The 2020s File Feature
Water (Drowning Pt. 2)
Water (Drowning Pt. 2) by A Boogie Wit da Hoodie Featuring Kodak BlackA Holiday Season Chart AppearanceThe week of December 24, 2022, was not an obvious mome…
01 The Story
Water (Drowning Pt. 2) by A Boogie Wit da Hoodie Featuring Kodak Black
A Holiday Season Chart Appearance
The week of December 24, 2022, was not an obvious moment for a brooding rap collaboration to land on the charts. Holiday season chart activity typically tilts toward nostalgia and familiar comfort, which made the appearance of Water (Drowning Pt. 2) at number 97 on that particular Saturday all the more notable. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and Kodak Black, two artists with very different but comparably intense followings, managed to pull enough streaming activity to register on the Hot 100 during one of the most competitive chart weeks of the calendar year.
A Boogie's Bronx Foundation
Artist Julius Dubose, known professionally as A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, had by late 2022 built one of the most consistent streaming careers of any rapper from New York's post-2010s wave. Raised in Highbridge in the Bronx, he developed a melodic, emotionally candid style that set him apart from the harder regional sounds of his peers. His debut project and the albums that followed demonstrated a gift for capturing romantic and personal vulnerability without abandoning the credibility markers that mattered to his core audience. By 2022, multiple Billboard chart appearances and platinum certifications had confirmed that his approach resonated far beyond the Bronx.
Kodak Black's Particular Intensity
Kodak Black brought a different but complementary energy to the collaboration. The Pompano Beach, Florida native had navigated a turbulent personal history while simultaneously accumulating one of the more distinctive artistic voices in contemporary rap. His delivery style, with its Florida coastal drawl and unpredictable melodic choices, had become highly recognizable. Collaborating with an artist like A Boogie, whose strengths lay partly in crafting emotional atmosphere, gave Kodak an environment that highlighted rather than constrained his particular qualities.
The "Drowning" Connection
The parenthetical subtitle, Drowning Pt. 2, connects the track explicitly to A Boogie's catalog: Drowning was among the tracks that helped define his sound and establish his audience. Returning to that sonic territory, this time with Kodak on board, offered fans a continuation of an emotional and aesthetic through-line rather than a completely new departure. The track debuted at number 97 on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 24, 2022, spending one week on the chart. Approximately 3.5 million YouTube views confirmed the track's resonance with its core audience.
Collaboration as Conversation
Some features are transactional, two brands sharing a release for mutual promotional benefit. Others feel like genuine conversations between artists who have something to say to each other. Water (Drowning Pt. 2) leans toward the second category. The emotional register both artists inhabit here, somewhere between vulnerability and defense, produces something more genuinely interesting than a simple joining of fanbases. Press play and let the water metaphor do its quiet, persistent work.
“Water (Drowning Pt. 2)” — A Boogie Wit da Hoodie's singular moment on the 2020s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind "Water (Drowning Pt. 2)" by A Boogie Wit da Hoodie Featuring Kodak Black
Water as Emotional Territory
Water is one of the oldest and most loaded metaphors in human expression: it sustains, it overwhelms, it reflects, it conceals. In the context of A Boogie Wit da Hoodie's catalog, water has carried a specific emotional meaning associated with being submerged in feeling, with the particular experience of emotional intensity that removes your ability to simply breathe and function. The drowning metaphor is not hyperbole in this tradition; it is an accurate description of a very specific psychological state that the artist and his audience recognize without needing clinical language to name it.
Romantic Vulnerability
A Boogie's strength as a writer has always been his willingness to describe romantic and emotional experience from a position of genuine vulnerability rather than performed strength. Where many of his contemporaries defaulted to bravado in their love songs, he routinely chose honesty about how difficult and consuming romantic attachment could be. Water (Drowning Pt. 2) continues that tradition. The drowning imagery captures the experience of caring about someone so much that the caring itself becomes a kind of threat to your equilibrium.
Kodak's Contribution to the Emotional Landscape
Kodak Black's verse brings a different quality of intensity to the track: raw, less polished in its emotional presentation, but no less genuine. His voice has a quality of unfiltered feeling that provides an interesting contrast to A Boogie's more melodically refined approach. Together they map the same emotional territory from different coordinates, which gives the song more dimensional coverage than either artist would produce alone. The collaboration feels complementary rather than coincidental.
The Continuation Narrative
Sequel titles in music carry implicit promises: the story continues, the characters return, the emotional work is not finished. Drowning Pt. 2 makes that promise explicit. Listeners who knew A Boogie's earlier work came to this track with a prior relationship to the metaphor, which enriched their experience of the song. For new listeners, the reference works as a tease: it suggests a depth of catalog worth exploring. Either way, the continuation structure adds emotional weight to the track's premise.
The Weight of Being Pulled Under
Songs about emotional overwhelm serve a specific function for their audiences. They give language to states that feel pre-linguistic: the experience of being so consumed by feeling that articulation seems inadequate. When those songs do their job well, listeners recognize themselves in the drowning metaphor and feel less isolated by their own intensity. Water (Drowning Pt. 2) does that job with enough craft that the metaphor stays alive throughout, never collapsing into cliché despite its familiarity.
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