Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. I met Flavor Flav in a Las Vegas bowling alley and haven't stopped talking about it. The Minnesota Daily • © 2020 The Minnesota Daily • Privacy Policy • FLEX WordPress Theme by SNO • Log in, Q&A: Jake Luppen talks his debut solo record, health scares and Tears for Fears, Making the best of a crappy situation: New manure research looks to help farmers during climate crisis, Local artists flip the film script to highlight queer identies, UROC: One decade as a community institution, Masked man in Dinkytown raises questions on mental health, policing, Nearly half of University-owned housing unoccupied for fall semester, Oregon wildfires impact Minnesota athletes who call the state home, Letters to the Editor or Op-Ed Submissions. Fellow ATLien 21 Savage shows up for a feature that is equal parts funny (“I'm on a private jet eatin' Popeyes chicken / I be flexin' like I'm eatin' Popeye's spinach”) and insightful (“The police keep harassin' 'cause I'm rich and I'm black / They mad 'cause I made myself a boss without crack”), and the song’s extended fadeout makes room for some bonkers production quirks. Glover graduated to A-list pop crossovers and multi-song suites on 2013’s Because the Internet, a sprawling concept album about the agony and ecstasy of being Extremely Online.

On the bouncy electro-funk cut “19.10,” he reflects on what it means to be black in a society that seeks to both marginalize and profit off his culture: “To be beautiful is to be hunted / I can't change the truth, I can't get you used to this.” The album’s penultimate track, “47.48,” ends with a conversation between Glover and his son, Legend, in which they both exclaim they love themselves—a moment of levity on an album fraught with existential questions that have no simple answers. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic). While songs like “32.22” put a damper on the adventurous spirit of 3.15.20, others offer evidence that Gambino is a compelling soul-funk revivalist (and listens to a tot of Prince). Other than a brief description of his experimentation with shrooms, he keeps things PG, as if his two young sons were his audience. Like a character actor or a wily NBA vet who adapts his game to suit his team’s needs, Rapping Gambino appears in spot duty, relieving Singing Gambino when the situation demands a change of pace or style.

On the other hand, its anti-rollout, blank cover, difficult-to-remember song titles, and modest first-week sales projections point to Gambino’s apparent indifference towards promotion, and maybe the immense cultural capital he holds as well. 3.15.20 represents the kind of overextension that is endemic to hyper-successful, do-it-all creative types. ", which granted him his biggest hit to date with the impossibly catchy “Redbone.” But “Redbone” merely foreshadowed the stratospheric success of 2018’s “This Is America,” which debuted at No. Some of these songs are familiar: “Algorhythm” has been a live staple for years, and its thumping bass line and nonstop hooks suggest several rounds of edits. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 10: Childish Gambino performs onstage during the 2019 Outside ... [+] Lands Music And Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park on August 10, 2019 in San Francisco, California. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic). 3.15.20 tackles appropriately heady concepts for a Gambino album: identity, self-love, the passage of time, existence itself. With 3.15.20, Glover has delivered his masterpiece, a kaleidoscopic blend of rap, pop, funk, soul and R&B that serves as a culmination of every phase of his career. Meanwhile, “42.26” (previously released as “Feels Like Summer”) evokes Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness,” and “47.48,” a slow-burning meditation on what happens when young children are first exposed to serious violence, echoes Donny Hathaway’s “Lil Ghetto Boy.” These two songs are the emotional nerve center of the album; they both carry an ominous undertone, a dormant anger that simmers and rises to the surface in the presence of sweltering heat. It's really a wonderful instrument, but he sometimes uses it as a crutch that allows him to scrape the surface of the production and build his songwriting around Disney-grade platitudes about things like family love, self-worth, and childhood innocence. Gambino’s singing voice is a two-edged sword. There are meditations here on love and self-love, and hook-ups with girls while high on magic mushrooms. I am a music and entertainment reporter who specializes in pop, hip-hop and heavy metal. For nearly two years, fans have eagerly awaited a full-length follow-up to “This Is America.” Glover whet their appetites with the two-song Summer Pack in July of 2018, but it was hardly the zeitgeist-capturing work of which he had proven capable. The multi-hyphenate artist, last Sunday as a continuous stream on his website and removed it the same day. With each subsequent Childish Gambino album, Glover made vast strides, but there remained a nagging sense that he had not yet reached his final form. 3.15.20 pulls from every facet of Glover’s sonic palette to create something new and daring, cementing itself as the definitive Childish Gambino album.

, Glover has delivered his masterpiece, a kaleidoscopic blend of rap, pop, funk, soul and R&B that serves as a culmination of every phase of his career. The page you are looking for no longer exists. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelled Glover from a musical auteur to a prophet who distilled the fury and pain of millions into one blistering, four-minute song. Childish Gambino isn’t a vanguard leading pop forward, and he doesn’t have to be. According to Genius, he replaced (almost) all of the song titles with timestamps to encourage listening to the album in its entirety. For nearly two years, fans have eagerly awaited a full-length follow-up to “This Is America.” Glover whet their appetites with the two-song. It’s on the album’s more sprawling tracks, however, that Glover reveals the breadth of his songwriting. 1 that his musical alias Childish Gambino ascended to the status of bona fide pop superstar. Childish Gambino is the nom de plume of Donald Glover, whom you Community fans watch every Thursday as Troy Barnes, in … With 3.15.20, Gambino has found his optimal balance between singing and rapping. (Just look at Kanye’s DONDA chart). If he never revives the moniker again, he’s left listeners with a brilliant swan song.

3.15.20 also shows how his musical identity is still lodged in his biggest influences. The eight-minute “24.19” starts off like a pitched-down “Redbone” before piling on extra vocal layers and climaxing in a fiery slow jam.

He staked his claim as a feisty punchline rapper on his 2010 Culdesac mixtape and 2011 debut studio album Camp, the latter of which earned a notorious 1.6 and a scorched-earth review from Pitchfork. “Feels Like Summer” resurfaces as “42.26,” making for a refreshing chaser after the incendiary “32.22” (which sounds like a spiritual successor to Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead”) and the ominously upbeat, country-inflected “35.31.” These preexisting songs represent some of 3.15.20’s more accessible cuts, along with the readymade R&B/pop smash “Time,” on which Glover and Ariana Grande bring out the best in each other. Childish Gambino quietly released his new album with blank cover artwork and songs named for their timecodes. The multi-hyphenate artist improves every element of his performance: His rapping is tighter, his band is looser, his singing is more euphoric, and his message is more concise. I cover numerous festivals, interview local and national touring musicians, and. Donald Glover has striven for greatness ever since he invented his Childish Gambino persona, and his astonishing new album, 3.15.20, has been a decade in the making.
But lyrically, Glover trims the fat and delivers some of his simplest and most poignant statements. Meet your new favorite rapper. One of my most listened to artists of the last decade has been without a doubt Childish Gambino. COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites.
He weaves a hilarious tale of a tryst gone awry thanks to some potent psychedelics on “12.38,” contorting his syllables atop a slinky funk beat that sounds more relaxed than anything off "Awaken, My Love!" “35:31” sounds like it could be in a Kia commercial, and the “Time” chorus repurposes a syrupy number from Glover’s 2019 film Guava Island in which he earnestly wonders if “all the stars in the night are really dreams.”. My Love.” The main difference is that those LPs were both conceptual, and the liberties Gambino takes on his new album—the faux-spiritual intro, the animal noises, even the determined genre-hopping—suggest the absence of any kind of unifying vision.

Follow me on Twitter for more. It is telling that one of his best songs is still his 2015 live radio cover of Tamia’s “So Into You,” where his sweet falsetto mingles perfectly with plaintive electric piano and finger snaps. I am a music and entertainment reporter who specializes in pop, hip-hop and heavy metal. One of the most versatile talents of our time has surprised us with what is likely his final album… In fact, Donald Glover, in general, has had a hand in multiple great forms of media over the years. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelled Glover from a musical auteur to a prophet who distilled the fury and pain of millions into one blistering, four-minute song. , which granted him his biggest hit to date with the impossibly catchy “Redbone.” But “Redbone” merely foreshadowed the stratospheric success of 2018’s “This Is America,” which debuted at No. Lands Music And Arts Festival at Golden Gate Park on August 10, 2019 in San Francisco, California.

Glover returns to his roots—sort of—on 3.15.20’s final track, “53.49,” showing off his athletic raps and stunning falsetto shrieks. © 2020 Complex Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.