Once I was 14, I used to be launched to Infantile Gambino via his 2010 mixtapes I Am Only a Rapper and I Am Only a Rapper 2. This was when he was a sitcom star first and a rapper second, rapping with a glut of popular culture references, getting off punchline after punchline in a congested voice that made him sound like Urkel doing Da Drought 3. I favored them as a result of they have been satire, or perhaps not, and perhaps that was the purpose. If something, the mixtapes have been endearingly corny, nerdy, and goofy—he performed with a rap character he was forming and hinted on the racial insecurities that may make 2011’s Camp a pop-rap catastrophe.
All these years later, Infantile Gambino is merely a facet challenge of Donald Glover, who has labored tirelessly to shift the notion of himself from nerdy, goofy, and insecure Black artist to a cool, layered, and severe Black artist. I consider his 2018 New Yorker profile by which he stated, “I study quick—I found out the algorithm,” and described his “superpower” as getting individuals to consider no matter he wished them to about him if he tried laborious sufficient.
He did try to it labored. “Awaken, My Love!” from 2016 was basically his Parliament-meets-Maxwell funk challenge. It’s nowhere close to as soulful or groovy as he wished it to be (I’ll give it up for “Riot,” although), but it surely did infuse his music with the stamp of Blackness he was thirsty for. Then there was the tune and video for “This Is America,” extra obscure and fewer radical than its popularity, but it surely immediately gave his songs the aura of significance. And, oh yeah, there’s this tv present he created referred to as Atlanta, among the best exhibits of the twenty first century, the factor that makes good on his want to make distinctive Black artwork. By darkish comedy and the hyperlocal lens of his hometown, the present blurs the traces between persona and actuality, a thought he was veering towards on the 2013 challenge As a result of the Web. And but the best achievement of Atlanta is rather more easy: It was humorous as hell.
There’s not a lot of a humorousness on Bando Stone and the New World, billed as Donald Glover’s ultimate album as Infantile Gambino. The purpose he gave The New York Instances? “It’s not fulfilling. And I simply felt like I didn’t must construct on this manner anymore.” You’ll be able to really feel that in how he appears burdened with the stress of dwelling as much as the notion he has molded for himself. It’s a strained album that so badly needs to finish the Infantile Gambino experiment with a bang, that desires to be a center finger to everybody who ever thought he didn’t have the vary to drag off no matter he set his sights on, that desires to be the form of susceptible report that lasts as a result of a brand new technology of youngsters see themselves in his music. That’s wonderful and all. Atlanta had related ambitions baked in. But additionally, the very best episodes featured one thing you had by no means seen earlier than in your life, and it was thrilling to observe Donald and his writers’ room subvert the expectations of TV. In the meantime, Bando Stone and the New World is a well-recognized slog, and the swings really feel algorithmic reasonably than experimental.
