SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 10: Childish Gambino performs onstage during the 2019 Outside ... [+]
Donald Glover has striven for greatness ever since he invented his Childish Gambino persona, and his astonishing new album, 3.15.20, has been a decade in the making. He staked his claim as a feisty punchline rapper on his 2010 Culdesac mixtape and 2011 debut studio album Camp, the latter of which earned a notorious 1.6 and a scorched-earth review from Pitchfork. Glover graduated to A-list pop crossovers and multi-song suites on 2013’s Because the Internet, a sprawling concept album about the agony and ecstasy of being Extremely Online. The 2014 mixtape/EP combo STN MTN/Kauai showed his propensity for the gritty Southern hip-hop of his Atlanta hometown and his burgeoning interest in alternative R&B, as evidenced by breakout single “Sober.” In 2016, Glover made his biggest stylistic departure yet, channeling the psychedelic funk of George Clinton and Prince on "Awaken, My Love!", which granted him his biggest hit to date with the impossibly catchy “Redbone.” But “Redbone” merely foreshadowed the stratospheric success of 2018’s “This Is America,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelled Glover from a musical auteur to a prophet who distilled the fury and pain of millions into one blistering, four-minute song.
For nearly two years, fans have eagerly awaited a full-length follow-up to “This Is America.” Glover whet their appetites with the two-song Summer Pack in July of 2018, but it was hardly the zeitgeist-capturing work of which he had proven capable. With each subsequent Childish Gambino album, Glover made vast strides, but there remained a nagging sense that he had not yet reached his final form.
That sense is gone now. With 3.15.20, Glover has delivered his masterpiece, a kaleidoscopic blend of rap, pop, funk, soul and R&B that serves as a culmination of every phase of his career. The multi-hyphenate artist improves every element of his performance: His rapping is tighter, his band is looser, his singing is more euphoric, and his message is more concise. 3.15.20 pulls from every facet of Glover’s sonic palette to create something new and daring, cementing itself as the definitive Childish Gambino album.
Glover originally released 3.15.20 last Sunday as a continuous stream on his website and removed it the same day. According to Genius, he replaced (almost) all of the song titles with timestamps to encourage listening to the album in its entirety. Some of these songs are familiar: “Algorhythm” has been a live staple for years, and its thumping bass line and nonstop hooks suggest several rounds of edits. “Feels Like Summer” resurfaces as “42.26,” making for a refreshing chaser after the incendiary “32.22” (which sounds like a spiritual successor to Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead”) and the ominously upbeat, country-inflected “35.31.” These preexisting songs represent some of 3.15.20’s more accessible cuts, along with the readymade R&B/pop smash “Time,” on which Glover and Ariana Grande bring out the best in each other.
It’s on the album’s more sprawling tracks, however, that Glover reveals the breadth of his songwriting. He weaves a hilarious tale of a tryst gone awry thanks to some potent psychedelics on “12.38,” contorting his syllables atop a slinky funk beat that sounds more relaxed than anything off "Awaken, My Love!" Fellow ATLien 21 Savage shows up for a feature that is equal parts funny (“I'm on a private jet eatin' Popeyes chicken / I be flexin' like I'm eatin' Popeye's spinach”) and insightful (“The police keep harassin' 'cause I'm rich and I'm black / They mad 'cause I made myself a boss without crack”), and the song’s extended fadeout makes room for some bonkers production quirks. The eight-minute “24.19” starts off like a pitched-down “Redbone” before piling on extra vocal layers and climaxing in a fiery slow jam. Glover’s knack for cultural references remains intact (“You’re watching Parks and Rec alone, you sweet thing”), but he performs with a disarming tenderness, crooning to an anonymous lover, “I just wanna say thank you, I love you.”
3.15.20 tackles appropriately heady concepts for a Gambino album: identity, self-love, the passage of time, existence itself. But lyrically, Glover trims the fat and delivers some of his simplest and most poignant statements. On the bouncy electro-funk cut “19.10,” he reflects on what it means to be black in a society that seeks to both marginalize and profit off his culture: “To be beautiful is to be hunted / I can't change the truth, I can't get you used to this.” The album’s penultimate track, “47.48,” ends with a conversation between Glover and his son, Legend, in which they both exclaim they love themselves—a moment of levity on an album fraught with existential questions that have no simple answers.
Glover returns to his roots—sort of—on 3.15.20’s final track, “53.49,” showing off his athletic raps and stunning falsetto shrieks. He also reflects on his upbringing in Atlanta, his artistic muses and the loved ones he’s lost, trying to make sense of it all and coming to a heartening conclusion: “There is love in every moment under the sun, boy / I did what I wanted to / Now I just power forward.” Glover sounds light years removed from the wounded, insecure boy he rapped about on Camp’s cinematic closing track, “That Power.” After years of punching up, fighting for legitimacy and shuffling through a myriad of musical identities, Donald Glover finally sounds like he knows exactly what he wants out of Childish Gambino and how to achieve it. If he never revives the moniker again, he’s left listeners with a brilliant swan song.
Like what you see? Follow me on Twitter for more.
