In 2015, a mutual friend, Keith Troup, introduced him to Young Thug, the rapper who has most influenced his sound today—and the friend who has reshaped the course of his life.
“When I didn't know him, I had a feeling I'd meet him because in Atlanta that's how it is,” Gunna says. “You link up with n-ggas when the time presents itself.” He and Thug grew closer following Troup's death later that year. “We ain't do no music or nothing. We was just hanging. And, shit, that's how it started from there.” Eventually, of course, the pair did do music together, and more. Gunna is currently signed to Thug's YSL Records, while Thug is a constant presence in Gunna's life. “Me and Gunna are like brothers—we've known each other for years,” Thug tells me in an email. When Gunna landed in the hospital last year with a case of pneumonia, Thug gave him four watches—three from Audemars Piguet and one from Cartier. (“I'm a giver, that's just what I do. Especially if I consider you family, and with Gunna it's like that. So of course I had to pull up on him while he was down,” Thug explains. “He'd do the same thing for me.”)
As Gunna sets his sights on expanding his career to include movies and a fashion line full of “hard shit”—he's got a very Gunna plan to eventually sell berets—he's also making sure to have some fun. He, Thug, and the rest of the YSL roster love to bowl; he's got plans for a multi-label tournament down the line. As dinner at Steak Market wraps after midnight, the group takes its celebration to a local bowling alley. This life “is a blessing,” Gunna says. “It's everything I've ever wanted.”