![]() This is, without a doubt, the most accomplished batch of songs of Donald Glover’s musical career. All of this is miles sharper than the offbeat, sorta-magical realism of Because the Internet (which Atlanta has pulled off largely without tripping into absurdity) and more relatable than the nerd rage and thumbed noses of Camp. “Redbone” works at dual purposes as Gambino repeats the paranoid refrain, “Stay woke, niggas creeping.” At first pass, the lyrics scan as concern for the safety of a pretty woman, but like Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” there is a sense beneath the surface that the woman is a representation of black America at large. ![]() “Zombies” uses a metaphysical monster story to call out cold capitalists, but “Riot” follows, fearfully musing about a fiery conclusion to the mounting racial and political strife cable news has offered a window into over the last four years. You got searingly direct words for life on songs like “If You Don’t Like the Effects, Don’t Produce the Cause,” but there were also times they’d stash political and social commentary inside seemingly upbeat songs like “Chocolate City” and “One Nation Under the Groove.” “Awaken, My Love!” strikes a similar balance between veiled and overt social outreach. Part of the genius of Clinton and his gang of mothership oddballs is that they often wrote on two levels. Suddenly, it’s 1978, and they’re Funkadelic, mid–“Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?!” Bits of homage surface elsewhere: The acoustic guitars and crowd vocals of “Have Some Love” make it a dead ringer for Maggot Brain’s “Can You Get to That?,” and the noodling guitar riff of “Boogieman” feels like a hyped up take on the same album’s “Hit It and Quit It.” Second single “Redbone” owes a rib to the Bootsy Collins classic “I’d Rather Be With You.” Awaken is a studious ‘70s funk experiment but the obviousness of the reference points doesn’t take away from the sharpness of the playing or the cleverness of some of the writing. “Me and Your Mama” is notice that these aren’t the “Telegraph Ave” and “3005” guys anymore. It doesn’t sound like much else out this year, but it sounds a lot like classic P-Funk. Opener “Me and Your Mama” dives backwards in time after floating in on a bed of twinkling keys, choir vocals, and pillowy 808s, as an impish, tribal guitar-and-drum stomp cuts into the serene scene two minutes in, and Glover makes his entrance, not as conquering nerd rap king but as howling, pleading, screaming loverman professing affection like dying words after a shot through the back.Īwaken dispenses with the Childish Gambino of albums past as well as most of the sound and subject matter of his nearest fellow gold-selling hip-hop acts, but this isn’t to say its conventions are unconventional. Ultimately, Glover kept his promise about quitting rap, as the rest of us would learn upon the unveiling of his third studio album “Awaken, My Love!” The new songs abandon the post-Drake, left-of-the-dial sonics pieced together over Because the Internet and Camp in favor of brash, druggy funk. It’s the loftiest product launch yet for a performer whose last studio album urged fans to read a story alongside the songs and comb his website’s code for Easter eggs. Gambino would resurface unexpectedly this year through PHAROS, a multimedia experience out in California’s Joshua Tree Park that presented a surprise new album to diehard fans in a bath of haunting lights and sounds. By 2013’s short film/screenplay/studio album Because the Internet, it seemed like Childish Gambino was an exercise in pivoting from TV renown into rap stardom through sheer force of determination.Īll of this effort makes a mystery out of the last year and a half of Gambino comings and goings: After threatening to quit rap in 2015 (“I feel like Childish Gambino is a period that should come to a close,” he told the Today show), Glover popped up in a series of respectable acting, producing, and directing projects from FX’s Atlanta to Magic Mike XXL on the big screen, lending further credence to the notion that his music career might be over. ![]() His 2011 debut studio album Camp added a (gauche) outsider approach to the textbook celebratory rags-to-riches rap album bolstered a year later by Royalty, a mixtape that made inroads with the very hip-hop audience he seemed eager to supersede before. Though it began as a lark, Donald Glover’s work as Childish Gambino has gotten grander in scope with every subsequent release - the messiness of his original mixtapes tightened into more workmanlike lyricism as time passed. ![]()
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