As the Cornell community anticipates the end of classes and its annual Slope Day, it is obviously necessary to reflect on the new artist that will be headlining the event: Gunna.
Nobody could deny the outpour of excitement that took SideChat by storm when the Cornell Administration announced Gunna as the new artist to headline Slope Day. However, I personally got mixed reactions from many people around me — some were excited but others were a bit lost. Many of my friends did not even know who Gunna was. So in a bid to prepare ourselves for slope day many of us had to create playlists of Gunna’s music and learn the lyrics so that we would not seem too lost at what is undoubtedly the largest and most unifying event of the school year at Cornell.
Gunna is a rapper from Georgia, known for his melodic trap beats and chill music. Most people label him as a must-know artist if you are a New Yorker, which I am. His music often feels like something you would listen to when just hanging out with friends or going for a ride: a fun beat without too much musical layering and not very intense vocals. If traveling with your friends was converted into musical format, it would probably be this.
His song “Lemonade” with Internet Money particularly caught my attention because even though it is a rather simple melody I could not get it out of my head for several days. This song is definitely an earworm. It was also inevitably something I blasted in the car on multiple occasions and personally found to perfectly fit the mood.
Gunna has also done collabs with many different artists such as Lil Baby, Young Thug, Chris Brown and Travis Scott. Some of his most notable songs such as “Hot” and “Drip Too Hard” came from these collaborations and have grown him an immense fan base. These songs have melodies overshadowed by sharp rap lyrics and developed on a much more strict metrical basis than others of Gunna’s songs. These collaborations tend to highlight the less melodic works in his discography. Along with classics such as “Fukumean,” which was popularized with remixes and edits on social media platforms, Gunna has become a household name for many people.
Though Gunna seems like an amazing artist that has left and continues to leave his mark on the rap industry, he doesn’t seem like the type of artist to headline Slope Day. For one, his music (or what I have heard of it) isn’t super exhilarating. As compared to previous headliners such as Flo Rida, his music isn’t the kind that has crowds jumping and screaming their lungs out because to me personally it just feels like songs that you vibe to. I have listened to his music while doing work or driving around with friends. Yet they aren’t necessarily hype songs — which are what Slope Day is mostly about for Cornell students.
Gunna also isn’t as mainstream as many other artists that either have been selected or that many people were vying for to be selected to perform, which means many people may not know who he is. To me this personally goes against the whole point of Slope Day, which is to have the whole school singing along to songs that they know. This was very much the case last year when almost every single person inside the perimeter of the Slope was shouting the lyrics to Flo Rida’s “My House” — a classic that I first heard when I was in elementary school. In this year’s case, I do not think enough people know the lyrics to Gunna’s music. It is also faster rap, which makes it much harder to follow along even if you know the lyrics. Nevertheless I am excited to see Gunna’s performance on May 7 (though I will personally be staying a safe proximity away from the actual stage so as to not be trampled by excited crowds).
Lusine Boyadzhyan is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at lboyadzhyan@cornellsun.com.
