VOTD: Childish Gambino - “This Is America”
On June 11th, 2018, Donald Glover made a surprise appearance for a high school audience at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. There, he performed his groundbreaking single, “This Is America,” as his musical alter-ego, Childish Gambino. As Chance The Rapper stepped aside and the opening choral riff started, the student audience flocked to the stage from their seats, screaming in disbelief. Then, as the song’s intro sequence came to an end and anticipation mounted, the students chanted in unison:
“This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Look what I’m whippin’ now”
Childish Gambino performs “This Is America” @OpenMikeChicago
Students were hysterically dancing to music that was thought to symbolize distracting oneself from the horrors of today’s America; it was a striking scene for many who saw the music video as the next socially conscious beacon of hip-hop. Over a month later, Glover’s music video has taken on a life of its own, been transformed into hilarious internet memes, and been endlessly examined in the depths of Twitter and Reddit. Internet denizens quickly picked up on several of the video’s details, from Glover’s choice of Confederate Army uniform pants, to the poses and facial expressions emulating Thomas D. Rice’s Jim Crow, to the overt reference to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston.
For many viewers, the video deals with the realities of gun culture as its most jarring moments are punctuated by gunshots. For others, it deals with materialism and fame as many lyrics relate to money, and bills can be seen flying through the air at various points. However, Glover himself has remained mum about any deeper meanings in the song or video. In an E! Live interview at the 2018 Met Gala, he said only, “I just wanted to make, you know, a good song…something that people can play on 4th of July.”
For someone who instills as much nuance into his crafts as Donald Glover, it is easy to see that this statement actually contains multitudes. The video was lauded for requiring multiple watch-throughs, each time focusing on a different detail. It functions more as a piece of art than a hit track, sparking discussion among people from all walks of life, where no interpretation is truly wrong.
In the end, though, the prevailing reaction to the song, while inextricably linked to its music video, will be the thundering, deafening roars of crowds across the country, because the song and accompanying video were made painstakingly and thoughtfully, and are just good. The video is well-choreographed by Sherrie Silver to glue together the long, seamless, steadicam shots by the director of FX’s Atlanta, Hiro Murai. The song itself features heavy influences of trap music, and a dark and gritty bass that shoots straight through to the listener’s core.
Donald Glover took a different approach from some of his socially conscious peer emcees when shaping the tone of “This Is America.” Whereas Kendrick Lamar’s “Blacker the Berry” or Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up” show the black experience in a more explicitly conflicted light, “This Is America” boasts great pride and exuberance in its lyrics (“Look how I’m livin’ now, police be trippin’ now”) and dance moves. In so doing, it dethroned Drake from the Billboard Top 100 in spite of all of its more unpleasant undertones. “This Is America” is not predominantly about decrying fame and media for ignoring the horrors of gun violence and racism, it is about black culture thriving, though battered by existential crisis.
Donald Glover’s gawky pose here is a reference to Jim Crow. (source)
“This Is America” was released the same week as the season finale of Atlanta, written and produced by Donald Glover, and directed largely by Hiro Murai. Murai and Glover have collaborated on Atlanta since the show’s premiere in 2016, and over that time, melded their respective crafts to create a shared vision. It is through the lens of Atlanta that we can begin to understand Murai and Glover’s combined storytelling technique.
