New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Childish Gambino

 
Donald Glover is already famous (relatively speaking). He’s an actor, playing Troy on the criminally under seen show Community, and does standup comedy, being featured on Comedy Central Presents. He also wrote for 30 Rock for a few years prior to starring on Community, which, if you’ve seen the show, know how funny it is. And long before he moved into the big leagues, he was the leading member of Derek Comedy, who’s biggest claim to fame is the hilarious Bro Rape, and more recently, Blow Job Girl (this latter one was sans Glover). However, the same internet that made him a player in the NBC comedy circuit made him a force in the hip-hop industry.

Donald Glover has been rapping under the name Childish Gambino since 2008 (he disowned his 2005 album), and it’s been a rocky road to fame. He mainly promoted his early stuff via his blog and Tumblr, and tried to get friends to share it. Now, I’ve heard his early stuff; a friend of mine showed me some of this early stuff about a year and a half ago. And it just didn’t do anything for me. He had a weak flow, bad production, amateur beats, and iffy content. However, lyrically, he had some good lines and funny punch lines (which is the joke or ultimate metaphor that a rapper makes in a song) and some decent singing, and it was pretty obvious that, if he could improve his actual rapping, he would be pretty damn good.

Of course, I wouldn’t be writing about him if he didn’t improve. While I laughed at my friend for liking those early mixtapes and forgot about CG almost immediately, I got turned on to him again around November of 2010, when that same friend shared “Freaks and Geeks”. And my god, was that song hot fire. The beat starts out drawing you in for some epic music with a simple strings-backed piano before an intense Cheezy starts spitting a few lines. Then things go wild as the bass drops and a male chorus sings “oh yeah” in the background and Donald delivers some amazing bars. It’s a fantastic song. So I went back and downloaded all of his mixtapes (which were free by the way, and probably still up if you want to look for them). To save you some time, he finally got his flow, beats, and content down by the time he dropped Culdesac, and I enjoyed that tape. Granted, it had its problems, but overall, it was a solid album that I wouldn’t mind standing behind if I was Gambino.

But in my mind, the very pinnacle of his career is “Break (All of the Lights)”. It takes an acoustic instrumental of Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” (one of the best songs from the best album of the decade), and features going from singing Rihanna’s hook, to fun rapping, to depressing rapping. And while that may sound like it would be all over the place, everything just melts together into a perfect amalgamation of vocals and emotion and music and swag. This was released right around when his fantastic EP was released, which is about 2 inches away from matching "Break". 

But what I want to really talk about with him is the music industry and what happens when other people’s money gets involved. Let me take this opportunity to say that I’m not against record deals. I think that it’s great when a band or artist is getting paid to do what they love, and, if I particularly enjoy their music, I’m truly happy for them. I don’t think it’s “selling out” or whatever you might describe it as. It’s honestly the dream of 99% of artists, whether they admit it or not, if for nothing else than a relatively steady income. But with CG, something happened.

See, Glover got a record deal in the spring of 2011, right after the EP/”Break” period I described above. And everyone was excited. By this point, he had major websites like Rap Genius repping him, and a large fanbase of devoted “goons” that followed him. It felt like his success was our success; we supported him and wanted him to succeed, and we helped do that by talking about his music and listening to him. Us goons were finally legitimized, our fandom was recognized by people who only invest in projects that are good enough to make money. But when he dropped Camp in the fall of 2011, things had changed.

Now, before the deal (and for some of these things, after the deal), Gambino had a lot of strengths. For starters, he had a unique voice. Slightly higher pitched and a little more nasally than the low rumblings of most uncongested rappers, it stood out in the relatively uniform alternative hip-hop scene, not unlike Lil Wayne’s whiny voice (and unlike Weezy’s voice, tolerable). Also unlike Lil Wayne, Gambino has a gift with words. His couplets, one liners, and metaphors are usually fantastic and deliciously obscure. Yes, some are rather contrived and forced like a line about being “fucked up like a hang gliding whore house”, but others are subtly brilliant, like this ridiculous line - “E.E. Cummings on her face/Now that’s poetry in motion” (E.E. Cummings being one of the most revolutionary poets of the 20^th century, and “Poetry in Motion” being an ad campaign in the NYC transit system that used quotes from poets like Cummings. And then the other thing that line is about). He has tens of dozens of these throughout his discography, and it really makes draws you in as a listener to see what he’ll say next. And nothing is off limits; he’s referenced Casey Anthony, the Virginia Tech shootings, and very recently made a Trayvon Martin reference.

And of course, you have the content of the songs. Culdesac saw a variety of topics, including a ballad to his suicidal tendencies/what the game has turned him into. However, he also would spit love songs, as exampled by “So Fly” and “Got this Money”, and a few songs like “Not Going Back” that espouses how he’s different from your usual rapper, but he’s still just as awesome. Of course, he also has his stupid, fun songs about how many bitches he fucks, all the money he makes, how good he is, etc. But those were more of a change-of-pace from the stuff I normally associated with him, and they gave us have some of the greatest punch lines in the game from songs like “Freaks and Geeks”. And let’s not forget the occasional shout outs to fellow NBC stars like his concert audiences being “more mixed Rashida Jones”, and old albums (usually I Am Just a Rapper). It creates a certain tangibility to Donald Glover, like he’s an actual person who draws not just from “black culture” as many rappers do, but all pop culture like most people, and makes you feel like you’re part of an elite club because you understand the references he’s making.

But once he got the record deal, things changed. While I didn’t notice this until the 100^th play of the album, once you hear it, you can’t unheard it. He slightly dropped the pitch of his voice (either naturally or electronically) for Camp, losing some of the originality of his voice. He also growls his lyrics for emphasis, like Kanye, except CG does it too often and the lines he does it for don’t need to be emphasized. And to go along with the change in voice, the lyrical content has also shifted. While he does put a half-hearted attempt at a love song with “Letter Home” and a spiritual sequel to “Freaks and Geeks” called “Bonfire”, he spends most of the album addressing his haters, both past and present. He constantly reassures the listener that, even though he was lame 15 years ago, he’s cool now, and those that say he sucks today are wrong. He’s also ditched all the personal references to his TV friends and previous albums in an attempt to not alienate those not familiar with his acting career or previous efforts.

But what’s the most strange is the pandering. He frequently will claim that the “hood” won’t give his new and different music a chance, but at the same time he’s rapping to exactly what the “hood” “wants” to hear. In the opening track to Camp, “Outside”, he mentions living in the projects and an uncle addicted to crack, neither of which ever appeared in any of his previous releases, and something that’s talked about frequently in “ghetto rap”. He also discusses racism, specifically in “That Power” where he talks about being “stared at by Confederates” in his hometown of Stone Mountain, Georgia, and on “Hold You Down” where he discusses racist cops and African-American voices being “blacked out”. While in the context of the song he uses it to show how he doesn’t fit in to the “traditional” black community, and I’m sure he faced his share of racism, it’s not really something he’s ever talked about in his songs, and it’s certainly never brought out in the way he does in these songs. And let’s not forget about the “fuck the haters” songs “You See Me” and “Backpackers”, a distinct departure from his usual raps and a clear attempt at attracting those who like tough songs with a hard bass.

That said, the deal didn’t change everything for the worse. The first thing you notice in the album is the increased production value. He had some well produced songs on EP and Culdesac, but nothing is the same as having access to a professional studio that a record label can provide. The sound quality is fantastic, and the instrumentation sounds great. And compared to his older tracks, Gambeezy has very elegant and well placed orchestral music in many of the songs that really adds to the overall feel and emotion of the track and gives it a bit of a stadium feel. And then Childish Gambino adds in, for the first time, a chorus. It’s a great addition to the sound, and makes the tracks feel more like a picnic, like Kanye West’s “Family Business”. So not all the changes were bad. He also kept his sharp lyricism and provided the world with some terrific lines like "69 is the only dinner for 2" off of "Heartbeat". And at the end of "That Power", he gives a rather endearing and heartfelt story about why he talks about so much personal stuff on his tracks, but this only serves as a reminder of who he was before this album.

It’s impossible to know how much of these changes are just part of Childish Gambino’s evolution, or if he was forced by the record label to do these things, or even that it was his own choice because he thought it would draw in more listeners. But somebody somewhere definitely thought that, in order to get more sales, some changes needed to be made for Gambino to sell more albums.

Has he changed for the better? Personally, I don’t really think so – Camp was lessened in my eyes when I realized the minor, but significant changes made (although I still enjoy the album and would recommend it). I don’t want to be a hipster about it, but he sold out, and it nearly broke my heart. Before the deal, his songs felt so real, like it was one of my best friends rapping. But once you realize that what he was saying wasn’t really him, but rather the him that would sell the best, it’s a bit disheartening. I still follow him, but the honey moon period is over, and now we have to work on staying together. I can only hope that he moves a bit closer to the old stuff, but I’ll still listen to him no matter what he does. I enjoy his music and want him to keep making more. But it’s just not the same, and I think that’s what I miss the most.

(Side note – he recently dropped a song “Eat Your Vegetables”, which is pretty good. Still comes from the corporate structure, but is still far enough removed to give me some hope)

Other than “Break”, check out “Bonfire”, “Kids”, and “Letter Home” off new album, and “Fuck It All”, “So Fly”, “I Be On That”, “Rolling in the Deep Remix”, and all of EP (excluding “My Shine”). Assuming that I didn’t scare you off with this article (which you shouldn’t be)