The 2010s File Feature
Gnarly
Gnarly — Kodak Black Featuring Lil Pump (2018) "Gnarly" is a collaborative track by Kodak Black and Lil Pump , released in 2018 . The song brought together t…
01 The Story
Gnarly — Kodak Black Featuring Lil Pump (2018)
"Gnarly" is a collaborative track by Kodak Black and Lil Pump, released in 2018. The song brought together two of the most prominent figures in the SoundCloud rap and mumble rap movements that had defined a particular strain of hip-hop in the mid-to-late 2010s, both artists having risen through a combination of raw street credibility, distinctive vocal personalities, and the viral mechanics of streaming-era music discovery. Their collaboration was a natural outcome of sharing overlapping fan bases and a common aesthetic rooted in South Florida hip-hop culture.
Kodak Black, born Dieuson Octave in Pompano Beach, Florida, had already established himself as a significant commercial force by 2018. His 2017 breakthrough single "Tunnel Vision" had reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and demonstrated his ability to move beyond regional stardom into genuine mainstream success. Lil Pump, born Gazzy Garcia in Miami, had similarly achieved viral success with "ESSKEETIT" and "Gucci Gang," the latter of which had charted prominently on the Hot 100 in 2017. By the time the two collaborated on "Gnarly," both were operating at a level of commercial visibility that gave their collaboration real market weight.
The production on "Gnarly" fits squarely within the aesthetic of late-2010s SoundCloud rap, with a hard, minimal trap beat that prioritizes impact over complexity. The track deploys the distorted 808 bass, sparse hi-hat patterns, and bass-heavy low end that had become the signature sonic language of the movement. Both artists deliver their verses with the casual, almost bored intensity that had become one of the movement's stylistic signatures, projecting confidence through understatement rather than through technical display.
"Gnarly" charted on the Billboard Hot 100, reflecting the streaming power that both artists commanded among their core audiences of young hip-hop fans who consumed music primarily through YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify. The song's chart performance was a function of this streaming audience rather than radio airplay, which had historically been more resistant to the rawer, less polished aesthetic of the SoundCloud rap movement. The track appeared during a period when the Hot 100's methodology, which weights streaming heavily, was allowing music that would not have charted under older formulas to achieve significant positions.
Kodak Black was navigating a particularly complicated personal period in 2018, with ongoing legal issues that created uncertainty about his availability for promotion and live performance. Despite this, his commercial output remained consistent, and "Gnarly" was one of several tracks released during this period that demonstrated his continued ability to generate listener engagement even under difficult personal circumstances. Atlantic Records, which distributed much of his material, continued to support his releases through this period.
Lil Pump brought his own particular energy to the collaboration, characterized by the exuberant, cartoonish confidence that had made him one of the most distinctive voices in the SoundCloud rap scene. His aesthetic was defined by excess and deliberate outrageousness, a quality that complemented Kodak Black's rawer, more grounded approach in an interesting way. The contrast between the two artists' personalities gave "Gnarly" a dynamic quality that a single-artist track might have lacked.
Critical reception to "Gnarly" was consistent with the broader critical response to SoundCloud rap during this period, which ranged from dismissal to genuine enthusiasm depending on the publication and the individual critic. Observers who had come to appreciate the movement on its own terms noted the track's energy and the effective chemistry between the two performers. Those skeptical of the genre's aesthetic conventions tended to find little to distinguish it from the broader wave of similar-sounding material.
The song's cultural significance lies primarily in its status as a document of a specific moment in hip-hop history, when the SoundCloud generation was at or near its commercial peak and its leading figures were collaborating freely across the loose community that platforms like SoundCloud had created. Both artists' continued commercial presence in subsequent years, despite various personal and legal difficulties, suggests that the authenticity their audiences perceived in tracks like "Gnarly" created a durable connection.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind "Gnarly" by Kodak Black Featuring Lil Pump
"Gnarly" is a track that operates primarily within the rhetorical conventions of street credibility rap, presenting narrators who emphasize their toughness, their authenticity to their backgrounds, and their indifference to competition or criticism. The song does not attempt to construct a complex lyrical argument but rather communicates through attitude, energy, and the kind of understated confidence that was a hallmark of the SoundCloud rap movement at its peak. The meaning is inseparable from the performance itself, from the specific ways in which Kodak Black and Lil Pump deploy their distinct vocal personalities.
Kodak Black's contributions draw explicitly on his Pompano Beach background and the specific social textures of South Florida street culture. His delivery has always been marked by a raw, unpolished quality that his audience reads as evidence of authenticity, the sense that what he is saying reflects lived experience rather than constructed persona. On "Gnarly," this quality is present in the way he inhabits his verses, giving them the casual authority of someone speaking from a position of genuine knowledge rather than performance.
Lil Pump's approach to the track differs meaningfully from Kodak's, leaning into the exaggerated, almost satirical confidence that defined his brand. Where Kodak's authenticity reads as grounded, Pump's reads as deliberately excessive, a kind of performance of bravado that is aware of its own extremity. This contrast between the two artists' registers, one operating within a realist frame and one within a more cartoonishly inflated frame, creates an interesting tension that gives the track more personality than it would have if both performers were playing the same note.
The title word "gnarly," borrowed from surf culture and popularized through skateboarding's appropriation into broader youth culture, carries a meaning of extreme intensity, something impressive through its very dangerousness or difficulty. Applied to the identity these narrators are constructing, the word suggests a self-conception rooted in hardness, in a quality of being difficult to deal with or impossible to easily categorize. It functions as a badge of honor within the value system the song inhabits, where being gnarly is aspirational rather than problematic.
The song's thematic content also engages with themes of material success and the enjoyment of rewards that followed from navigating difficult circumstances. Both artists had reached points in their careers where the financial rewards of success were real and visible, and "Gnarly" reflects this position, with imagery centered on spending, possessions, and the pleasures available to young men who had made it out of poverty. This narrative of escape and arrival, common across Southern hip-hop, is present in the track's self-presentation even if it is not articulated with great specificity.
For the audience that received "Gnarly" most enthusiastically, the song's meaning was primarily one of identification and aspiration. The energy projected by Kodak Black and Lil Pump, their confidence, their refusal to seem impressed by anything, their projection of total self-sufficiency, spoke to listeners who found that posture compelling as a model for navigating their own circumstances. This kind of aspirational identification has always been one of hip-hop's most powerful mechanisms for connecting with audiences.
The track's broader significance within the SoundCloud rap era lies in the way it demonstrates the movement's particular aesthetics at a moment of peak cultural influence. The deliberate roughness, the minimalist production, the regional specificity of the performers' identities, and the emphasis on attitude over technical complexity were all characteristic of the movement and are present in concentrated form in "Gnarly," making it a useful document of what that moment in hip-hop sounded like and meant to the young audiences who embraced it.
→ More from Kodak Black Featuring Lil Pump
View all Kodak Black Featuring Lil Pump hits →
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging