It has been two weeks since Donald Glover returned to his alter ego known as Childish Gambino and dropped an absolute bomb on the hip hop world and rekindled the flame that burns deep in me for Gambino.
Two weeks ago, he released a music video for his new song “This is America.” The video loudly and boldly criticizes the current state of America. It was brilliant. It was jaw dropping. It was amazing. It is because Childish Gambino be on that other shit (see what I did there?). The video has over 170 million views on Youtube and counting. I have been listening to Gambino for quite some time (Maybe 2009-2010?). One of my old roommates in college told me about the song “Freaks and Geeks” and the rest was history.
One of the big reasons I became a huge Lupe Fiasco fan was because of the political messages in his music and lyrics. I remember listening to “Words I Never Said” for the first time with the same buddy who told me about “Freaks and Geeks” and thinking “holy shit if that isn’t the most in your face message, I don’t know what is.”
I felt the same way magnified by like a million the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth (you get the point) when I watched “This is America.” You can obviously read a breakdown of the video elsewhere. I am not getting into all that. But the first thing I noticed is him talking about the issues in this country while dancing around to some of the viral dances making their way around the web (distractions). The scene of him being handed an assault rifle and blowing up a church choir immediately made my jaw hit the floor. It is literally everything that needed to be said and heard.
I am so pumped that he has been going viral for his music video not just because of the downright in your face message showing his creative genius, but he has been so undervalued in every industry.
Part of that comes from the fact that every time he starts to get big, he either focuses on another industry or switches his sound. If he actually put all his eggs in one basket as an actor, writer, rapper or comedian, he could be an A-lister in any one of those categories. However, he tends to float around as a B-lister in all of them simply because he chooses to, which makes me love him even more. He just doesn’t care. He is doing what he wants to do.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of the song “Redbone” or even his album Because the Internet minus a few songs, but I love that he experiments and tries new things. I can appreciate that. I hope this video continues to spread like wildfire.
In honor of all that, I wanted to share my top 10 favorite Childish Gambino songs with the album or mixtape you can find them on.
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