It only took Gunna a week to take over 2022 at the top of the year. The Atlanta native released his third album DS4EVER and it arguably became his biggest release to date. DS4EVER debuted at No. 1 on the albums chart, beating out The Weeknd’s Dawn FM, and while the project was statistically impactful, but was equally so on a cultural level. The project produced the term “Pushin P,” thanks to Gunna’s song with Young Thug and Future, and it took the world by storm. Fellow rappers and celebrities started using it and big-time corporations joined in on the fun. Through it all, Gunna’s definition of the term wasn’t the clearest, but at long last, we’ve received a more straightforward explanation.
During a recent episode of LeBron James and Uninterrupted’s The Shop — which also featured Rick Ross, Las Vegas Aces player A’ja Wilson, and United Master CEO Steve Stoute — Gunna took his time to explain the phrase.
“Pushin P really started at first as me just pulling up on some player, might got me a vibe with me,” he said. “My homies are like ‘Okay!’ You might come back around [later] and I’m doing the same one with a different type of vibe [and it’s like], ‘You’re still going? You Pushin P, now you pushing it! You pushin this player sh*t.’ Now I’m tryna make sure that I’m capitalizing on the P like, y’all Pushin P or what?”
Gunna then explained what inspired his player mentality. “Really all the dope boys,” he said. “Like our OG dope boys, man they was P, they was pulling up. When Boosie and them was riding DUBs, floaters, and Chargers, we had some OGs in our hood riding them too, telling us like, ‘This how you pull up.’ I looked up to them, got my game, and ran with it. Kept it P.”
Stoute chimed in with his point of view on “Pushin P,” and recalled that many people from Oakland accused Gunna of stealing their lingo. “Come to find out,” Gunna said in response, “they just come from player sh*t, too. That’s all that means. That’s what I took from it like bro, everybody been player. Your uncles, your aunties? They was player.”
You can watch the full episode of The Shop in the video above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.