[2019 DAY 7] Childish Gambino

“Without Danny Glover’s celeb status I don’t think Gambino would be anything more than a middle of the lineup rapper/musician” -Reddit rando, 1/7/2019 

General Info

Biography: “Donald McKinley Glover Jr. (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, comedian, singer, writer, producer, director, rapper songwriter, and DJ.” (thanks Wikipedia!) While attending NYU, he began filming short videos with fellow comedy writers DC Pierson and Dominic Dierkes under the name DerrickComedy, which gained him enough attention to get hired as a writer on 30 Rock at just 23 years old. From there, he took on a breakout role as Troy Barnes on Community (hilarious) while simultaneously releasing an hourlong standup special called Weirdo (less hilarious but still pretty good) and producing music under the name Childish Gambino. While his star was quickly rising in the acting world with supporting roles in films like The Martian and Magic Mike XXL, he also began to pour more time into his music and largely left comedy behind to release a series of progressively better-received LPs under the Childish Gambino moniker. More recently, he’s headlining festivals like Coachella and this one (after previously playing in 2015 and pulling double duty as Childish Gambino and doing a standup set in 2012) and taking on starring roles in major blockbusters such as playing Simba and Lando Calrissian in the new Lion King and Star Wars movies. Oh yeah, and he’s also intimately involved in writing, acting and directing Atlanta, one of the best shows currently on TV which just wrapped its second season on FX. If that seems like a lot, that’s because it is (and I didn’t even mention just how huge the “This Is America” video was)! The young man keeps quite busy, and regardless of whether the rumors of him retiring the Gambino name are true, there’s little doubt he’ll remain a mainstay on the American entertainment landscape for the foreseeable future.

Major Discography: Though he’s put out a lot of music before his trio of LPs (both under the Gambino name and his defunct DJ alias mcDJ), it won’t be incorporated into his live shows and isn’t really worth your time to investigate unless you’re a superfan (a possible exception could be made for the single “Freaks and Geeks” which is better than most of Camp). Anyway, here’s those aforementioned LPs:

• Camp (2011) – pretty meh

• Because the Internet (2013) – some good and some meh

• “Awaken, My Love!” (2016) – mostly pretty good

In addition, his live set will probably incorporate a few tracks from the Kauai and Summer Pack EPs, as well as several unreleased songs and, of course, the non-album smash hit “This Is America”.





Sounds Like

Genre: Hip Hop, R&B

Similar Artists: Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Pusha T, Vince Staples, KIDS SEE GHOSTS, A$AP Rocky (according to Spotify)

Similar Bonnaroo Artists: BROCKHAMPTON, I guess?



Suggested Listening

For a brief overview of his studio output since 2011, please refer to this hourlong playlist I created! It’s in chronological order of release, and I’m not certain all 15 of these songs still regularly appear in his setlists, but it gives you a good taste of the multiple flavors he takes on (if you only have time for just a few tracks, check out “Sweatpants”, “Sober” and “Redbone”).







Live Show

I’ve only had the pleasure of seeing him live once. It was at Bonnaroo in 2015, and I caught most of the second half of his performance from fairly deep in the Which field (also had tickets for the Nashville date of his most recent tour but was unable to attend due to the date being rescheduled after his foot injury). Obviously, his sound has evolved a great deal since then, but I recall being impressed particularly with his singing ability and showmanship, and he actually fucking uses a live band! It’s a rap set (and a headlining one at that), so expect increasing levels of rowdiness as you approach the front of the stage (though probably not comparable to someone like Travis Scott or BROCKHAMPTON in terms of wildness). Here’s some footage from Roo 15, Fallon and other recent tours:















Interesting Facts

• The name “Childish Gambino” was the result of the Wu-Tang Name Generator. Bless his heart, he’s stuck with it through all these years.

• Glover first met his longtime producer, Ludwig Göransson, when the two worked together on Community. Ludwig has gone one to have some success in his own right, most notably for his work on the Black Panther OST (not the Kendrick album, the other one).

• Here’s some examples of Glover’s early humor from DerrickComedy, Community, and the world of stand-up comedy. He also wrote the Funcooker episode from Season 3 of 30 Rock, which is a really good one. Also also, he recently hosted SNL and (even though Kenan does most of the comedic heavy lifting), this pre-taped skit is kinda fun.

• At one point in time, FX had hired Glover to work on an animated Deadpool series for their network, but for some reason pulled the plug on the project. Undeterred, Glover took to Twitter to post screenshots of some scripts already in progress (I’m typically a Deadpool hater but they’re pretty funny!).

• Yet another upcoming project of Glover’s is a mysterious project filmed with Rihanna called Guava Island. It was while filming in Cuba that the two came up with their plan to have Rihanna pull out of Bonnaroo 2019 at the last second to make bonnaroobuff look like a liar and get permabanned.

• The prompt for this portion said “influences”, so I think there’s a lot of early Kanye backpack rap DNA in his early work. Make of that what you will.



Personal Notes

My personal thoughts on Gambino probably track pretty closely with the rest of the board, but I’ll do my best to serve up some hot takes here regardless.

• He’s obviously an incredible talent in a variety of different spaces, and this is comparing apples to oranges, but I personally have enjoyed his TV work (Community and Atlanta) more than I have his musical career, but just by a hair. He has a lot of individual songs that I think range from good to excellent, but he hasn’t released any career-defining album one could point to as being “fully realized” just yet… could LP4 prove to be his MBDTF or TPAB? Time will tell.

• It’s worth pointing out he’s gotten progressively better over each of his albums: Camp is full of Lil Wayne-style one liners that largely end up feeling forced, as well as themes that range from a bit tired (being a black man who “acts white”) to the weird and cringey (so many sex jokes about Asian women!). I didn’t dislike it as much as Pitchfork (which infamously gave it a 1.6), but Because the Internet (which has some interesting experimentation on the back half and a few exceptional tracks on the front half while still being hampered by Black Mirror-style musings on technology that generally lack subtlety) was certainly as large step up, as was the funk-infused “Awaken, My Love!”, an album that veered dangerously close to out-and-out ripping off Funkadelic but nonetheless is a solid listen that really could only have been many by someone with the singular ambition and mercurial talent of someone like Glover.

• It honestly still feels a bit weird to see him in what’s essentially the #2 spot… That’s more a commentary on Bonnaroo booking strategy than any compliment or criticism of him as a performer though. There could be a whole lot worse acts to see on the top line.

• I mean, c’mon. You guys all know who he is already. You probably also already know if you like him or not. I’m not here to serve as his evangelist or convert you, but I like him pretty well! Based on how excited my immediate friend group was to see him pop up, I think it’s a pretty good booking.