How Because the Internet is a Millennial Masterpiece.

2013 was a loaded year for rap music. It brought us Drake’s Nothing was the Same, Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap, A$AP Rocky’s Long.Live.A$AP, and Kanye West’s worst album.

In addition to these classics (as well as Yeezus), was Childish Gambino’s sophomore album Because The Internet, one of the most in depth releases seen in recent history. It came complete with a 75 page screenplay, a short film on YouTube, and a litany of cryptic tweets hinting at the true meanings of the 16 track experience. For a lengthy period of time, fans and listeners speculated on the true meaning of this deep and complex production, and I too have spent many hours listening and analyzing in order to come to a conclusion as to what exactly is trying to be conveyed in this dense auditory experience.

Is it a self-criticism of Donald Glover via his own created character “The Boy?”

Is it Gambino saying that his own mental state keeps him from entering into meaningful relationships?

Is it just another Hip-Hop album that was taken too seriously?

Not quite.

From all of my analysis and obsessive combing through of the lyrics, it seems to me that Because the Internet’s meaning is right in the title. It is a concept album, about the worst and best parts of living in the Internet age, about the internet itself.

Now it may sound completely outrageous that one album could offer an in-depth explanation of such a wide ranging and practically endless topic, but when you look at the track-list, it seems a little more clear. Start with the first track after the intro, I. Crawl. The lyrics and beat conveys a robust, boastful attitude chocked full of drug references, threats, and nods to females, all staples of the stereotypical “Rap Twitter” culture. While you may say that this is just the typical topics that mainstream Hip-Hop usually talks about, in context with this album, it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the topics covered. I. Crawl, is the true start of the first three “segments” I have split the album into. The first, which I have titled “Shallow”, stretches from the first track “Library” to the fifth “The Worst Guys”. This part of the album is solely reflective of the narcissistic, care free personas that are prevalent on social media. Explaining how some people present a certain way in order to compensate for a various number of mental issues such as low self-esteem, depression, or neglect from family or friends. Obviously not everyone who is presenting themselves positively is masking some sort of deep rooted issue, but for this example that is the sort of person we are talking about because it fits better with the album narrative and also is a large segment of the internet. In this segment Gambino’s character seems to just be indulging in normal internet behaviour, but as we will see further down the track-list, it is more likely that this is a facade, seen through an excerpt from “II. Worldstar”, a way to recieve adoration from random strangers to fill whatever void is present.

nobody think about it, worst case
Best case, we the front page, 10K on the first day
Yeah, mothafucka, take your phone out
To record this, ain’t nobody can ignore this
I’m more or less a moral-less individual
Making movies with criminals, tryin’ to get them residuals

No matter what he has to do, even working with people who he admits are criminals, he will be noticed.

The second segment of the album, which will go by the name “Her” features all tracks from “II. Shadows” until “Playing Around Before the Party Starts”. In this segment, Gambino realizes that there is another way that he can fill whatever void he is trying to cover. That is through relations with women. But the girl he wants will not answer his emails as seen in the song “ II. Shadows”,the song as a whole is basically Gambino begging to a woman whom we know nothing about, fantasizing about a relationship that does not yet exist. This song is pretty much the anthem for anyone who has ever been denied in the DM’s

(something I have ZERO experience with, of course.)

Following this song just two tracks after is the misunderstood “V. 3005". In this song, ‘Bino has secured the girl, and for most this seems like a love song where Gambino professes all that he would do for his female companion. I don’t even have to explain this one, take it from the man himself:

Everybody’s like, ‘It’s a love song,’ it’s kind of an existential thing. I’m just really scared of being alone.

Says it all really, more compensation, more masking, just like how couples online will portray a healthy relationship on Twitter or Instagram even though there may be deep rooted issues hidden away. “Playing Around Before the Party Starts” is just an instrumental of a lonely piano in what seems to be an empty room. Now at face value there is nothing here, but metaphorically it stands as something more. This song marks the end of the masking phases of the album. As Gambino sits alone at his piano prior to the beginning of the party described in the next track, he realizes his real loneliness and isolation, that the people on the internet who have raised him to his current status aren’t his real friends or supporters. No one is really there for him, and all of his friends, for lack of a better word, are virtual.

The second to last segment is titled “Alone”. This part of the album stretches from “The Party”, until “Zealots of Stockholm (Free Information)”. In this section, Gambino explores his new found realization of his own loneliness. Nobody Gambino has invested in actually has his back, and he begins to believe that he is the one who has a problem. In an era where everyone is always connected, feeling alone is even more of a difficult task to accomplish. The pleas for help and companionship increase and become more desperate until they climax on “ II. No Exit”, where Gambino is literally pleading for his last few followers (notice the word “followers” as opposed to “friends”) to not leave him behind in spite of his many missteps and perceived faults:

I’m a murderer, what does that change?

This whole section to me seems like a way for Gambino to try and relate to his listeners inherent self-confidence issues and sensitivity. He himself has felt this sort of pressure, which led him to basically wiping his presence off the internet two years ago, seemingly due to the pressure and scrutiny he was placed under constantly. His Twitter, Facebook, and even Website were all wiped clean without explanation. Later on it was revealed that this was caused by Gambino’s deteriorating mental state, as he stumbled through bouts with suicidal thoughts and depression. Finally, during the last song of the section, the brilliant “II.Zealots Of Stockholm”, he breaks. The chaotic instrumental which opens the track is representative of his mind’s assault on itself, which then subsides for a magnificent final verse, delivered from a calmer, more subdued perspective of a man who has given up. Gambino croons about just how meaningless one single life is, with lines pertaining to ways which people can easily kill and forget about him ever existing. In another parallel to internet culture, Gambino brings up a point about just how trivial life and death can seem online. Whether it be through news sites or social media, we as a culture are exposed to so many senseless and needless deaths we cannot truly process all of the grief we should feel. Therefore becoming desensitized to even the thought of death itself.

One of his brief respites from his pain was an intimate relationship with singer Jhene Aiko, which leads perfectly into the final segment of the album, which I have titled “Realization”, which runs from “III. Urn”, until the final track, the haunting “III. Life: the Biggest Troll”. This segment shows Gambino finally at some sort of contorted peace, knowing that he will never be happy in his life, and showing his apathy take over his psyche until he becomes completely numb. The only thing that can change his demeanor is his relationship with the aforementioned Ms. Aiko. This sentiment is represented in the album’s sequence by the song “I. Pink Toes”, an out of place love song amidst the wasteland of self-doubt and sadness, representing how she can make him forget his pains. However, even this song has a negative connotation, because, as some as you may know, Jhene Aiko has since entered into a committed relationship with fellow rapper Big Sean, one that has been paraded as a prototypical “Goals” relationship on Twitter, Instagram and the like, further shoving the sad reality in Gambino’s face:

The only thing that could possibly bring him joy in his suffering left him. Ouch.

After this, there is another contemplation of the consequences of death in the song “II. Earth: The Oldest Computer”, a track which uses the guise of an apocalyptic situation to further explain the feelings of one contemplating suicide and the final acts that could be performed before the act is taken. Finally, there is the just harrowing experience that is “III. Life: the Biggest Troll”. Now this track could be analyzed on its own for hours upon hours, but he gist is this: Gambino has realized that life is just a cruel unforgiving game which we are forced to play regardless of our willingness. Every happy moment is countered by countless ones that are the polar opposite, no one will ever escape unharmed or unaffected. He compares life to an internet troll, constantly taunting you with allusions of happiness, only to take it all away for its own twisted amusement. He decries how someday his followers will grow to reject him as a leader and details his close brushes with suicide that can never be confirmed as either personal experiences or just twisted storytelling, unfortunately, vivid storytelling such as this is usually not possible without some sort of prior background knowledge.

The last few lines of the album reflect a cold, unforgiving reality that has been portrayed throughout the album,

“Life’s the biggest troll but the joke is on us, yeah the joke’s you showed up.”

Gambino finishes the album by again likening the concept of life itself to an troll, an apt comparison when you think about it in correlation to his past experiences. Things are taken away strictly to spite the individual that is targeted, their accomplishes downplayed, while the failures are amplified and magnified until they consume your every being. Maybe this was why Gambino disappeared from the Internet sphere,

He was tired of being trolled.

The last line explains that in reality, we all fell for the troll the moment we were born, we all begin life blameless, naïve to the trials our own existence will throw at us, we were all given a shot at a long, healthy existence, embedded with dreams we will never realize, only to be met with the cruel fate of death before we could accomplish everything we sought to complete.

In a way, you could say life click baited us all.

JR