luxury of the fashion world they cited. The effect is less like boasting and more like casual inventory.
The YSL Aesthetic and Collective Identity
Part of what gives Wit It its cultural weight is the collective aesthetic that surrounded it. Young Stoner Life had developed a recognizable sound and visual identity across a roster of artists that included Young Thug, Gunna, and others, and releasing music under that banner in 2019 carried meaningful context. Listeners understood that a YSL track existed within a specific sonic and cultural framework, and that understanding shaped how they received individual songs. The collective identity gave each track an additional layer of meaning beyond its own content, functioning as both a standalone artistic statement and an installment in a larger ongoing aesthetic project.
The Post-Young Thug Vocal Tradition
Gunna's vocal style is deeply indebted to Young Thug's innovations, and it is worth being explicit about that genealogy rather than vague about it. Thug's approach to melody, his willingness to bend syllables and vowels in ways that prioritized emotional texture over conventional pronunciation, opened a significant aesthetic space that Gunna and others moved into. What Gunna brought to this inherited approach was a particular smoothness and restraint that distinguished his style from Thug's more mercurial energy. Where Thug could be unpredictable, Gunna was consistent; the same quality that made his music feel safe and pleasurable to inhabit for long periods of time.
The Debut Album as Cultural Statement
A debut album as commercially strong as Drip or Drown 2 is both a personal arrival and a cultural event for the audience that has been waiting for it. Wit It and its chart companions from that project gave Gunna's audience their first extended, formal statement of who he was as an artist and what his music would consistently offer. The consistency and quality of that statement set expectations for everything that followed, and it is worth remembering that the album's commercial performance at number three on the Billboard 200 placed him immediately in the conversation about the most commercially significant artists in the genre. That position was built partly on tracks like this one, each contributing its streaming weight to an opening-week total that confirmed the breadth and depth of his waiting audience.
→ More from Gunna
View all Gunna hits →
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging