Childish Gambino

Is there anything Donald Glover can't do?

"Donald McKinley Glover^[1] (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, writer, comedian, and musician. Glover first came to attention for his work in the sketch group Derrick Comedy, and is best known for his role as community college student Troy Barnes on the NBC comedy series Community. In 2011, Glover signed to Glassnote Records under his stage name Childish Gambino, with whom he released his first studio album entitled Camp on November 15, 2011." -from his wikipedia page

Not only does he write, act, tell jokes, and rap, but he's fucking good at all of it.

This last Christmas, I got my sister his newest album, Camp (she loved it- for a real writer's take on Donald Glover, check out her post about him here). Not even two hours after she'd unwrapped it, once she'd stepped out to do some Christmas day yoga, I snagged it and transferred all the songs onto my laptop. Since then, I've listened to it many times. He's crude, egotistical, and often superficial. However, he's also funny, sometimes thoughtful, and damn good. I think the main thing that sets him apart from many other actors is that he doesn't take his rapping too seriously; he does it because he likes to, and sometimes it seems like he just does it for laughs.

In his lyrics, he constantly uses pop-culture references to his non-rapper self ("Baby, I'm your hero, Donald for Spiderman," "When I wrote for 30 Rock, I was under 25") and to others, oftentimes in the form of a pun ("All I wanted was some more like Ashton," "I'm headin' west like I'm fuckin' blowin' Kanye"). Sometimes, his lyrics are just straight up stupid ("An elephant never forgets, so my dick remembers everythin'"). It's almost like he knows he can get away with saying ridiculous things, just because of who he is.

To be honest, it took a while to be able to listen to his songs without picturing Troy from Community (like, longer than I'd care to admit) rapping. But I've finally (and slightly sadly) separated the two in my head, and continue to listen to Camp, at least in part, almost everyday. The best part of the entire album, for sure, is that after 12 songs of crude language and angry/egotistical sounding rapping, three minutes into the very last song (That Power), it slips into 4 1/2 minute monologue that closes the album. OH MY. Surprise surprise, Donald Glover has a bad-ass, strangely gentle, speaking voice and, as he talks about his ride back from summer camp with the girl he likes at age thirteen, my heart melts a little each time I hear it.  You can listen to it/read this blog post about it here.

"This is on a bus back from camp. I’m thirteen and so are you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other dudes I hadn’t met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It turned out it would be me and just one girl. That’s you. And we’re still at camp as long as we’re on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us. We’re still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still smell like pine needles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you, but I don’t know if you do or don’t more-than-like me. You’ve never said, so I haven’t been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so on. A girl who’s smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh, is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who reads books that no one’s assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet

Back in the real world we don’t go to the same school, and unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we won’t go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something. The sun’s gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. We’re talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we know. And then I’m like, “Can I tell you something?” And all of a sudden I’m telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And there’s no expression on it. And I think just after a point I’m just talking to lengthen the time where we live in a world where you haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. And regrettably I end up using the word “destiny.” I don’t remember in what context. Doesn’t matter. Before long I’m out of stuff to say and you smile and say, “okay.” I don’t know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but there’s nowhere to go because we’re are on a bus. So I pretend like I’m asleep and before long, I really am

I wake up, the bus isn’t moving anymore. The domed lights that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and you’re not there. Then again a lot of kids aren’t in their seats anymore. We’re parked at the pick-up point, which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You might be in your dad’s car by now, your bags and things piled high in the trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our way off. It’s Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light, so I can’t really see her face, but I can see her smile. And she says one word: “destiny.” Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didn’t know you were friends with them

I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our house and camp is over. So is summer, even though there’s two weeks until school starts. This isn’t a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad, this is a story about how I learned something and I’m not saying this thing is true or not, I’m just saying it’s what I learned. I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isn’t a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But it’s a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t  ."