Adult Gambino: unpacking the importance of 'This Is America'

Max Quinn explores Childish Gambino's artistic ascendancy, and the importance of 'This Is America'.

This weekend, Childish Gambino returned with ‘This Is America’, an inevitable landmark track that might be the best and most ambitious of his career. Paired with its accompanying music video, ‘This Is America’ is also one of the first multimedia experiences of true importance in 2018 (alongside Beyoncé at Coachella, and Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer "emotion picture"), as Gambino actualises the jarring reality of modern American discourse with narrative precision, bold production choices, and manic dance moves. It’s important as both a statement of artistry, and for the context in which it arrives, and we should break those things down piece-by-piece.

Is this a good song without the video?

Yes. Let’s get this out of the way first. The clip is excellent: it draws the ambiguity out of the lyrics and creates a universe for the song to live within. It’s also quite shocking – if you haven’t seen it, prepare for cute fun and then prepare for awful gun violence. The symbolism runs deep, as Gambino enlists and executes an entire choir in a nod to the Charleston church shooting, before he dances with children front of frame. It’s rare for music videos to rise above accoutrement status, and Gambino and director Hiro Murai deserve nothing but praise for making something stark and wonderful.

Examining the song as a standalone piece of music yields equal reward. This is a jarring listen punctuated by sweeping structural and sonic dissonance: beautiful, choral folk melodies are carefully gestated and then cut abruptly, substituted for surgical, sonicboom bass pulses and Gambino’s harsh verse. We have not heard such production choices before from Donald Glover, but they are not altogether unexpected; he has shown an affinity for rebirth both within the framework of his own music (for example, the soul/funk departure of Awaken, My Love) and outside of it (see: his career/s as a TV writer, stand-up comic, sitcom star, rapper, musician, et al).

Keeping this in mind, it should also not be surprising to see Gambino turn to social commentary in his music. Though we’ve seen it from Glover in his TV series Atlanta, this is our first real exposure to Childish Gambino as a Man With A Message, and for him to go in on racial disparity, vanity and gun violence in contemporary America with such vigilance marks a real guidepost in his career. Consequentially, when he raps “1, 2, 3, Get Down” as the song hits its apex, it feels less like a prefix to partying, and more like a warning: This is America. Get down.

What does this say about Childish Gambino as an artist?

For Glover to re-emerge from his hip-hop chrysalis as a poignant voice on issues of social significance more or less completes the circle of Childish Gambino as modern rap’s best thought experiment.

This project began as Glover’s critically panned alter-ego, and has become something different entirely, and entirely brilliant. If Awaken, My Love affirmed Gambino’s credentials as an artist who has moved into the realm of musical legitimacy by the sheer force of his own creative agency, ‘…America’ represents his harnessing of accrued skill to create a powerful experience.

Kind of unbelievably, Gambino has moved through the flippant bombast of brag-rap debut Camp and the navel-gazing sadboi of Because The Internet to become one of the most powerful voices in music, and he’s now using his voice to make a vivid social statement.

On ‘…America’, the “Stay Woke” bumper sticker has given way to the driving force of Glover’s legitimate cultural critique. It’s a cadence designed to provoke thought in a way that his earlier raps aren’t: this is about as far from “my dick is too big / there’s a big bang theory” as you can get, which, weirdly, almost gives the track extra weight as a bold artistic statement.

Already, the track has reached beyond a core, expected audience of Gambino fans. Erykah Badu has weighed in on the track, so has Janelle Monáe, and so has Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who broke an 18 month twitter silence to speak up on the song.

Point being: this is rich, textured watercolour artistry that reaches outside the lexicon of popular culture and into something pretty connectively humanising. This is a flex of thought, of concept, and of execution – and for Gambino to tie all of those strings together so neatly is as impressive as his work is important.

Why is this song especially important right now?

You can’t extricate ‘This Is America’ from the context it arrives in, especially as it pertains to hip-hop’s most important contemporary voices.

Simply: Kanye’s out here trying to reclaim Make America Great Again, and blindsiding a black audience who have looked to him as a beacon in the process. TMZ producer Van Lathan, who confronted West about his antics last week, described the situation pretty aptly:

“I’m disappointed,” he told West. “I’m appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that to me, you have morphed into something that is not real.”

It’s important that ‘… America’ arrives right now because it provides a buffer and counterpoint. Intentionally or otherwise, Gambino is saying what Kanye isn’t, and saying it explicitly. That’s huge. Here he is on SNL over the weekend weighing in on Ye’s twitter “damage control”:

It’s also important because outside of a few bars (“Young, Black and gifted / but he still in America” from ‘Yaphet Kotto’ sticks out), this is the first time we’re hearing it from Gambino. For an artist with that kind of status to make that kind of statement at this kind of time? FOH.

Anything else?

Yep. Go back and watch the video again. This time, don’t watch Gambino, and pay attention to all of the chaos in the background. It’s unnerving, unexpected, and unequivocally good. This is Childish Gambino’s America, and we’re better for experiencing it.

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