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The word “drip” took hip-hop by storm in 2018. Rappers started widely using the slang term in their vocabulary, song titles, and mixtapes that year, but Gunna believes he’s why it became so popular. Many artists would likely challenge his viewpoint. However, he thinks he deserves credit and has good reason for his claim.

32-year-old Gunna has been rapping since 2010, but he’s used “drip,” referring to fashion sense, since he first released music. In 2016, his debut mixtape was titled Drip Season, with the Atlanta rapper then releasing Drip Season 2 and Drip Season 3. He also has another mixtape series called Drip or Drown, which has two editions.

Not only that, but his hugely successful collaborative album with Lil Baby was also called Drip Harder. It featured Drake, Young Thug, Lil Durk, and NAV, and the hit single ‘Drip Too Hard’ reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100.

“I think [drip has] always been in my life,” he told Complex. “I always like to dress up, you know what I’m saying? Put on nice, expensive clothes. But before it was even ‘drip,’ I used to be like, ‘swag.’ That’s what we used to call it back then. It’s just a lifestyle.

“[I should have] a lot of credit. Even artists who make songs now with ‘drip,’ they’ll hit me up like, ‘Oh, I got a song for you, it’s gonna say something about ‘drip.’ So they just putting me to the word anyway, just because I came with Drip Season.”

The word has been used in decades past, with Ghostface Killah using it in ‘Nutmeg’ from 2000 and Lil Keke using it in ‘Pimp the Pen’ from 1996. There’s no denying that other rappers have referenced “drip,” but the word completely took off during the late 2010s. It was mentioned in over 2,000 songs in 2018.

During an interview with Billboard, Gunna explained what “drip” means to him. “Drip is your attire, the clothes you wear,” he said. “My drip today, man, I got on a Saint Laurent hoodie, some Balmain’s and some Chanel shoes because it’s Friday. I drip every day, all week, but weekends I’m really putting that shit on. I might wear a $10,000 outfit on a weekend, no cap. Before the deal.

“On God, I always had a passion for clothes, though. I was best dressed in high school. I always spent my money on clothes. My mama will tell you I used to get dressed three or four times a day as a kid, just putting shit on.”

Sauce Walka is another rapper who claims he blew up the word “drip.” On his 2015 track, ‘Flava in Ya Ear’, he rapped, “Talking flava in ya ear right here/ I know you hear me motherfucker (I know you hear me)/ Splash! Drip-drop!” He explained to Genius, “To drip is to be a king. To drip is to be a winner.”

Cardi B also used the word as the title of her 2018 song ‘Drip’, a collaboration with Migos from her debut album Invasion of Privacy. She raps in the chorus, “Came through drippin’ (Drip, drip)/ Diamonds on my wrist, they drippin’ (Ice!)” No matter who popularised the word, Gunna has undeniably impacted its use.