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Written form of a reduction of going to. Attested since 1917. The pronunciation of present participles with the sound n rather than ng has a long history (see g-dropping on Wikipedia).
The final schwa does not trigger linking-R in accents where it usually would (most non-rhotic accents). Instead there is hiatus, a glottal stop, or the final vowel is pronounced /-uː/.
Never gonna give you up, / Never gonna let you down, / Never gonna run around and desert you. / Never gonna make you cry, / Never gonna say goodbye, / Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
Usage notes
This spelling, like any nonstandard spelling, risks appearing very informal. Even when going to has the pronunciation that gonna denotes, it is usually spelled going to.
Gonna, like the pronunciation it denotes, only occurs when going to is a modal verb indicating a future tense (something that is bound to happen or is planned), and not for lexical uses of "going to" (i.e. the verb go followed by a prepositional phrase beginning with to). Thus, one says, I’m gonna go now, but *I’m gonna the mall is not observed. (In such contexts, I’m going to the mall is said, with going to pronounced more fully, e.g. IPA(key): , .) The same is true of other modal verb contractions such as shoulda, woulda, or coulda (e.g. She shoulda come with us but not *She shoulda some patience).