New Childish Gambino Single 'This Is America'

[sweeper]

Something like this might make the conversation easier, though, just because the presentation makes it more palatable for some. As Kurt Vonnegut said: 'profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.' Which is where being mainstream comes into its own.

[Golden E. Pump]

I genuinely prefer "Awaken My Love" to 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. And I love both albums.

[Large Noise]

I think it's pretty meh but obviously the biggest issue I have with it is that it's getting those same writeups that 3 or 4 things get every year (Master of None and Lemonade immediately spring to mind) about being a huge revelation and somehow a game changer in mainstream art which ring incredibly hollow.

As far as making music that truly empowers people or hits a raw nerve, something like To Pimp a Butterfly on a pure sonic level makes far more of an impact than a Vevo music video ever could. I think Glover himself is plenty aware of that.

Yes. This.

One of the things I like about the recent wave of soundcloud rappers is that they're making youth culture scary and unacceptable again. Not this fucking boring stuff that the whole family can agree is powerful and sends the right message. Give me some 22 year old with face tattoos and a meth habit earnestly rapping about murder any day.

[manticore]

It's satirizing the two poles of the music industry (or specifically the role of black artists in the music industry), the minstrel tokenism (dancing black children, gospel choirs) and the performative violence/hedonism of dangerous black men, which are commercialized and sold to largely white audiences. I think the subtext is also that this commodification of "blackness" ultimately does nothing to change underlying issues.

White audiences want Donald Glover to either be the dancing token black friend, or the street tough rioter, and think that in doing so they are actually in touch with what it actually means to be black in America.

I don't know if you're right in this interpretation of this song/video or wrong, but I've just googled for interpretations  and haven't found any that really agree with you (there may well be, I just haven't seen them). One passage that seems to is this, in the only negative piece that I found:

"This Is America" is full of the same social commentary of Spike Lee's Bamboozled or KMD's Black Bastards—Jim Crow and minstrelsy allusions to discuss blackness in front of the white gaze and under capitalism's control—but with not enough self-awareness about what it's presenting to an audience.

https://www.spin.com/2018/05/donald-glover-this-is-america-review/

Other pieces agree with each other on a few things, the Jim Crow references especially, but differ on lots of other things. The gospel choir bit is almost universally taken to refer to the murders of black people in the church in Charleston.

I had never heard of Donald Glover before which shows how much I know. After reading about this I think I get some things he's saying, but I'm not at all sure it has such a clear interpretation.

[saltysnacks]

I'm now going to listen to his entire discography, been on a hip-hop binge lately, might as well catch up with this fella. I assumed he was a comedy rapper simply because he was on Community.

[newbridge]

I think my interpretation is supported by the very misanthropic interview he gave to the New Yorker a few weeks back: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/donald-glover-cant-save-you

The final shot of the music video suggests to me that it is more about him and the identity/identities he is supposed to adopt to please a white audience and to navigate American society

[phantom_power]

Yes. This.

One of the things I like about the recent wave of soundcloud rappers is that they're making youth culture scary and unacceptable again. Not this fucking boring stuff that the whole family can agree is powerful and sends the right message. Give me some 22 year old with face tattoos and a meth habit earnestly rapping about murder any day.

I am not sure Donald Glover/Childish Gambino is youth culture. And I am not sure why youth culture and rap should be confined to such strictures of having to be this or that. It is an incredibly versatile musical form so to pin it down to just scary murder rap seems a bit odd

[thraxx]

I'm very pleased that evryone thinks this is brilliant song and video, but i just don't see it myself. It's alright like but I'm not creaming my knicks or owt.

[Norton Canes]

So did anyone spot the bear?

[itsfredtitmus]

Yes. This.

One of the things I like about the recent wave of soundcloud rappers is that they're making youth culture scary and unacceptable again. Not this fucking boring stuff that the whole family can agree is powerful and sends the right message. Give me some 22 year old with face tattoos and a meth habit earnestly rapping about murder any day.

DJ Jazzy Jeff   

[Paaaaul]

So did anyone spot the bear?

That was a horse.
And please drive safely.

[Wet Blanket]

i'd never heard of him until this song but Atlanta sounds good. It's on BBC2 rather than fucking Sky as well, which makes a refreshing change

[phantom_power]

i'd never heard of him until this song but Atlanta sounds good. It's on BBC2 rather than fucking Sky as well, which makes a refreshing change

Is it? The first season was on Fox I think. When is it on?

[Wet Blanket]

Starts this Sunday at 10.00. That's series 1 but it might segue into the new series I dunno. How many seasons are there?

No doubt it'll follows the time honoured path of Seinfeld, Larry Sanders, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks and Rec and The Wire etc and will vanish down the schedules and then back onto satellite

[Norton Canes]

As if I'm listening to someone who calls themselves "Chidish Gambino"

To be honest I'd like him more if he called himself Donald Golver. Donald Glover is a great name for a rapper.

[phantom_power]

Donglover

[Ja'moke]

One of the things I like about the recent wave of soundcloud rappers is that they're making youth culture scary and unacceptable again. Not this fucking boring stuff that the whole family can agree is powerful and sends the right message. Give me some 22 year old with face tattoos and a meth habit earnestly rapping about murder any day.

Soundcloud rappers make youth culture scary and unacceptable because they're constantly being accused of physical abuse or sexually harassing underage girls. Or overdosing at their shows.

[Large Noise]

Soundcloud rappers make youth culture scary and unacceptable because they're constantly being accused of physical abuse or sexually harassing underage girls. Or overdosing at their shows.

Is there a popular musical genre/movement you couldn't say that about?

Im referring more to their visual aesthetic and sound/lyrical content. Including the ridiculous tattoos and rampant drug use. I like that Lil Yachty makes no sense to old farts and pisses off 'real' rappers, how there's an almost moronic simplicity to some of it that doesn't allow 30-somethings to latch onto it and give it the "Ice Cube is like Wordsworth to me" routine. I like how there's a strong DIY element too.

I'm too old and only really have a passing familiarity with it, but I have younger siblings who're sort of into it. And I'd sooner have them listening to something like Minnesota than awful drecht like God's Plan.

And Donald Glover, who I like a lot as an actor (don't mind as a stand-up, can take or leave as rapper) just kind of makes my eyes roll with the [pulls out gun] This is America thing. The guy grew up a Jehovah's Witness and got hired to write for 30 Rock straight out of university. Maybe it's somebody's America but it's not his. The whole thing just seems made for myriad the New Yorker thinkpieces it'll spawn. Not that that's a terrible thing, but it's just boring.

[itsfredtitmus]

i only listen to flockaveli

[Ja'moke]

Is there a popular musical genre/movement you couldn't say that about?

True. But the frequency with which it seems to happen with the Soundcloud crew almost makes it a subset of that culture.

Im referring more to their visual aesthetic and sound/lyrical content. Including the ridiculous tattoos and rampant drug use. I like that Lil Yachty makes no sense to old farts and pisses off 'real' rappers, how there's an almost moronic simplicity to some of it that doesn't allow 30-somethings to latch onto it and give it the "Ice Cube is like Wordsworth to me" routine. I like how there's a strong DIY element too.

I'm 29, so perhaps I'm too old to get it (though I enjoy stuff like Migos, and they'd probably be considered mumble rap), but there are far more interesting non-mainstream rappers out there than those Soundcloud types (though I suppose Soundcloud rap is now mainstream). They just remind me of Insane Clown Posse and the whole juggalo culture. Also, their production all sounds the same too.

[Mister Six]

And Donald Glover, who I like a lot as an actor (don't mind as a stand-up, can take or leave as rapper) just kind of makes my eyes roll with the [pulls out gun] This is America thing. The guy grew up a Jehovah's Witness and got hired to write for 30 Rock straight out of university. Maybe it's somebody's America but it's not his.

Black people in the US are still subject to prejudice, random stops, racial abuse and a racist system and society regardless of how un-gangsta their childhoods or how rich they are. That's part of the message ("You're just a black man in this world").

Glover's also spoken about how being lighter-skinned than his brother (who also writes for Atlanta, and who inspired the line "I scare white people at ATMs, I gotta be a rapper") gave him a skewed view of being a black person in the US. His brother, like a lot of darker-skinned (and therefore more "scary") black people, had a tougher ride.

Anyway, the video isn't just talking about that, it's also talking about how violence against black people is commodified in the US, and how audiences (like yourself) want to see and hear stories of crime and drug use, but how this becomes a distraction from solving the actual issues.

Black people become complicit because playing into those narratives is a way to get rich ("Get your money, black man") and escape the economic ditch that so many black people are trapped in, but in doing so they reinforce that image of black thug culture (the Jim Crow shooting at the start) and become enforcers of their own marginalisation (the Confederate trousers).

And even if they get rich, they're still a black man in this world, a big dog in a cage. Those lines are sung over the Gambino character/Glover running in terror from a mob. Even as someone who exploits/enforces the status quo, he's still subject to the status quo and it's brutality.

I agree that the song isn't that great (it's nowhere near as good as Rebone, for example, which is extraordinary) without the video, but together they're dynamite.

[Z]

And Donald Glover, who I like a lot as an actor (don't mind as a stand-up, can take or leave as rapper) just kind of makes my eyes roll with the [pulls out gun] This is America thing. The guy grew up a Jehovah's Witness and got hired to write for 30 Rock straight out of university. Maybe it's somebody's America but it's not his. The whole thing just seems made for myriad the New Yorker thinkpieces it'll spawn. Not that that's a terrible thing, but it's just boring.

I guess this plays into it for me to. He's nowhere near as bad as he once was in this regard, a lot of his rapping came across as an ivy league slam poet trying to put a bit more of an urban slant on their delivery but ultimately being unable to shake off the years of elocution lessons their parents paid for.

Not being from slums doesn't mean he has nothing to say about being black in America though. I think he's a very good voice who's more than aware of any legit criticism I could level at him.

[Large Noise]

Yeah, I understood the video and I'm familiar with the concept of racism in America.

You say 'black people become complicit because playing into those narratives is a way to get rich'. But it seems to me that Glover never had to do that, so he's really critiquing other black artists there.

But if gansta rap was always secretly about selling records to suburban white kids, could there be- bear with me here- any chance that he's selling liberal chinstroking to 24-39 New Yorker/Guardian readers? Is this a trap sound for people who don't normally listen to trap music, and think that it's a shame that so much of it is negative?

But whatever, I'm naysaying a harmless thing that people like, which is never a good look.

Edit: this is in reply to Mister Six

[Brundle-Fly]

It reminds me of this brilliant number

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA

and this come to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgoTSuBZPGI

[newbridge]

could there be- bear with me here- any chance that he's selling liberal chinstroking to 24-39 New Yorker/Guardian readers?

Yes, just as every social critic or satirist in the history of human civilization has made a living selling his or her work to liberal chinstroking readers who did or did not realize they were being criticized to varying degrees. That's a function of how art is made in a market economy...

(I'm not saying Glover is Jonathan Swift here, I just think he made an interesting music video.)

[Pseudopath]

Anyone posted this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUWq_aBiE_s

Works frighteningly well.

[Large Noise]

Yes, just as every social critic or satirist in the history of human civilization has made a living selling his or her work to liberal chinstroking readers who did or did not realize they were being criticized to varying degrees. That's a function of how art is made in a market economy...

(I'm not saying Glover is Jonathan Swift here, I just think he made an interesting music video.)

Surely you'd recognise that there's been a lot of interesting rap music containing social commentary that wasn't made with liberal chinstokers in mind?

[newbridge]

Surely you'd recognise that there's been a lot of interesting rap music containing social commentary that wasn't made with liberal chinstokers in mind?

Not by anybody making money off it. Though if you mean that Donald Glover is disingenuously rapping about social issues solely because it's easier to sell, well that's just preposterous.

[Large Noise]

Not by anybody making money off it. Though if you mean that Donald Glover is disingenuously rapping about social issues solely because it's easier to sell, well that's just preposterous.

Eh? You don't think Nas made any money from Illmatic?

It's not that I think there's anything disingenuous about Donald Glover or the song, it's just that he's already a widely successful uncontroversial mainstream darling and this song is probably him at the zenith of that.

[phantom_power]

He is quite controversial if you are a black woman apparently, at least according to the comment section of some article I read somewhere