It’s a masculine hegemony, even now and this means hip hop’s default is to express its revolution physically, violently, and externally. The blueprint for a rap revolution was born in N.W.A.’s "Fuck The Police" and there is still the embedded, macho culture of battling. Yet fear of blackness and the boogieman remains: “if he's scared of me, how can we be free?” His voice dehumanised Gambino half chants: “Every boy and girl all around the world / knows my niggas' words”. He hears the billboard top 10, raps with Kanye and JayZ, while on the street black kids get shot. Kari Faux plays the role of an A&R snake on the spine-tingling hook, and whispers: "we’re coming out to get you / we are so glad we met you / we’re eating you for profit / there is no way to stop it".Īnd behind "Boogieman" is a scared child, of course. Blackness is exploited, packaged and sold on.
It adds threat to the sultriness, but it’s the lyrics that cut deepest.
It has a chanted, moaned bridge, and nods to "Thriller" with shuffle-clap and chilling cackle. "Zombies" is more explicit, opening with a ducking, diving, distorted guitar and the same feel it in your boots bassline. Again, guitar caterwauls with princelike abandon and the smooth vocal paints in broad strokes, to reference an indistinct fear: “Catch a nigga coming quickly behind you / People want you underground / Do you misbehave?” It benefits from the influence of a more modern R&B, where Glover is already comfortable: a finger click groove and high-pitched croon contrast with bassline a deep heartbeat.
They deal too with the dichotomy of blackness, in which black men and women are superstars, businessmen, president, but are still marginal. Darkness and threat is implied in the titles, but the music behind has a magnetic pull. This duality comes to bear too on "Boogieman","Zombies" and "Terrified". Bass stabs come from some deep dark place, laden with wah, whilst piano is pure and celestial, the vocal dripping with desire. Lead single "Redbone" is pure Prince, and treads the knife edge transgression between sex and danger. High points come when the funk is laid down slow and thick, and Gambino’s R&B crooning can rise above. It grows from his The tenth, "When Me and Your Mother Met" is left blank perhaps for his father’s story “I remember, this song back when me and your mother…” From the album title and its cognate stirrings to the first track, ‘Me and Your Mother’ it’s clear this is familial.
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In the main, he inhabits the skin of George Clinton, James Brown and Prince with squeals and vocal gymnastics.Īlthough this is a departure, for us, he tackles this new language fluently. The closest Glover comes to rapping is in the half ragga, half choking-on-a-fishbone staccato of "California".
He’s unrecognisable as the wink-and-nod, introverted rapper, and instead is at the helm of a luscious metaphysical psychedelia. The three part introduction opens with the slack synth of Kool and the Gang, a jump-cut into a Funkadelic fireball and a fading away into The Isley Brothers’ ice. Opener "Me and Your Mama" acts as a précis. God damn it Donald, you’re making the rest of us look bad. Childish Gambino is his musical alias, where he raps, produces and sings, to acclaim, and " Awaken, My Love!" is his third album, released, surely, to acclaim. Actor, screenwriter, director, stand-up comedian, all to acclaim.
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