There’s protest and slick talk and failure and fear, endlessly treading the line between character and autobiographical while fully concerning itself with the details. It’s an extended homage to the lineage of funk and soul - Sly, Prince, Bootsy, Clinton, on and on - and it’s a set of instructions to Glover’s newborn son, born into a world always on the verge of burning. Depending on when one peers in, they’ll find: an insecure burgeoning Black superhero, a nerd’s ruthless revenge fantasy (with Asian fetishism and rape jokes to match), a tortured renaissance man typecast as a token, a nigga who’s really from Stone Mountain, and an Internet-obsessed pop star electing to disappear before the apex of his success.Īwaken, My Love! is no exception to the rule of clarity, but it’s a shining achievement in its execution because it knows precisely the record it wants to be. In the interest of self-disclosure, I admit I’ve kept close watch on his trajectory finding several mirrors into my own self-discovery for all the ugly immaturity and beautiful growth in being a young Black man with an affinity for words. Gambino is indeed a mastermind: first introduced via a mixtape series of a hobbyist fare, we’ve witnessed several evolutions and revolutions of his character over the course of six years. In the oeuvre of Childish Gambino - like many of Donald Glover’s works across mediums - the clarity of the material can be centered and sacrificed all at once.
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