Meaning
A drainage gully or ditch — and, by extension, the poor inner-city neighbourhoods that grow up alongside them. Beyond the concrete channel that carries off the rains, 'gully' became a powerful cultural badge in dancehall, standing for the grassroots, ghetto, street side of life, most famously in the Gully-versus-Gaza rivalry. To rep the gully is to claim the raw, poor, real world of the streets, and the word carries the whole pride and hardship of coming up from the bottom.
Examples
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Di rain full up di gully.
The rain filled up the drainage ditch.
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Him come from di gully an mek it big.
He came from the ghetto and made it big.
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Gully to di worl.
From the gully to the world.
Echoes the 'Gully' identity made famous in dancehall culture.
Origin
From English 'gully', a water channel. In Kingston the concrete gullies run through poor districts, so the word came to name those communities and, in the late 2000s, a dancehall movement.
How it’s used
Both a literal ditch and a symbol of grassroots, inner-city identity. Once central to a famous dancehall rivalry between 'Gully' and 'Gaza'.