2024-09-10 16:54:21
He has five Grammy Awards and two Golden Globes to his credit, and his videos and songs have garnered over a billion views. Despite this, the official biography of the American rapper, actor, screenwriter and comedian Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino on the Spotify streaming platform can be summed up in three words: Nobody gives a fuck. “No one cares” to be fair, as he sings on Lithonia from the latest album.
The album, called Bando Stone & the New World, which oscillates between a full-length recording and a soundtrack for an upcoming film, will be presented by Childish Gambino live on November 12 at Prague’s O2 Arena. It will be his first Czech concert and at the same time his last in this role. Enthusiastic responses from the current tour attest to the opposite of the brief slogan. Everyone is interested in Donald Glover: fans of rap, stand-up comedy, TV shows and Hollywood movies.
His career took off in the early 2000s when he portrayed former high school football player Troy Barnes in Back to School. Since then, he became known for the role of the carjacker Lando Calrissian in the film Solo: Star Wars Story, he also appeared in the films The Martian and Spider-Man: Homecoming. In the English version, he dubbed the lion Simba for the remake of the famous Lion King.
He applied his comedic talent as a screenwriter and actor in the Studio 30 Rock series, but, similar to Back to School, he eventually stopped enjoying working in a team with a clear hierarchy. “I just want to do what I want,” he explained his departure.
By now we already know what he meant. For the series Atlanta, which he created between 2016 and 2022, he won Golden Globes and TV Emmy Awards. Glover is signed on as a lead actor, producer and screenwriter. Strange stories from the hip-hop community in a surreal version of the American city of Atlanta work with dark humor, satire and social criticism. They gloss over life in the US today from the position of an African American. There were no white people on the writing team, which also included Glover’s brother Stephen.
Harden and paint
In parallel with his television and film career, his musical career was also taking shape. Childish Gambino created his pseudonym on a whim: he used a slightly corny random rap name generator created for fans by the Wu-Tang Clan. Under a new stage name, he debuted with the album Camp in 2011. On it, however, he rapped too often about how no one understands him and how he is not appreciated enough.
Donald Glover’s hyperactive temperament resembles his colleagues from Generation Z. | Photo: Fource Entertainment
Over time, however, Childish Gambino has matured into a man who is more concerned with wider societal issues than himself. Most probably in the world-famous clip This is America from 2018, which still arouses strong reactions and detailed analyses. On the YouTube server, the number of views is already close to a billion.
Glover and Japanese video director Hiro Murai, who also worked together on Atlanta, managed to evoke mixed emotions in the audience by combining joyous dance creations with flashy, senseless violence. The sharply contrasting clip refers to genre clichés, racial stereotypes and harsh segregation laws that were valid in the USA until 1965. The gangster surrounded by cars or weapons in Glover’s portrayal is not a romantic hero, as the hip-hop world often perceived it, but a hard-to-define madman. In this way, the rapper points to the murders and frequent mass shootings in contemporary America.
He turned to her past, but the musical one, two years earlier with the album Awaken, My Love. Back then, he surprised many fans when, instead of rap, he came up with a tribute to soul, funk, R&B and bands like Funkadalic or The Isley Brothers.
He attracted the most attention with the composition Redbone, which is still his most listened to today. At the same time, the history of the song points to the author’s slightly dark side: it occurred to him while reading Internet comments about how he said he couldn’t write a hit. And so Glover wrote it. Natruc didn’t create a clip for him to make it difficult for himself and to smear all the slanderers.
The track This is America earned Childish Gambin four Grammy Awards. He speaks out on violence, xenophobia and prejudice in the US. | Video: RCA Records
In a recent interview with the YouTube show Hot Ones, host Sean Evans asks him about this propensity for negatively motivated motivation. Today, the 40-year-old Glover, with a slightly graying beard, responds with words about the almost “black magic” that every ambitious young person needs to experience in small doses.
Anyone who looks back at his stand-up performances or comedy sketches will agree with him. They form the image of a talented young man who desperately tries to impress and be better than others.
Donald Glover has undoubtedly succeeded. In addition to director Hiro Murai, his long-time friend, composer and music producer Ludwig Göransson helped him on his way to form Childish Gambino. They met while filming the series Back to School, for which the Swede composed the soundtrack. Since then, Göransson regularly participates in the production of Glover’s albums, tracks and mixtapes – in the case of the one called Culdesac, they also published an acoustic version from a hotel room.
The northerner currently has two Oscars under his belt for the scores for Oppenheimer and Black Panther, while fans of the sci-fi saga Star Wars know him for the infectiously catchy theme song of the Mandalorian series.
Donald Glover brought a unique perspective to the world of hip hop. | Photo: Reuters
The court jester leaves
In the middle of this summer, Glover released the album Bando Stone & the New World, on which he somewhat reduced the previously close collaboration with Göransson. Their careers have taken off in other directions and there simply isn’t time. He has matured so much that Glover decided to say goodbye to the character of Childish Gambino. “I think Childish Gambino is a little bit like The Boss from Chancel in the sense that he was great ten years ago,” he said, referring to the popular series.
The cover of this year’s record also suggests that it is time to move on. Glover sits on it with a melancholic thoughtful expression on his face, with a chicken in his hands and a father’s cap on his head. It’s a far cry from the overgrown half-naked maniac from This Is America.
According to the trailer, Bando Stone will be a notable character in Glover’s upcoming feature directorial debut, where the musician finds himself in a kind of post-apocalyptic reality. The multimedia project combining the album, film and partly the current tour in a way follows up on what the artist hinted at on his record Because the Internet from 2013. It was accompanied by a short film and a seventy-two-page script that people could read while listening.
The knowledge that Donald Glover is back on the concert line after six years and that this is Childish Gambino’s swan song elevates the whole event to extraordinary heights. Internet forums of fans are full of comments about unique and unrepeatable experiences, about the best concerts they have ever seen and heard. Apparently, Prague has a lot to look forward to.
It will be an opportunity to say goodbye to a rap figure who brought a unique perspective to the world of hip hop. “I never wanted to be the king of rap,” Glover said in an interview with Hot Ones, “but I didn’t want to end up as a day laborer either. I just chose the path of a court jester and could do and afford anything.”
Will Childish really say goodbye to Gambino for good after he wraps up a four-date tour in Australia in February 2025? Hard to say. “It just doesn’t fulfill me anymore,” he told the New York Times. He made essentially the same statement when he left the series Back to School more than ten years ago. However, there is currently talk of a feature film in which he would reprise the role of Troy Barnes.
The need for constant change and the search for new projects seem to reflect Glover’s current distraction. Although he will celebrate his 41st birthday in September, his hyperactive temperament is more reminiscent of his colleagues from generation Z. And not only the artistic ones. How many of us are currently moving from one project to another, trying new hobbies, and discovering fascinating Wikipedia entries again and again? Maybe Donald Glover is doing a little bit of the same thing, he just manages to come up with that new song, that screenplay, that next collaboration out of every spare moment and random idea.
“No matter what this guy does, something good always comes out of it,” summed up one fan in a comment below the clip for the Lithonia track. Unlike the post-apocalyptic world, in which Bando Stone is probably justifiably depressed that no one cares, Donald Glover doesn’t have to worry about the lack of attention just yet.
Video: Trailer z filmu Bando Stone & The New World
The album Bando Stone & The New World serves as the soundtrack to the forthcoming film of the same name. He does not yet have a Czech distributor. | Video: Donald Glover