Donald glover 2 3 by Yusef LaiWalters

3005: Childish Stories

Contents

Glover’s Lane A conversation with Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, about the Grammys, rap, race, and the two sides of fame

Know The Ledge There’s a thin line between raping and acting, laughing and crying, living and dying. And Donald Glover, A.K.A. Childish Gambino, has his eye on that line – all the time.

Lyrical Analysis Who Killed It: A Lyrical Analysis of Childish Gambino’s “Outside”

Coversation With Bino A Conversation with Childish Gambino

Atlanta: Dont Care What You Think Donald Glover talks about tackling race in his new show, those Star Wars and Spider-Man rumors and ignoring the haters as Childish Gambino

Glover’s Lane

Glover’s Lane Robert Browne

On December 5, 2014, musician Childish Gambino was nominated for two Grammys, for his album Because the Internet (Best Rap Album) and song “3005” (Best Rap Performance). One week later, on December 12, FX ordered a pilot for actor Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. A month later, on January 13, the premiere date for the sixth — and “final” — season of Community was announced (March 17 on Yahoo Screen), without the character of Troy. Amid all of this, I was dropped off by a cab at a house on a winding street in the hills of a neighborhood Google Maps calls Glassell Park in Northeast Los Angeles. Inside this house there was first a quiet dog and then three or four or six people, relaxing or recording music. Past them, a door, and past that door, an outside deck. On that deck, a table, and beyond that table, in the neighbor’s yard, a second dog that was not quiet. At that table on the deck beyond the house on the hill off the winding street, Donald Glover and I sat and spoke. Twenty minutes in, I turned on the recorder. The second dog — the neighbor’s dog, the loud one — barked the entire time. One thing I’ve had many conversations about with friends is this idea of writing for no one. Creating things for no one’s eyes. And how, now, the process of creating is directly aligned with broadcasting, popularity — Money.

3005: Childish Stories

Yeah. With your come-up — writing, acting, music, just putting videos up on YouTube — what did it look like in practice before there was any idea of people seeing it or hearing it? It’s so strange to even hear you talk about it that way, because you’re absolutely right. That’s so funny. I remember, me and Derrick Comedy had this podcast that we made. That we never released. And I still have it. What was it about? We would talk about movies, things we were working on, Mystery Team, events that had happened. And we would just riff. Because a lot of our sketches would just come from just hanging out, and then we would just riff and be like, “That’s a funny idea, let’s make it into a sketch.” But then we were like, “We do that together anyway, let’s just record them.” And I still listen to those. But I listen to it now and it’s just for me. And I’ve learned a lot from those. Oh, I do that thing. So much of being human is learning about yourself, self-control and all that stuff. And when you just get validation — that’s the good thing to do, that’s the bad thing to do — we don’t really know why we really fuck with it. But that’s kind of what it was, just doing it for yourself. I had a Talkboy,1 [and] I used to make audio movies for myself. Are there still things that you make with the intention of never sharing with the public? Everything is either zero or 100 now. You either don’t make anything and stay super-secret like Frank Ocean, or you put out a song every fucking day. And I realized that I had been doing a lot of things in public. So making songs now that I know aren’t going to be heard by anybody else, it is an interesting thing. Because I think you have to do that now as an artist. I really do. Because you start to manipulate your work based on other people, which is fine depending on what you’re trying to do. I’m 31 now, but I had a lot of friends that started off like, I’m going to make sketches every day, I’m going to do this, we’re going to do this. And now they’re like: I’m just trying to make this, and why do I like this anymore? There’s an Internet fear that I think you have to get over, not tricking yourself into thinking people are going to forget about you if you don’t constantly remind people that you exist. Reminding people, all the time, that you’re important. That I’m on

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the way up, squad going up, that feeling of “I’m relevant and I’m going to tell you my story before it’s even started.” Everyone wants to sell their story of “look at how I did it” at the beginning. They’re writing that story and they’re cashing that check. And to be real, at this point in history, it feels irresponsible. It’s not sustainable. Yeah, but mainly it’s really irresponsible. Culture’s so important. Honestly, there haven’t been that many big jumps in culture lately, because it just eats itself now. And we’re seeing some changes — I’m happy about this feminist movement, because it’s a human movement. But mainly the culture is just eating itself. And there are so many things that come out where it’s like, I just took that old video, this old thing, and made this. And that’s cool, I get it. But there’s no room for mistakes. Because everyone knows mistakes mean less money. Mistakes mean you might not get another shot. You have to be super safe. Yeah. You got to be safe because everyone’s freelance, so everyone’s like safe-safe-safe-safe-safe. And then you look around and it’s like, So what now? It’s scary to me. I don’t even remember what the question was. Me neither. But I do have these moments, these existential moments, occasionally, of asking: Why do I do what I do? Black kids are getting very existential. Jaden [Smith]’s existential. It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful. And a lot of it, for me, is that I didn’t have a ton of older black prototype male figures to look at. Someone to look at and say, “I think something like that is the direction of what I’m interested in being.” Because what I wanted felt vulnerable. But being vulnerable is often the great black male Kryptonite. And we can’t even really do it. People are like, “Drake’s so vulnerable,” but I’m like, he can’t really be as vulnerable as he wants to be, I feel sometimes.

3005: Childish Stories

Do you think about how certain things — your lyrics, how you present yourself online, how you dress, whatever — can be perceived as being bigger than you? The funny thing is, no. I wish I could sit here and be like, “All of this was planned.” Or that I have a bigger thing in mind. But I really do have to be me. I’ve tried to be those things that I knew you could be. And I’m lucky that it happened really early. I went through that in high school. And then you go to college, and in the very beginning of college you’re like, “I’m going to be this black guy.” But then it’s like, “I’m not.” It’s so hard to be this black guy. And it sucks, because I don’t like talking about race. But what a lot of people don’t understand is that it affects so much of who you can be. But back to the question: I’m like,This will be cool to me, so I do it. But time and time again, the frustrating thing about it is proving that there’s an audience. I can pinpoint moments where I could feel myself slipping back into the most convenient version of myself. And I can also pinpoint the moments when I got fed up and was like, “I just don’t have the energy to do that anymore.” Yeah. But it’s hard. For me, that’s made slightly easier because I have people in my life and it’s clear we want to navigate this world alongside each other, helping each other. That’s what Royalty is. To be real, Because the Internet was my stab at existential rap. Not to say rappers haven’t been existential before, but it’s like, I wanted to make an album that felt like an existential rap album because it was perfect for Gambino at the time. But with these Internet kids, you start to realize, if I’m an ad and kids are cool with me being an ad, what do I represent? What am I? What’s at the end of this? Because you want to control what you represent. But so much stuff goes out of your hands. And everybody above you is like, “Fuck everything.” So it becomes “fuck everything,” but also, I’m supposed to matter? Like, everything on Twitter and Instagram is like, “I’m stunting,” but this matters? This matters, but fuck everything? And especially with black kids, it’s like we’re get-

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ting shot in the streets, so what does this mean? What is this for? Which is why, now, I feel like there’s going to be a movement of people who behave like, This stuff is for us. You’re going to have your writer friends, and you’re going to write together, because at the end of the day, who are you making it for? And do you make stuff for yourself? We have to. The “Sober” video is for me. That wasn’t for anybody. I wasn’t trying to get tweens between 13 and 17. I wasn’t trying to get Hispanic men between … I did this shit for me. That was a thing I’ve always wanted to do since I walked into that Zankou Chicken.3 So that’s where the mistakes will come. And the mistakes are the things we really need right now. Does something like the public validation of getting nominated for two Grammys confuse all that? Is it complicated? Is it something you strive for? Or is it just a very cool thing? It’s all very schizophrenic. And I know I have schizophrenic tendencies with a lot of my art. And also, just my personality. So it feels like all of that. But also, who doesn’t want a Grammy? Who doesn’t want to be nominated for a Grammy? But then again, there’s that “Well, now they can say ‘Grammy-nominated’ in front of my name” [thing]. And that’s what’s so hard about putting art out there. Especially now. But it’s a weird feeling, because I don’t react the way I think anyone wants me to react about it, but that’s what it is. How are you supposed to feel? But some of my favorite artists have Grammys. Kanye has Grammys. Jay Z has Grammys. Beyoncé has Grammys. It’s validating, but at this point in my life I kind of realize it’s dope, I’m happy about it, but mostly because it allows me to do more of whatever I want. That’s the thing. Because when good things like that happen to you, you’re able to do what you really want a little bit more, and people can step to you less. And you can continue to be yourself. I mean, it’s not a coincidence I got my pilot right after I got a Grammy nomination. [Laughs.] You think the people were like, “Wait, what? He got a Grammy too?” It’s harder to turn down a Grammy guy who also writes. I know I’m in a unique position. So I take that very seriously. That’s the thing, it isn’t for naught. Going back to your question before, when you were like, “Do you feel like you have to do this for everybody?” I just know I’m in a unique position. Last night at [a Golden Globes]

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party, I was talking to some 30 Rock people, talking about how writing for 30 Rock was like being in the Marines. You don’t want to fall asleep, and you know the job’s on the line and they’re pushing you. And the scripts are like, this is a joke that’s a setup for another joke, which is really a setup for Tracy [Morgan] to come in. It was like, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. And I was talking to [writer] Matt Hubbard, and he was like, “Do you remember that night when we were at Tina’s house and we were all so tired and it was hot in there and you were looking at the screen and then you almost passed out but then caught yourself?” Matt was like, “This kid isn’t gonna give up.” Yeah, I’m not going to be that. I’m not going to be the runt. I’m not going to be the one who drops it. At least I’ll give it everything I have. Because of the success you’ve had, and in different fields, have you felt the need to almost stunt your growth or your popularity as a way of holding on to some normalcy? People always wonder why famous people buy these ranches to be far away from people. I hate being famous. Fame is not really cool at all. People don’t realize how dangerous it is. Everyone knows what TerRio looks like. And he’s a kid. Everyone knows who he is. And for some reason, people still equate fame with money. So people think this kid has a bunch of money. When, really, his face is everywhere and people are making money off his face by making TerRio T-shirts. It’s scary to be famous. They know everything about you. They know what your house looks like. They know you shoot all your videos in your house. So, I guess, yeah — I do look for normalcy. Because red doesn’t show up on red. Red shows up on white. So in order for you to make something that is really visceral on an art level or anything, you really have to have an idea of how do regular people live, for real. Being from Atlanta, how did it feel to get asked to be a part of the Outkast festival in Atlanta, ATLast? It was dope. But to be honest, what was cooler was André [Benjamin] coming to my show. There had to be a reason for him being there. I was very honored, because Outkast played a really big part in Atlanta culture for me. But him coming to my show, because his son is a fan. And then meeting his son. That’s what was really cool. It was a cool moment.

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That was a good weekend. It was very Atlanta. Also, speaking of, the first track on the EP that you put out last year, STN MTN, starts with “I had a dream I ran Atlanta,” followed by a DJ Drama narration. It feels like an inside joke for anyone from the city. It’s super, super specific. Exactly. So with that song, that festival, a TV show in the works called Atlanta, you seemed to be pushing to be associated with Atlanta, without trying to market yourself as an Atlanta artist. And, on top of that, a large part of the listening public doesn’t think of you the same way they think about Migos. Are you actively trying to force your Atlantaness on the public? Do you just want people to know where you’re from? Here’s what it is. There are two sides to every story. When I went to college, everybody was like, Oh my god, you’re from Atlanta … fucking Lil Jon … is it like this … oh so my friend’s going to Emory, that shit must be off the hook all the time. People forget Atlanta is a very black city. Again, not to get on — There’s a lot of black people in Atlanta. There’s a lot of black people in Atlanta. And it affects you when you’re a kid and everybody around [you] is black. You’re like, “Oh, OK, cool, there’s people and we’re kind of in the shittier positions, but there’s a lot of us.” And then you go everywhere else, and it’s like, oh yeah, Atlanta is a black Mecca. But publicly, you only often see one type. And I just started seeing that as a microcosm for everything. So I need people to understand, I see Atlanta as a beautiful metaphor for black people. For a black person. Because Atlanta — everybody knows it as something. And it’s supposed to be a bunch of things for a lot of people. It’s tried to be everything, but it’s in the middle. And at the end, what it is? It’s all these things. It’s crazy. It has the capacity to handle everything, but it’s never really figured out how to handle everything. There’s subsections and different groups, but there’s also the version that people think,Well, this type makes money. It’s not some evil thing. I’m from America, too — I get capitalism. I understand what’s going on here, I just think there’s actual money on the other side. People give Tyler Perry a lot of shit, and whether that’s your taste or not, I get it. But that audience is there. There’s an audience for that.

3005: Childish Stories

Yeah. So, I guess to shorten this, I have taken Atlanta on my back, but only because everybody’s like, Where are you from? That’s where I’m from. And people have a “huh?” reaction. So I just think it’s important. And it’s a metaphor for who I am. Or maybe I’m a metaphor for Atlanta. Yesterday I realized that one of the earliest things I’d ever written at Grantland was about Camp. Oh, really? Yeah. And then I realized I should probably reread it for the first time in three years, which is always a terrifying prospect. Do you go back and listen to or read old work? Do you revisit old stuff when you’re making new stuff? It’s crazy, I haven’t listened to it in a minute. But Childish Gambino’s so interesting withCamp because that album is heavy to a lot of people. And people hold it really close to them. But it’s weird — each one of the albums is kind of a diary or a time stamp that you have with people and then people make their own emotional connections to them. So you have to be careful. But I don’t just put them away. I usually go back and listen to them. But sometimes it is hard to go back and listen or read — if you kept a journal or you keep a Facebook, and it’s like, “ugh, April — that was a breakup.” But I’ll look through that. It’s all emotions. But I don’t really ever leave them, because I do think they help later. Hearing you talk, sometimes you’re talking in third person or you’re actively talking about a different part of you. Is that how you treat it in your head? Rappers are all like wrestlers. That’s the world now. Even kids are rappers. When you go on Vine and you see a white kid and he’s like, “Thug life, fuck you” — that’s not David. That’s his rapper version. No one has a problem with Rick Ross, because that’s what it is. So Childish Gambino, I’m not going to even put labels on it, but I always looked at it like, I always wanted to be like Harry Potter. As in, we grow up with this thing. I do look at it like “he” — he has his own thing and his own stuff, and yes, those things are tied into my things and things I observe, but I know what I am at the end of the day. I’m a storyteller.

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There are definitely people that know you only as Gambino and have never heard ofCommunity, and there are definitely people that know you as Troy and would scoff at the fact that you’re out here making songs with rappers like Fredo Santana. Going back into this first world, the television world, is that something that’s exciting? Does it even feel like going back and forth? Well — Because it’s still the same part of your brain. People always ask me, which one do you like doing more? I don’t see the difference, which is why I feel like I’m valuable. That’s why it’s valuable to put out all this stuff. Because when you go to a Childish Gambino show, you’re going to see a lot. Yes, there are 15-year-old white girls there, but also really hard white guys that are like, “I listen to Atmosphere, but I also like this,” then you’re going to get the older black dudes and you’re going to get moms — that’s the mass culture. And I don’t like being niche. I felt like a lot of the early 2000s were n----s trying to be niche and make the cream that way. But that’s fucking bullshit. So, Childish Gambino, Troy, Donald Glover — they exist how they need to exist. I give my life to art, man. I don’t feel like I’m going to be here that long. But I know my role. I know what I’m supposed to do. That’s how I feel. I exist in all these different planes, because that’s the only way I feel there is to be big anymore — you have to show the connections. People are like, How is that possible that you’re rapping about this, but you do this, and then you say this about women, and then I see this, how is this all making sense? I have to be a little schizophrenic just like you. And you have to talk to people about it. Actually talk. Not get online, actually talk. I remember having a handful of conversations with people after you wrote those notes in that hotel that worried people. And I remember reacting like, “It kind of looks like my drafts folder.” It was very reminiscent of any conversation where you begin to worry about how you’re portraying yourself, which is very real in this ever-public world. Absolutely. A few years ago, I was at Lollapalooza. And had two or three guys come up to me, white bros, if you will, and it was flatter-

3005: Childish Stories

ing because they recognized me. And then they brought up something I’d written about race — and their takeaway was that I wasn’t angry. And that I didn’t see race. And they needed to tell me how awesome that was. Which was the exact opposite of what I was trying to say in the piece. When they left, I had an anxiety attack and left the festival and drove to Wisconsin. And in the car, my thought was that I was never going to write in public again. Because my great fear had come true, that my beliefs would just get twisted and that I’d fully lose control over what I was saying. When I was a kid, I had a friend — a white guy — and we were really close. And then we went to a mall, an affluent mall, but there were some black kids hanging out. And they walked by and kind of laughed at my friend’s shorts. They were like, “Yo, look at that dude’s shorts.” Kind of just laughing. And then my friend, who I had known for a while, was like, “See, there are, like, black people, and there are n----s.” And it was this weird thing, because then we had to drive home afterwards. And right there, I didn’t know my essence anymore. It’s that sadness. People don’t realize this cake has so many layers that we deal with. It shouldn’t be, like, “Black people look at Vine differently.” It’s like, everyone looks at Vine differently. We all do. The difference is, some people have to take the good and the bad. And some people get to just take the cream. I can’t just laugh at TerRio. You can’t just laugh at TerRio. You can’t. Because it’s like, “TerRio’s like my little cousin.” I know him. It’s too close to home. It’s like, there’s this really charismatic black gay kid and everyone’s laughing and making fun of him, but that kid’s got to go to school. And that kid has to go to church. He’s still a kid. I just want people to understand we’ve got to eat the crust of this shit, too. We can’t just eat the stuff we love. We all have to eat all of it and understand. It’s a weird thing, my friend saw that situation totally different. And then everything we’d done before felt totally different. And then there’s the mindfuck of him thinking you’d find that funny. Like, you agreed. Yeah, and then further, it’s a Chris Rock bit. That’s a fucking Chris Rock bit that Chris Rock does in a world where he’s like, “But I eat

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all of the pie.” But then even he stopped doing it. Because people weren’t eating all of the pie. That’s the Chappelle example. It’s the exact same thing. I completely understand why he turned down everything, because he’s like, “This has to stop. In this form, this has to stop. Right now.” So the philosophy there is, you can’t let people off the hook. If you’re going to be a politician about this stuff, that’s fine. But we’ve got to call it that. We can’t be like, “This is art if it’s politics.” We can’t be like, “This is religion if it’s capitalism.” That’s all. I don’t care — I have no problem with all this shit. You watch my standup, I’ve seen some fucked-up shit. But that’s part of life. That shit is complicated. And to sit here and pretend that critical thinking is happening in the most complicated time in human history is ludicrous. We are a society that clowns people for making mistakes. And we get off on seeing that stuff. It should be a thing where you can look back and get better. And I think the next generation totally gets that. Hopefully they’re doing it for themselves. And then hopefully they will look at it later. I still listen to that Talkboy. And I’m like, “Yo, that thing I did when I was 11, that was a good device I did. That was cool.”

3005: Childish Stories

KNOW THE LEDGE THERE’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN RAPPING AND ACTING, LAUGHING AND CRYING, LIVING AND DYING. AND DONALD GLOVER, A.K.A. CHILDISH GAMBINO, HAS HIS EYE ON THAT LINE—ALL THE TIME. Jacob Moore

It’s a Wednesday night in L.A., and Donald Glover is sitting in front of a computer in a room full of friends, taking puffs from his PAx vaporizer.

He lives up in the hills of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. Walt Disney built his first big studio here in the 1920s and Forbes named it America’s best hipster neighborhood in 2012. Donald’s house—a modern structure far up on the winding roads—looks over the busy city, but from a calm and quiet vantage point.

It’s not a party per se; about a dozen people come and go throughout the night, even though reaching Donald’s house can be a struggle. Once they make it through the L.A. traffic and find a place to park on the street, guests have to walk up hundreds of steep stairs to the back entrance. By

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the time they make it to the door, they’re breathing heavily. Donald’s been wearing the same shirt all day and short shorts that he says sometimes get mistaken for boxers. He’s playing music ranging from Björk to Lil Durk through large speakers while a projector beams South Park onto a huge screen covering half the wall. He asks everyone to let him know if they’ve got any requests. An argument breaks out about who’s better, Maxwell or D’Angelo. Donald and company joke about girls and race and life. With his friends around, he’s jovial and quick to break into laughter, but as the guests begin filing out around 9 o’clock, Donald gets quieter. It’s hard to tell if he’s relaxed, bored, or high off the vaporizer. He turns off the music and the conversation quickly leads back to something Donald talks about a lot: the Internet. “Coding is a beautiful thing,” he says. “If there is a God, he definitely codes. There are fail-safes in the world. That’s code. I don’t want young black kids to aspire to be rappers or ballers. Even lawyers and doctors—those are service positions. I want them to be coders. They can make their own worlds then. They

don’t need anybody else. I love hearing those kids’ ideas, all these kids on the Internet. The excitement of making something, that’s the spark of God.” Donald Glover, 30, originally came to fame through comedy—first as a sitcom writer, then as a stand-up comedian, and finally as an actor, playing the fan favorite Troy on NBC’s Community. Since he was 20, he’s also rapped. When he makes music, he does it under the name Childish Gambino. He famously came up with the alias using an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator. Given his comedic background and goofy name, the reception to Childish Gambino’s music has often been: Is this guy kidding? Late last year Gambino/Glover convinced a lot of people that he was dead serious about his music. In October he stopped by SiriusXM’s Sway in the Morning radio show in midtown Manhattan to premiere a track from his forthcoming album Because the Internet. He hadn’t planned to rap that day but Sway convinced him to spit a freestyle over Drake’s “Pound Cake” beat. Were they his best bars ever? That’s up for debate. But the performance became a tipping point in Gambino’s rap career. The “Pound Cake”

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freestyle set rap blogs afire, effectively changing the conversation about Childish Gambino. Since that day, nobody asks if the acclaimed comic’s rap career is some kind of joke. The day before the get-together at his house, Donald sat on Arsenio Hall’s couch—wearing those same short shorts—and explained that rapping is only one of the things he can do. “Rappers don’t want to be rappers,” he said. “They’re usually artists who want to do a bunch of stuff. I don’t think any rapper wants to be just a rapper.” On that note, Because the Internet is more than just an audio experience. “I believe that music has just become advertising for a brand, and if that makes music less magical, then fuck you,” he explains. “I understand people being like, ‘I worked really hard on this song and I’d like some payment for it.’ It just needs to be done differently.” In addition to music videos, Gambino’s album is accompanied by a 73-page script, which you can read at becausetheinter.net. The screenplay—which opens with a little boy coming home from camp (Camp happens to be the name

of Gambino’s last album) and getting picked up in a limo by his father (who happens to be Rick Ross)—also contains soundless visuals designed to be viewed while listening to the album. The “prelude” to this script is a perplexingly artsy short film released on Donald’s YouTube channel called Clapping for the Wrong Reasons. It all ties together, presumably, but it’s up to the audience to figure out how. Because the Internet may seem like a strange title for a rap album—there was a time when being called an “Internet rapper” was a bad thing—but it makes sense given how much time Donald spends thinking about the World Wide Web, and how it affects both our way of looking at life and his way of making art. He seems both acutely aware of, and slightly freaked out by, the profound changes taking place around us every day. But he’s rolling with it. With the release of his new album, Donald has used the Internet to build a world of his own. In addition to becausetheinter. net, he’s turned childishgambino.com into a trove of hidden

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I DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T WANT YOUNG BLACK KIDS TO ASPIRE TO BE RAPPERS OR BALLERS. I WANT THEM TO BE CODERS. THEY CAN MAKE THEIR OWN WORLDS THEN.

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pages and exclusive content, including password-protected music videos, a meme generator, and behind-the-scenes footage. He’s also partnered with websites like Tumblr and Rap Genius to connect with fans through live events and Q&As, making the release of Because the Internet an event that brings the web to life.

way. I’m not special. Those letters were not special. They were just louder because I have a platform.” Even so, few people articulate such thoughts to their closest friends and family, let alone on social media. “You have to be real with yourself,” he says. “No one is doing that. People are too concerned with making everything look nice and calm and pretty.”

Though he’s got lots of smart ideas about how to use the In the last note, Donald wrote Internet creatively, spend a little “I got really lost last year, but I time with Donald and you’ll recan’t be lonely tho. Cause we’re alize there are a lot of IRL issues all here. We’re all stuck here.” he’s still trying to understand. He referred to a suicide attempt in an interview with Noisey this Despite all of his fame, he’d be past October, but now says it’s the first to admit his insecuri“nobody’s business.” On “3005,” ties. “I look at success like the first single from Because solving a problem,” he says. “I the Internet, he raps, “Leave it haven’t figured out humanity or like Cobain/And when I’m long whatever I’m searching for yet.” gone, whole crew sing a swan song/’Cause we all just ticking On October 14, Donald shared time bombs.” Donald rejects seven handwritten notes with the notion that suicide is weak his 222,000-plus Instagram or selfish. “It’s neither. I’m still followers. Each piece of hotel here. I obviously still like it here,” notepad paper was filled with he says, getting louder and deeply personal fears. “I’m excited. “Everybody feels that afraid people hate who I really way. Everybody has suicidal am,” he wrote, “I’m afraid I hate thoughts. Everybody is on the who I really am.” Many fans verge of suicide every day. You fretted about Donald’s mental could die at any moment! You state, but he brushes off those could have a brain aneurysm.” concerns: “Everybody has the same fears. If my letters did anything, they proved that everyone kinda feels the same

Know the Ledge

“I DON’T WANT YOUNG BLACK KIDS TO ASPIRE TO BE RAPPERS OR BALLERS. I WANT THEM TO BE CODERS. THEY CAN MAKE THEIR OWN WORLDS THEN.” “I HOPE DONALD KNOWS NOT TO GIVE A SH*T WHAT ANYONE THINKS.” — TINA FEY Born in California and raised in Stone Mountain, Ga., Donald is the son of Jehovah’s Witness parents. He attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and got his first big break in 2006 when Tina Fey gave him a job writing for her show 30 Rock. “He was literally still living in the NYU dorms,” Fey recalls. “And that was a great resource for us. We would turn to him and ask, ‘What would a young person say here?’ ” She wasn’t surprised when he became a rapper. “Donald comes from a generation that is very confident doing it all,” she says. “They are comfortable being rapper/actor/entrepreneur/fashion designer/sex-tape authors. Lots of rappers become actors. Why not do it the other way around?” Doing things that

way presents some unique challenges—just ask Drake (or Jaden Smith). But Fey, for one, doesn’t think it matters. “I hope Donald knows not to give a shit what anyone thinks.” Beyond rapping, Donald is most known for his role as Troy on Community. Earlier this year, the show’s creator, Dan Harmon confirmed what he called a “devastating” piece of news: Donald would appear in only five of this season’s 24 episodes. Fans immediately voiced their disapproval. “It’s funny because on Reddit, people are like, ‘Just give us another year on Community,’ ” Donald explains. “I get it, it gives life structure. You come home every day and Abed’s in front of you and when Troy’s not there it’s like, ‘Where the fuck is my structure!?’ I get it. But it’s time, man.” Less acting means more time for music, through which he’s able to connect with fans on a deeper level than he does on TV. “I just wanna fit in, but nobody was helping me out/ They talking hood shit and I ain’t know what that was about/’Cause hood shit and black shit is super different,” he raps on “Outside,” one of his songs that addresses race and class from a perspective that isn’t typically celebrated in rap.

3005: Childish Stories

Donald embraces his outsider status, calling himself a “brown recluse” on “No Exit” or a “silver spoon coon” on “Sweatpants” and his “Pound Cake” freestyle. Growing up in a working-class town and being “the only black kid at a Sufjan concert,” as he says in “Firefly,” has given Donald Glover a unique perspective and a distinct vulnerability that listeners appreciate. Even while delivering the heralded “Pound Cake” freestyle, nine days after posting his notes on Instagram, Gambino flaunted his insecurities. “So nerdy but the flow wordy,” he rapped, but he still impressed Sway. “Folks are sleeping on him, because they seen him on TV first,” says the veteran hip-hop DJ. “They think he’s corny or they don’t give him a shot. As he continues to evolve he’s differentiating himself from the others. He does that thing where he stops rapping and starts talking and then comes back on beat. That’s his signature. I like rappers who find ways to differentiate themselves. Patterns are all repetitious now—motherfuckers even rhyming the same words.” According to Sway, the difference between an Internet rapper and a real MC is “tangibility.” Internet rappers might move a

lot of free downloads but they can’t translate IRL. “Gambino’s beyond an Internet rapper because I’ve been to his shows and I’ve seen them sold out,” he says. While Donald claims to not care about record sales (his 2011 album, Camp, released on Glassnote Records, sold over 240,000 copies), he clearly wants to fill arenas, not college auditoriums. “My music is for everybody,” he says. “It’s stuff I like, but it’s also accessible. I don’t want to be preaching to the choir. You see a lot of these conscious rappers doing that. They’re not gaining new fans, they’re just agreeing with people. I want to reach as many people as I possibly can.” One day in late November, Gambino hosted an afternoon listening session at Pan Pacific Park in L.A.’s Fairfax District. A couple hundred kids—a multiracial group of teenagers and twentysomethings—gathered to hear Because the Internet. He’d already held impromptu listening sessions like this in New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto. A few hours before, Donald would tweet out a time and place to his million-plus followers, and then arrive there with a sound system to play the album and chat with whoever showed up. “No one is using the Internet to make real stuff

Know the Ledge

happen,” Donald says. “When information travels, things usually get made. And that’s all the Internet is. We’re just now starting to see things come from it.” But today’s session doesn’t go quite as planned. Donald’s right-hand man, Fam—the guy seen sitting next to him by the campfire in Clapping for the Wrong Reasons—picks up a microphone and explains to the audience that they don’t have permits, so they are going to get right into playing the album before the cops show up. And if police do try to shut the listening down, he advises, “Just be cool: act natural.” About a minute into a knocking new song called “Crawl,” a fan approaches Donald for a picture. Within seconds, half the audience swarms around him, asking questions and sweating him for photos. Sitting on a short wall on the outskirts of the park, Donald calmly greets his fans, seeming happy to speak with everyone. While Because the Internet plays out of a few big speakers, an LAPD squad car rolls up on the grass. Fam heads straight toward the cops, stalling them for a few minutes before a second car pulls up. One officer steps forward and announces that

the crowd has 15 minutes to disperse before they start handing out citations. While Fam disconnects the power, Donald sticks around to chat, augmenting his online outreach with some face-to-face connections. Some people take the name Because the Internet as a joke— a snarky comment that could be the caption to a meme. But to Donald, it’s more than that. The Internet has shaped the way he views the world, the way he relates to people, and the way he creates and disseminates his art. “I want to show how the Internet affects our lives,” he says. “As much as everyone can find someone on the Internet now, we still feel lost. I still feel very empty. It makes me feel more lost because nothing that I do is that different. Nothing is cool. We’re kind of alone in the universe. Like those Instagram notes I shared. We all feel these things, but nobody’s figured out how to solve them.” The first step may be just talking things out, and that’s something Childish Gambino does well. He talks about loneliness, relationship issues, isolation, and a lot of the personal struggles that artists have been talking about for decades. But he’s

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doing it in a new language, with the help of emojis, and with a self-awareness and acceptance that challenges the norms of hip-hop, celebrity culture, social media, and yes, the Internet. “That’s the thing—it’s not real, it’s curated,” he says back in his house, after everybody’s gone home.

“EVERYTHING ONLINE— EVEN THE FUCK-UP STUFF— IS CURATED. IT’S THE SAME THING AS GOING ON A FIRST DATE. THE INTERNET IS GOING ON A FIRST DATE OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. “The last thing I want to be is somebody who’s like, ‘The Internet is wrong.’ I don’t believe that,” he continues. “This is how we connect. I love the Internet. We’re the first ones to have to deal with this kind of stuff. Our generation is very important because we can still remember shit before the Internet. We remember just enough.” More than just remembering, Donald understands how music and entertainment are changing and what this means for

the business he’s in. “Trying to make somebody pay for music is like a bakery trying to get people to pay for smelling the bread as they walk by,” he says. “This is the way information works now, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. There’s another way to capture that feeling in a more succinct, faster fashion. That’s what the Internet does with everything. So how do you package that?” Over the past months, Donald— who recently took up surfing (the ocean, not the web) as a hobby, and sometimes wears a wetsuit—has been using the phrase “Roscoe’s Wetsuit” on Twitter and Instagram. Nobody really knows what it means. His fans make up meanings, spread rumors, and Google arduously for clues—nothing. In the screenplay that goes with Gambino’s album, the phrase came up again in a random tweet. The lead character searches for its meaning throughout the story, but nobody can help him. So does Roscoe’s Wetsuit mean anything? Is it just a symbol for the meaning we’re all searching for and failing to find? Why does Roscoe’s Wetsuit even exist in the first place? It exists because the Internet, of course. But ultimately it exists because Donald Glover created it

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Lyrical Analysis Who Killed It: A Lyrical Analysis of Childish Gambino’s “Outside” Toure

The autobiographical song is a critical part of hip-hop. Most good MCs are constantly sprinkling autobiographical elements throughout their work—listening to your album I should be to learn about your neighborhood, your background, your favorite stores, your troubles, your friends, your ethos. But I love it when a song is a full-on memoir, like Jay Electronica’s “Exhibit C” or Biggie’s “Juicy”—or Childish Gambino’s “Outside.” These audio autobiographies often fit within the Black literary tradition (books like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave,Manchild In the Promised Land, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Assata, Black Boy, and Monster). So many of those classics could be subtitled “My Rise Up From Hell.” In a hip-hop context these songs often serve to confirm an MC’s hip-hop bona fides—that he’s from the street and has fought through tough circumstances and proven his mettle and his character. Sure we now have Kanye, Das Racist, Drake, Gambino, and others who are succeeding without talking about being from the ghetto, but hip-hop’s central conversation remains life in the hood and

Lyrical Analysis

what becomes of those who rhyme their way out of it—i.e., You Can Take The Boy Out Of The Hood But Not The Hood Out Of The Boy. See, Look: He’s Eating KFC While Flying Private. But slowly, it’s becoming less and less of a prerequisite that MCs be from the hood. Class norms are being challenged in class-ultraconscious hip-hop, and Gambino’s part of that movement. He’s unapologetic about being or sounding “untraditionally” Black and attacks normative Blackness by not accepting that he should accept it. And yet, he is from the hood. “Outside” is a memoir of Glover’s childhood, and it deals with class conflicts in Glover’s life. Not the stark differences of, say, the rich actor Donald Glover vs the poor child, but much more subtle differentiations... Written by Touré (@Touré) “I used to dream every night, now I don’t dream at all/Hopin’ that it’s cause I’m livin’ everything I want.” Interesting that he starts his memoir with a flash from the present day before snapping back to the past. We know Glover’s successful, he’s hot in three careers (acting, standup and hip-hop) when many of us would kill to be hot in any one, but right away he’s hinting at his uncertainty over whether he’s made it. He’s “hoping” that it’s because he’s living his dream life. Why doesn’t he know?

IN SO MANY OTHER SONGS HE’S BRAGGING ABOUT HOW RICH AND SUCCESSFUL AND BAD-ASS HE IS, SO WHY DOES THIS SONG START WITH A NOTE OF ANXIETY ABOUT HIS PRESENT? In so many other songs he’s bragging about how rich and successful and bad-ass he is, so why does this song start with a note of anxiety about his present? For one thing no one gets to Glover’s level of success without constantly wanting more, so he’s surely not satisfied—definitely not until he gets the Spiderman gig or at least The Donald Glover Show. So he used to get a good night’s sleep when he was a poor kid, but now that he’s rich and successful, he doesn’t. Be careful what you wish for… “I used to wake up in a bed between my mom and aunt/Playin’ with this Land Before Time toy from Pizza Hut.”

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THE LINE ABOUT BLACK SHIT AND HOOD SHIT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LYRICS IN HIP-HOP THIS YEAR. IT SAYS QUICKLY AND CLEANLY AND UNREPENTANTLY THAT THEREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RACE AND CLASS. BLACKNESS IS NOT SUBSUMED BY THE HOOD AND THE HOOD IS NOT SUBSUMED BY BLACKNESS.

3005: Childish Stories

Back in the days, when he was able to dream, he’d do so in a virtual womb, sleeping sandwiched between two women who loved him intensely. No wonder he felt comfortable enough to dream. So when he was poor he was happier and more content than when he’s rich and successful. I love that at top of the song he talks about dreaming and then about waking up because it places the beginning of the story at the start of his day, which feels apropos. The Land Before Time reference works double time. First, it establishes where we are in history in a much more elegant way than saying “it was 1988.” This, in screenwriting, would be called good exposition. Second, Glover was about five when the movie and toy came out, so his Land Before Time toys evoke the Garden of Eden feel of early childhood—a place that exists before time, before you know how to tell time, before you enter the rat race, before life gets real. “My dad works nights/Puttin’ on a stone face/He’s saving up so we can get our own place/In the projects, man that sound fancy to me.”

I LOVE THIS DAD CHARACTER EVEN THOUGH WE BARELY GET TO SEE HIM. HE’S SO RARE IN HIP-HOP, WHICH IS SO DEEPLY SHAPED BY A LACK OF FATHERS. Dad is a saintly and stoic character, working hard to move the family up. I love this dad character even though we barely get to see him. He’s so rare in hip-hop, which is so deeply shaped by a lack of fathers. Look at the coldness of Jay-Z, formed by being abandoned by his dad at 10, or the spoiled-bratness of Kanye, stemming from his single-parent childhood, or Lil Wayne, the runaway wild-child working to please his surrogate father Birdman. There are very few positive mentions of biological fathers in hip-hop (Nas and Common are notable examples, and even their fathers were relatively distant presences). This lack of positive discussions about fathers in hip-hop—as opposed to the many loving mentions of mothers—is emblematic of the widespread dislocation from our fathers that our generation has suffered. Our lack of fathers has led us to search for manhood in the street and to bond tightly with our brothers, hence hip-hop

Lyrical Analysis

Camp/ Studio Album

1. Outside 2. Fire Fly 3. Bonfire 4. All the Shine 5. Letter Home 6. Heartbeat 7. BackPackers 8. L.E.S. 9. Hold You Down 10.Kids (Keep Up) 11. You See Me 12. Sunrise 13. That Power

3005: Childish Stories

THIS IS IN LARGE PART WHAT MY BOOK WHO’S AFRAID OF POST-BLACKNESS? IS ABOUT—BE BLACK HOWEVER YOU WANT TO BE—AND A REASON WHY SOME SAY THE MESSAGES OF MY BOOK ARE ECHOED THROUGHOUT CAMP.

Lyrical Analysis

crews filled with men that are like families. Against that backdrop, Gambino’s father stands out as a great example of a hard-working man who’s devoted to his family. No wonder Glover works so hard at his three jobs; he’s his father’s son. “They called me fat nose/My mom say, you handsome to me/Mrs. Glover, ma’am, your son is so advanced/But he’s acting up in class and keeps peeing in his pants.”

THE LINE ABOUT BLACK SHIT AND HOOD SHIT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LYRICS IN HIP-HOP THIS YEAR. IT SAYS QUICKLY AND CLEANLY AND UNREPENTANTLY THAT THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RACE AND CLASS. BLACKNESS IS NOT SUBSUMED BY THE HOOD AND THE HOOD IS NOT SUBSUMED BY BLACKNESS. The transitions in this verse are elegant, leaping from present-day reflections to childhood memories and now, here, to school life. Gambino packs in observations about racial norms of beauty and intelligence. Young Glover is smart but troubled with a sharp mind and an immature body that he’s not in control of. The lines shift easily from his mom talking to him, to someone talking to his mom about him. “And I just wanna fit in, but nobody was helping me out/They talking hood shit and I ain’t know what that was about/Cause hood shit and Black shit is super different.” This last line is one of the most important lyrics in hip-hop this year. It says quickly and cleanly and unrepentantly that there’s a difference between race and class. Blackness is not subsumed by the hood and the hood is not subsumed by Blackness. The working class has no hegemony over defining Blackness. Glover knows Blackness but not hood life, because his parents are trying to shield him from all that. This reminds me of the line “Fuck being hard/Posdnous is complicated,” from De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate, those moments when MCs demand freedom from the dominance of the hood and the narrow box that is “acting tough.” “So I’m talking hood shit and cool it now like New Edition/Mom and

3005: Childish Stories

dad wouldn’t listen/They left the Bronx so I wouldn’t be that.” Redman’s great song “I’ll Bee Dat”gets a sly reference here—Glover’s parents pointedly don’t want him to be that, and they work hard to move him away from the birthplace of hip-hop and a symbol of urban decay because they want him to have a better life. But parents just don’t understand. Glover wants to get along with his peers.

EVEN THOUGH THE GLOVERS HAVEN’T TRAVELED FAR CLASSWISE, GAMBINO TOUCHES ON INTERCLASS DIFFICULTIES WITHIN THE BLACK COMMUNITY. WORKING-CLASS RESENTMENT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IS REAL—THOUGH RARELY DISCUSSED—AND SOMETIMES REASONABLE. MIDDLE-CLASS SUPERIORITY COMPLEXES DO EXIST. BUT WORKING-CLASS INFERIORITY COMPLEXES ARE SOMETIMES TO BLAME. “All their friends in NY deal crack/It’s weird, you think that they’d be proud of ’em/ But when you leave the hood they think that you look down on ’em.” Even though the Glovers haven’t traveled far classwise, Gambino touches on inter-class difficulties within the Black community. Working-class resentment of the middle class is real—though rarely discussed—and sometimes reasonable. Middle-class superiority complexes do exist. But working-class inferiority complexes are sometimes to blame. To literally leave your working class community is not always applauded. It can be seen as threatening, a sign that you’re “leaving us” altogether. The Glovers moved from New York to Georgia in hopes of finding a better life for their son, but couldn’t leave without some of their neighbors’ baggage. “Truth is we still struggle on a different plane/$7 dollars an hour, WIC vouchers, it’s all the same/Facebook messaging hopin’ that could patch up shit/ but all they get now is, ‘Can your son read this script?’” You could spell it plane—a figurative level—or plain—a literal space (as in, a prairie). Not sure which Glover means but it doesn’t really

Lyrical Analysis

matter—either way he’s saying we’re fighting the same battle in a different place. We haven’t left you behind. We’re still on a plantation. I love the image of the parents using Facebook to try to keep those neighborhood ties alive, but finding that their old friends no longer relate to them in the old way. They just want to know if Glover can help them rise up. It’s a clichéd joke in Hollywood that every valet parker has a script he’s pushing. Glover transports that idea back to his old Bronx hood, positing that there, too, everyone’s got a script to peddle. “Dad lost his job/Mama worked at Mrs. Winner’s/Gun pulled in her face/She still made dinner.” He already told us how strong and stoic his dad is. Now it’s mom’s turn to get an epic compliment. She’s working at Mrs. Winner’s, a fried chicken restaurant popular in the South, and even after getting attacked she goes on to take care of her family like nothing’s happened. Anyone could understand someone needing to unplug and lie down after that sort of traumatic moment, but Mrs. Glover does not. She’s the salt of the earth, providing for her family all day and all night. “‘Donald watch the meter so they don’t turn the lights off’/Workin’ two jobs so I can get into that white school/ And I hate it there, they all make fun of my clothes and wanna touch my hair.”

BEING EXOTICIZED SUCKS. IN GRADE SCHOOL SOME WHITE PEOPLE WANTED TO TOUCH MY HAIR. THEY JUST WANTED TO SEE WHAT IT FELT LIKE. THEY MEANT WELL. I WAS YOUNG BUT I WAS LIKE, FUCK THAT SHIT. YOU AIN’T PETTING ME. THIS AIN’T THE ZOO.” What great parents Glover has—worried about every penny and still determined to get him into a great school. And they succeed, only to find that this school is not a great fit for him because of the culture clash. (Where he wasn’t Black—excuse me—hood enough for the previous school, in this one he’s so Black he stands out as exotic.) I’ve talked to lots of Black kids at prep schools who found themselves hating the environment there even while they understood the educational value, because being exoticized sucks.

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Having people want to, for example, touch your hair because it’s so different is annoying as hell. In grade school some white people wanted to touch my hair. They just wanted to see what it felt like. They meant well. I was young but I was like, “Fuck that shit. You ain’t petting me. This ain’t the zoo.” “And my uncle on that stuff that got my grandma shook/Drug dealers roughed him up and stole his address book/He’s supposed to pay ‘em back he owe ‘em money but his bank account is zero/So my momma made us sleep with phillips heads under the pillow/ Like that would do somethin’/But she’s got six kids, she gotta do somethin.” Love that first line—heavy drugs sometimes make the user shake, but this guy’s on drugs so serious they’re making his relatives shake with fear for his future. Also, Glover being in a great school doesn’t change much—he’s still got family drama that’s changing his home life. I love the detail that they’ve got Phillips head screwdrivers and not just screwdrivers. That level of specificity makes the story come alive that much more—I can see little Donald shivering under the covers, eyes darting back and forth, clutching his Phillips head in case some thugs come in through the window with real weapons. Up until now the story has been all about Glover sounding like an only child, but here suddenly he mentions he’s got five brothers and sisters! Shouldn’t they have been mentioned before? That’s a huge family! Glover’s parents welcomed a lot of foster kids into their home and also adopted kids. Where are they in this story? That’s for another rhyme. “She don’t want me in a lifestyle like my cousin/And he mad cause his father ain’t around/He lookin’ at me now, like ‘Why you so fuckin’ lucky?’/I had a father too/But he ain’t around so I’ma take it out on you’”/ We used to say “I love you”/Now we only think that shit/It feels weird that you’re the person I took sink baths with/ Street took you over, I want my cousin back.”

THIS IS IN LARGE PART WHAT MY BOOK WHO’S AFRAID OF POST-BLACKNESS? IS ABOUT—BE BLACK HOWEVER YOU WANT TO BE—AND A REASON WHY SOME SAY THE MESSAGES OF MY BOOK ARE ECHOED THROUGHOUT CAMP.

Lyrical Analysis

The breakdown of his relationship with his cousin is heartbreaking. Throughout the story his relationships with family members have been positive and sustaining, but this particular side of the family keeps hurting the others. I love the economy of using the sink baths detail as a rapid way of saying we were really close when we were babies. The class conflicts that he’s been talking about are in motion here: where Glover’s parents have been working hard to keep him away from the street influence, his cousin has been taken over by the street and their relationship is damaged by that. “The world saying what you are because you’re young and Black/ Don’t believe ‘em/You’re still that kid that kept the older boys from teasin’/For some reason.” The first few lines here are so powerful. The world tells you what it means to be young and Black—some of those messages are criminal, renegade, monster, some of them are brilliant, creative, fascinating, performer—and many of us select from the messages we get to form our personality. It’s impossible to totally divorce yourself from what the world says you are. We all take cues from what the world tells us about ourselves. Sociologists call this the looking-glass self. But you don’t have to be exactly who the world tells you to be—you don’t have to believe that. Reject the white gaze, reject all external gazes, and be who you want to believe. Don’t buy what they’re selling you about yourself. What a powerful message. This is in large part what my book Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? is about—be Black however you want to be—and a reason why some say the messages of my book are echoed throughout Camp.

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Childish Gambino Conversation with Bino Lily Rothman

The actor Donald Glover, 30, will appear on only a few episodes of the next season ofCommunity (which starts in January on NBC), but he’s staying busy as his rap alter-ego Childish Gambino. His new album, Because the Internet, drops Dec. 10. He spoke to TIME for this week’s issue, and an extended version of that conversation is below. TIME: First of all, your album art forBecause the Internet is a GIF. In terms of pronunciation, do you say it with a hard G or a soft? Childish Gambino: I say GIF like Gregory. Giff. Do you feel strongly about that? I mean, Jif is a peanut butter. I feel like it’s only right that GIF

Conversation With Childish Gambino

should sound different. The other way is confusing. (MORE: Trebek Trolls Us All By Making ‘Final Jeopardy’ Question About the Pronunciation of ‘GIF’) What’s the other half of that “because the internet” sentence? I was working with Beck, and he asked me a question about whether rappers talk to each other and I started off the answer by saying, ‘I don’t like starting answers with this, but because the Internet…’ and he said, ‘You should name your album that.’ It started as a joke and the more we talked about it the more it was like, it actually makes sense. It’s weird to me that there’s not a similar title [out there already], because the Internet is everything. These words will end up on the Internet, somewhere, somehow. Everything we do is put into information online so I thought it was appropriate for the times. And it lives there forever. Yeah, my grandkids will see that. So how much time do you spend on the Internet every day? It’s probably easier to answer how much time I don’t spend on the Internet, which would probably be the time when I’m sleeping, so I guess about four hours. What is that time usually spent doing? Emailing, checking up on information, getting sent Vines, reading a tweet, any sort of information. The album’s sort of about how I only connect through that really. I mean, how often do you sit down and talk to someone for like two hours? It’s not like a bad thing. I don’t want anybody to think this is an indictment. But I thought it was an interesting thing. People used to talk a lot longer and now it’s, like, if I sit down and talk to someone for two hours and not look at my phone, not only is it like a great feat, like it’s hard to do, but I’d be probably in trouble. People would be like, ‘Where were you? Were you sick? Did you get in trouble?’ Something would be wrong. On the song “3005” you say you’re scared of the future. Any futuristic thing in particular? I’m afraid of the great robot war. It’s coming. You should know that. [laughs] Honestly, I’m not scared of the future at all. I think the future is progress if we treat it right. But I think a lot of other

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people are afraid. I feel like most people are afraid of the future. If you go on Tumblr you’ll see a lot of nostalgia, a lot of, ‘Remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Remember Sister, Sister? RememberClarissa?’ It’s a lot of that. I don’t think we want to go forward, because it’s a little scary. This is the first time ever we can see all our mistakes in front of us. My parents used to be, like, ‘Aw man, look at how we used to dress in the ‘70s.’ Now kids are aware of, ‘OK, this is going to look dumb soon.’ We can see our mistakes in real time. That’s why there’s a lot of retro things. So if you’re like, ‘Oh that looks silly,’ well, this is taken from something that already worked so you’re kind of out of the loop. Do you consider yourself anti-nostalgia? To be fair, probably, yeah. I don’t see the point. I like memories. Memories are all we have. That’s why everybody’s afraid to die, honestly. You really won’t know but the thing is memories, people are like, “I’ll miss things, I’ll miss my mom.” It’s the memory of these feelings. And I’m of the mindset that you have to let go of those things. I’m part of a generation that’s pretty special because we remember life before the Internet. I’ve got little cousins who do not. So it’s kind of our job to not be nostalgic and be like, ‘Things were better back then,’ because I don’t think anything works that way. Things always get progressively better. And we can’t go back to pre-Internet anyway. Yeah. It’s done. I look at it the same way I look at my album. People are, like, ‘Try not to leak it, make sure.’ I’m, like, no, that’s how music works now. The album will leak. That’s how I know people want it. Trying to charge somebody for the album after it’s leaked is kind of like trying to charge someone for the smell of your bakery, you know? It’s like, these smells are mine — that’s so stupid. This is how it is. We have to be okay with it. Let’s fix those things if there’s something wrong but this is the way the future is. I think a lot of people are afraid of that, in the music industry, in every industry. We should all sit down as a planet and be like, okay, these are the rules now, because of the Internet. What would the rules be? We should definitely start looking at currency on the Internet.

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I’m winnin’, yeah, yeah, I’m winnin’ [x3] Rich kid, asshole, paint me as a villain Don’t be mad cause I’m doing me better than you doing you [x3] Better than you doing you, fuck it, what you gon’ do?

Conversation With Childish Gambino

Like bitcoins? Yeah, I know a lot of people are skeptical, but I feel like if everything’s going to live online, why not bitcoins? Being backed by gold seems very old and nostalgic to me. Being backed to a bitcoin, which takes time to actually make and there’s this equation that has to be done, that feels realer to me and makes more sense. (MORE: A Very Bitcoin Christmas) I saw that you’re promoting the album with a series of house parties… I like people to enjoy the moment. I always to invest people in the moment, a moment where they can look back — as much as I don’t want to be nostalgic, I definitely want to give people memories, like ‘That was a good time.’ Because you’re only going to remember a few moments. Unless this becomes some sort of profound interview, we won’t remember this. Most of the things I did yesterday I won’t remember. Or, actually, my life was threatened yesterday, so I will remember that. What? We were filming something and this dude was mad. Whoa. Yeah. I’ll remember that. But everything else, most of the days, you won’t remember. I’m not a big party-animal but with the album and the live shows, I’d like to create moments people can hold on to. Do you have any favorite party memories? I threw a house party when my parents were away when I was like 17 or 18. That was pretty cool. I felt very cool. My girlfriend and I made out in the bathroom. I felt like Ferris Bueller. That was a cool moment. And in the mansion that we rented to record the album in, we used to throw parties every once in and while. That was nuts. We used to make s’mores. In a fireplace or outside? There was a fireplace in the middle of the pool.

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You may be the only people in the world to have eaten s’mores in a swimming pool. I never thought about that. You’re probably right. That’s such a weird thing to eat in a pool. It’s not conducive. (MORE: Donald Glover Explains His Absence) You’ve said you left Community to do other stuff, but that you don’t want to be just a rapper — do you have a long list of specific other things you want to do? I don’t like to commit to things. In general? Yeah, in general. There isn’t like a list of things, like ‘after this I’ll become a tattoo artist.’ I’m not planning those kind of things. I don’t even really look at them like that. I want to become something that when people hear I have a project people will be like, ‘Oh, this should be interesting,’ without hearing the project. There are certain artists, even Salvador Dali or Prince, no matter what, when they’re like ‘I’m making this,’ I’m interested. I don’t ever want to be like “this is a blah who does this.” I want to be an idea. Ideas are the only things that last. Eventually they become businesses but I always want to move on before they become straight business. I’m only interested in ideas because I feel like that’s the only thing that helps us grow as humans. I only want to do things that help us as a whole, on a big scale, because we can do that now. It used to be, if it was 1857, I can only really help my town, you know, on that level, and I’m never going to meet more people than the 57 people in my town. Now I meet new people every day and I can reach the world every day. I literally touch the world every day, when I tweet or whatever. If it’s a good enough idea I can help everyone, so I only want to make moves [where] I can be living beyond me or going beyond me. I want to create ripple effects that can go past my time here. That’s what I want to do. That’s quite a goal! It’s kind of a big lofty idea but why else? I guess you could have a kid, which is pretty much the same thing, you living beyond you, but I don’t want to have a kid just yet. I don’t think I’d be great at it right now.

Conversation With Childish Gambino

What other cultural stuff are you paying attention to these days? Have you read any good books lately? I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy books. Kierkegaard and stuff like that. I’m not against reading, but no one in my crew really reads. We never sit down and have time. That’s the real currency. Everyone’s talking about bitcoins and money and stuff like that, but the real currency is time. Tina Fey told me, ‘The most expensive thing to waste in the world is other people’s time.’ When you control other people’s time, time is the essence of everything. And the reason people want money is so they can have more time. Not even just on a level of like, ‘I can live longer and be healthier,’ just on a level of, ‘I don’t have to run this errand.’ When you’re reading philosophy, do you talk to other people about it or just thinking about it on your own? I only want to do things where there’s a connection to other people. I feel really lost and weird about a lot of things in culture, because I feel like everybody’s just kind of, ‘You should know this.’ But we’re all in the same position. There are so many unknowns. Stop fighting. No one’s in a better position. I always want to do something that’s going to connect. Otherwise it’s like, why be alive? Why read a book and be like, this is just for me? Why would I make art? I look at us like all like water droplets. Every drop of water on earth is looking for all the other droplets. They’re all trying to get to the sea. They’re all trying to be the same water. I feel like that’s people. We’re trying to understand each other, whether that’s language or sex or all those things. That’s what separates us from everybody else, we’re the only things that can look at something and see how it hurts somebody to be called a name or something and feel that empathy. That’s what separates us really. I feel like sometimes we lose that because the Internet makes it hard to do that. We have to build that in. Emojis do that. Remember before emojis? You would just text something and people would be like, ‘Were you angry? Were you happy?’

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You had to choose between just smile and frown. Yeah, and that’s what emojis do. They give context. They give a texture to it. They make the Internet more human. The Internet is a living, breathing thing and we are making it as we go. And yes it’s scary, because we’re definitely going to f— up. We have f—ed up. But that’s the only way to make things better. You learn more from the mistakes than from doing everything right. I feel like that. I only want to do things that connect. If I read a book, somebody else has to read the book. We were reading the same books in the mansion when we were there together. We would talk about them at night. That sounds pretty amazing. I only want to make albums this way from now on. Any other way, like going to the studio, feels really sad to me. It feels really lonely. I just want to be somewhere figuring it out. What about music you’ve been listening to? I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye’s albums constantly. I’ve been listening to 2 Chainz’ album a lot, the new 2 Chainz. I feel like people are sleeping on that album. And TV? I only watch cartoons. Right now it’s China, IL. But Adventure Time, American Dad and Archer — those are the ones I watch constantly. I shot a video the day before yesterday, the video for “3005,” and I was there for 17 hours. And the next day I had to shoot some stuff for the album and I was out all day. And the only thing I dream about is coming home and watching cartoons. That’s all I want. I know this is TIME magazine and I probably shouldn’t say it, but I get very high and watch cartoons and I feel at peace. You know how it’s going to end and it’s nice. There’s predictability. I feel like we try to do that with everything but that’s what makes us people. That’s what makes us alive. Lewis and Clark had no idea what was going on when they were going across the nation, they had no idea, they were like, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to see, if there’s going to be a bear, if a Native American is going to kill us, I don’t know what’s going to happen — but we’re together.’ That’s the thing we can count on. That’s all I want. I want to move forward together.

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I’M NOT AGAINST NOT READING READING, BUT NO ONE IN MY CREW REALLY READS. WE NEVER SIT DOWN AND HAVE TIME. THAT’S THE REAL CURREN$Y.

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Atlanta: Dont Care What You Think Donald Glover talks about tackling race in his new show, those Star Wars and Spider-Man rumors and ignoring the haters as Childish Gambino

Atlanta: Don’t Care What You Think

Donald Glover talks about tack- Glover. “It turned into someling race in his new show, those thing more attainable than Star Wars and Spider-Manruthat, but that was the idea. I mors and ignoring the haters as was like, ‘Let’s make something Childish Gambino that shouldn’t be on the air, “Atlanta is a Trojan horse,” saysomething controversial.’ If it’s sDonald Glover, the creator canceled in 10 episodes, I’ll be and star of the dramedy, which happy with those episodes.” premieres Sept. 6 on FX. The In the first episode, a white show is ostensibly about an Ivy character tells a story using the League dropout and new dad N word to Glover’s character, (Glover) who helps his cousin Earn. Later, Earn goads that launch a rap career. But in same character into telling the reality, it’s a bold exploration story again—but this time in of race and class that feels like front of Earn’s rapper cousin, nothing else on television—part- Paper Boi. In the second telling, ly because the writers are all the white character awkwardly black, as are the stars. omits the N word. “The thesis was: How do we “That tone, I think, is specific to make people feel black?” says being black. You’re laughing at

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I just keep losing. I mean, some people just supposed to lose just for balance on Earth. Aside from the laughter that the series brings, Atlanta delves deep into what it means to be young, black and poor. After a long day, Earn is seen sitting on the bus cradling his daughter when a mysterious figure (who may not even be real) approaches him. He begins to tell Earn that his mind is racing, and before we know it, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spilling all of his thoughts on failure. The man tries to explain that victory doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see failure and that what you allow yourself to believe will ultimately be. Minutes later, Alfred calls Earn with Paper Boiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s song blasting on the radio.

- Atlanta season1, ep1

Atlanta: Don’t Care What You Think

the heartache of the situation— and for a long time wasn’t alhow economics and status and lowed to watch television, so identity plays into when people he listened to audio recordings think the word is appropriate,” of Simpsons episodes in bed Glover says. “Most shows would at night. “Being a Jehovah’s have a character say, ‘Here’s Witness, it forces you to feel like when you can use that word.’ you’re always looking behind That’s whack. The situation is a curtain,” he says. “It always more complex and weird than keeps the magic alive in you.” that.” He went to college at NYU He strove to make the white and joined the comedy troupe character cool—“like Diplo”—so Upright Citizens Brigade, where that viewers wouldn’t dislike Tina Fey tapped him to write him. “My biggest problem with for 30 Rock (via recommena lot of movies about race is dation by UCB co-founder people aren’t trying to be evil. Amy Poehler). But he left the People are trying to survive and Emmy-winning writing team feel good. When racist stuff after three years to act on Comhappens, it’s usually primitive, munity. Glover moved on after human sh-t.” five seasons of that series to It’s weighty material for the create Atlanta. “Working on two man best known for crafting special shows made me want Tracy Morgan’s bizarre jokes to understand my purpose,” on 30 Rock (“Werewolf Bar he says. “Tina always seemed Mitzvah”) and rapping under happy. I want that.” the alter ego Childish Gambino, His pursuit of happiness has a moniker spat out by an online been a complicated journey, as Wu-Tang Clan name generator. his leapfrogging from dream But Glover’s been building this job to dream job might suggest. particular Trojan horse—a sear- “I feel like millennials never feel ing social commentary hidden like they have enough, really. in a laugh-out-loud show about People are like, ‘Oh you’re this rap—his entire life. man-child,’ but really I think it He grew up in Stone Mountain, has more to do with the posGa., home to a mountainside sibilities being endless. A lot of carving of Confederate icons us choose endlessness over a that stands as the Mount Rushdefinite ending.” more of that cause. (It’s also the It hasn’t helped that his identity hometown of 30 Rock charachas been relentlessly scrutiter Kenneth the Page.) Glover nized by the public. In 2010, he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness off-handedly tweeted that he’d

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like to play Spider-Man, accidentally kickstarting an online campaign to get him cast in the role. (The part eventually went to Andrew Garfield.) Glover was suddenly thrust into a debate about the lack of diversity in superhero films. “The Internet is a strange box,” he says. He’s also had to deal with criticism of his music, which persists despite two Grammy nominations for his last album. “I used to try to dissect why people didn’t like certain parts of me. Now I’m like, ‘Those are people’s feelings, and it’s O.K.,’”

he says. “I’m not interested in making people happy.” Case and point: He’ll skip dropping an album on iTunes in favor of releasing new music during a live concert event at Joshua Tree, Calif. on Sept. 2-4. “It could be a disaster. People might hate it,” he says. Now 32, Glover seems to be finding his way. His new perspective emboldened him to create Atlanta’s sometimes unlikable protagonist, who often puts his own interests ahead of his responsibilities as a father. It freed him to take on

Atlanta: Don’t Care What You Think

You’re supposed to be so smart; you can’t remember to flush. The dry, slapstick comedy Earn’s parents deliver upon his arrival at their front door will make you chuckle. He’s fresh from dropping out of Princeton (with no explanation) and his father, in particular, isn’t too keen on letting him back into their house. He’s lent him loads of cash, since the $5.15 Earn makes an hour at an airport kiosk can barely keep him afloat, but the icing on the cake is when his father calls him out for sneaking into the house and forgetting to flush the toilet, to which his mother chimes in, offering that by the look of his stool he could stand to consume real food as opposed to candy.

- Atlanta season1, ep1

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bigger issues like the futility of programs featuring non-white fighting a broken prison system, casts are commanding renewed the inescapable cycle of povattention. erty, the hypocrisy of certain “Diversity means money. There rap lyrics—and that’s all just in are so many screens now, and the first three episodes. And they need content to fill those don’t expect a traditional story screens,” says Glover. “If they structure or narrative. “I don’t were making black shows, left care about shows where it’s and right, and they were maklike, are they going to make it?” ing no money, people were says Glover. “I think it’s more turning off black-ish week after interesting to ask, why are they week, no one would be interhustling?” ested in diversity. But they’re Atlanta isn’t the only reason watching it.” his star is on the rise. After “I’m definitely stuffed into that successful turns inMagic Mike conversation,” he continues. XXL and The Martian, he was But he thinks he has something cast in the upcoming Spiderthat can endure. “I studied a lot Man: Homecoming. Though he of black iconography,” he says. will not reveal the character “The show is me trying to make he’s playing, he says the studio something iconic.” wasn’t just paying lip service. “You never want it to feel like affirmative action, and it wasn’t that at all,” he says. “I know the director, and he has some really cool ideas.” He’s also rumored to be the first choice to play Lando Calrissian in the newyoung Han Solo film. He won’t say whether there’s any truth to those reports but, like everyone else his age, he worships the franchise. “I grew up on it. It’s a dynasty.” But if Glover leaves his mark, he wants it to be with Atlanta. He hopes the show’s candor and multidimensional characters will allow it to last beyond the current moment in television, when

Atlanta: Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Care What You Think

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I had a weird dream. For those who aren’t well-versed in Glover’s rap persona, Childish Gambino, the one-line opener of Atlanta more than likely floated right over your head like an afterthought. It’s normal for people to have dreams, right? Even when in a body of water filled with seaweed that could apparently grab you and drag you to dark, uncharted depths, according to Earn? Nevertheless, this dream is one similar to the one he spoke passionately about on STN MTN, the 11-track project that finally fulfilled Gambino’s dreams of having a Gangsta Grillz mixtape. But more importantly, its opening track appropriately titled “Dream”/”Southern Hospitality”/ “Partna Dem” offered a bit of insight into what was to come from Glover, even if by sheer coincidence: “I had a dream I ran Atlanta,” he says on the intro, railing off into a wish list, consisting of reopening the infamous Club 112, firing all the cops in Cobb county, and bringing back staples that city was built upon like LaFace Records, Freaknik, Kilo Ali and Lou. While many of the bullet points of his list weren’t necessarily addressed in the premiere, you can say in a sense, Glover is running Atlanta. - Atlanta season1, ep1

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All content found in these pages is the original property of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creators and owners. Articles, interviews, photographs, and other texts were collected and organized for the compilation of this book, which was created as a student design project. Some texts have been condensed, reformated, and edited to increase readability. Photographs have been edited, resized and cropped to optimize their printed appearance. Special thanks to the following companies and individuals whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s content has been included: (Complex Magazine, Grantland, Entertainment Time, Time) This book was printed, bound, and distributed by Blurb Inc. It was produced in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Yusef Lai-Walters designed and edited this book for educational purposes, and it is not commercially sold. Digital versions can be found on Behance.net and Issuu.com (up to you if you want to include this) Typefaces used include (Gotham Light, Gotham Condensed Light)

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