The Meaning of 3005 by Donald Glover: A Full Interpretation
Childish Gambino is one of my favourite artists and in my view, expresses true genius. His psycho-logical music hits at many different levels, with a great example being Sweatpants; a banger with sublime wit, rhyme and ego-soothing lyrics that wouldn’t go amiss at parties — yet really, it’s a song about defensive egotism, showing us how we can keep our insecurities at bay.
In 3005, his creativity expresses itself no differently. The song is taken by some to be about loyalty and sticking by someone in a rather literal fashion, but there is a strong case to be made it is about much more than this.
Here I make the case that 3005 is existential and is about a connection that transcends material life — one that we both know deeply, and secretly yearn for. Here I describe the music video’s evolving meaning, interpret each of its symbols and elements, and then try to put it into a cohesive interpretation.
Firstly, if you haven’t seen the music-video before or for a little while, it may be good to (re)experience it before we go into its treasure chest of meaning:
The 3005 Music Video: What happens
*Although there’s many interesting details and bits of interpretation, feel free to skip to the interpretation of the key elements if you feel you’ve taken the video in*
Verse 1
Beginning with a comforting retro aesthetic, the camera lens focuses onto a Ferris wheel and drops to a dejected Gambino sitting next to a teddy bear.
Gambino begins lyricising his troubles in an elegant soliloquy; until recently he was “all good” but has begun questioning his friendships and lifestyle; he no longer feels fulfilled and connected by the life he was leading. Throughout this, the wheel turns and we also realise the teddy is animated.
There is an air of naivete as he queries his decadent lifestyle and sense of disconnection. He’s now seeing he’s dependent on others and uses his assets to maintain his materialistic connections: “my god you pay for your friends? I’ll take that as a compliment — got a house full of homies, why I feel so the opposite?”
His hedonistic lifestyle has also led to him feeling less sharp and competent: “got so high off volcanos, now the flow is so lava”. He also alludes to petty arguments and his sense of distrust: “girl why is you lying, girl why you Mufasa?”.
In all, he’s telling us he’s feeling lonely, mistrustful and hurt by his realisation there is a lack of meaning in his life. His prior expectations and beliefs have been upset. At the close of the verse, he admits he’s scared of the future, but to an unknown person, or maybe himself, he assures: “till 3005, I got your back, we can do this, hol’ up.” All the while, the wheel turns.
Note: it is at this point the idea of sticking by someone is most relevant, as it is said directly by Gambino here. However, in the interpretation we’ll see how the next verse and the other-voice in the chorus changes the meaning of this in hind-sight.
Chorus 1
At the dawn of the chorus, a more unearthly voice begins to speak, fondly assuring that it will be by Donald’s side till 3005, asking him to “hol’ up”. This is repeated by Donald whilst he’s in a kind of dejected trance, and at this point, alarms also start going off.
The beat drops, and for the first time the camera pans out and shows us the wider scene. There is a ‘Fun Zone’; an arcade and game room, before the camera performs a panning rotation that gives glimpses of the Ferris wheel’s structure. Leading us into verse two.
Verse 2
In verse 2, Gambino and the teddy are transformed, their juxtaposition seems purposeful; Gambino on the one hand, is alert and less downbeat, but is clearly wary and perhaps cynical. The teddy bear is a little torn and at first breathes intensely, as if it were recovering from a panic attack.
The environment has also changed; behind them, the couple on the pod have aged, yet their teddy is intact. Some of the other pods are now empty too. The ambient light is not as luminescent as it was in the first verse.
Gambino measuredly delivers the verse. He’s wiser now and more empathetic: “I used to care what people thought, but now I care more”. He knows people haven’t got it figured out, and so there is no set path [contrary to society] which means for better or worse he’ll need to make his own.
He’s digging closer into the root-causes of his and others’ suffering and the various paths that life can take: “so insecure nobody’s perfect, we spend it, with no shame, we blow that, like Coltrane, we in here, like Rogaine (maintaining, seeking), or leave it, like Cobain.”
Gambino’s perspective and thinking are also enlarged; echoing the likes of Buddhist, Hindu and Stoic philosophy, he reflects on the impermanency of life: “we all just ticking time bombs”.
Despite his newfound magnanimity and perspective, he is still troubled by the authenticity of his relations: “no matter where all of my friends go… all of them people my kinfolk, at least I think so”. When he says “They’re not here”, the teddy bear deeply closes its eyes, as if to let out a painful sigh. The desire for connection is still there.
Regardless, he’s laughing “whatever happens” and can now follow some newfound intuitive hunches in the face of deceptions: “assassins are stabbed in the back of my cabin, labrador (a breed attuned to emotions) yapping”. Despite the concerns, he’s glad this change happened: “I mean it”.
Ahead of the 2nd chorus he addresses the object of his connection, but this time he is seeking assurance: “between us, I think there’s something special, and if I lose my mental, just hold my hand even if you don’t understand, hold up”. Some lights switch off just before chorus 2.
Chorus 2
The chorus voice repeats its message, with Donald repeating its request to “hol’ up” in a more alert way, but with tint of sorrow in his eye.
The camera pans sideways, revealing a great fire and a wider cityscape, before rotating back into the Ferris wheel; its lights are now going out, nobody is on it, the park has also switched off. For many, this sequence resonates and creates powerful, ineffable vibes. We see the fire one last time before the aftermath scenes.
Aftermath
The camera arrives back at the seat, the teddy bear’s song is playing, but itself is totally tarnished. In conclusion to this outstanding sequence, it whimsically remarks “we did it, yay! Nigga you so thirsty”
Finally, an eerie scene appears with a stranger; a sort of shadow man (perhaps Gambino), standing still in the middle of the dim, flickery street lighting. The overlaying track is ‘Zealots of Stockholm’, another song from Gambino’s album ‘Because the Internet; which was released with a screenplay and a prelude film, called ‘clapping for the wrong reasons’.
From the same view where we last see the fire in chorus 2, the fire is now gone at this point, only the shadow man and eerie streets remain.
Interpreting the Symbols of 3005:
The Teddy
As commentators suggest, the teddy is reflective of childhood, specifically childhood beliefs and attachments. Its role is symbolically crucial; as Childish Gambino wisens up, the teddy gets increasingly damaged. When the first chorus ends, the couple behind ages but their teddy remains intact. Gambino is symbolically linking change and letting go with retaining one’s vitality. The shredding of the teddy is an emotional process because it means identifying and de-attaching from prior ideals and beliefs, this is often painful and is why the teddy appears to be recovering from a panic attack after the first chorus.
On another point, is the teddy being damaged, or seen for what it is? Childhood conditioning is necessary but is also by no means a purely benign process. Whether we’re looking at our childhood as idyllic, or long for an idyllic childhood that we feel we did not get, either way it is illusive and serves as a call for seeing reality with more nuance and compassion.
Eventually, the teddy is abandoned in the darkness (uncertainty) when Gambino departs from the Ferris wheel.
The Ferris Wheel
The Ferris wheel represents opposites, loops, and time, which together bears a semblance to the Buddhist and Hindu concept of Saṃsāra.
Saṃsāra refers to our living universe of opposing qualities, expressing themselves as content (as seen in personalities and in objects for example). A universe of continual creation and destruction. In material incarnations in Saṃsāra, we easily create attachments to one opposite over another, and so we also attach to the resultant pleasure and suffering cycles that occur across time (the turning of the wheel).
Gambino is perplexed and suffers most in the first verse, less so in the second (as he de-attaches more from his childhood-created fears and expectations), and finally, he leaves the wheel and his childhood attachments completely, which could represent a move to end his suffering due to seeing through these cycles.
During chorus 2, the lights on the Ferris wheel go out, and the meaning of this is inferred in the light and darkness theme.
The Voice/Chorus
The voice is Gambino’s soul speaking to him. In a song about feeling estranged from his external connections, and just as the meaning of Gambino’s life is being lost, the soul awakens to assure him there is an unconditional, pure connection that he can depend on. It gives him the new emotional and logical understandings that are referred to in his lyrics.
How can we justify this? Here are some ideas:
- It says ’til 3005’, we can take that metaphorically as a super-long time away, but it’s purposeful; combining 3 and 5 together, you get an 8, akin to an infinity symbol. So more literally, it says ‘until infinity’, which corresponds to ancient and spiritual models of the universe; the soul is also part of Saṃsāra and will not exist forever, it too will reconcile with God/Source, the infinitude. Ironically, this lyric is not an exaggeration!
- After the chorus’s beat drops, there’s a subtle echoing voice, listening closely, it seems to be saying one of two things: 1) ‘but you’re in a body’ or 2) ‘but you ain’t everybody’. Update: a secret version of Gambino’s track makes it clearer to hear, it turns out it is indeed 1).
- In Gambino’s follow up album, ‘Awaken, My Love’ he explores our relationship to the soul and other existential topics more directly. Like here.
At its core, 3005 seems to be a song about re-connecting to our own essence amidst the impermanence and volatility of waking life.
Light and Darkness
The light represents our certainty of our beliefs (which can be closer or further from the truth) At the beginning, the park is at its most illuminated. The light drops ahead of chorus 2 and then near-completely in the aftermath, the city (structures and maps of belief, like concepts) is quite dark by the time we see the fire.
This happens as Gambino faces torment at his expectations from reality not being met, which leads to him changing and acknowledging the superficiality, uncertainty and impermanence of reality, which darkens everything around him.
Notice that Gambino’s state does not worsen in ‘light’ (bu-dun-tss) of these changes. He becomes more alert, wise and less glum. By the end, he ventures willingly into the darkness and his not knowing. 3005 of course, does not represent Gambino’s inner world fully; songs like Sober gives us a more joyful angle of his awakening to life. Though again, it is bittersweet.
To be clear, the light is not ‘truth’, it denotes certainty of belief. The fire in some ways, points to the truth as it sets light to the buildings (a scape of conceptual beliefs), which inspires Gambino to finally leave the Ferris wheel and venture into the darkness (uncertainty, not knowing).
The Fire
In accordance with the light vs dark theme, the raging fire represents a new and chaotic kind of belief that we can access (a deep belief of unknowing, which itself also has great truth to it.). It is a form of belief and truth that is divorced from content and knowledge captured inside of existing fixed and rigid beliefs; as impermanence drives reality.
The fire, in setting light to the established belief structures (the city), is perhaps a symbol of newer truths emerging. To make way for truth, older falsities require deconstructing to make ways for deeper layers of relative truth, and we broadly see this in human history.
The fire deconstructs the now dimmed city, whilst illumining a new source of truth via its dynamic, formative light. This symbolically, aligns with Gambino’s insights into the impermanence and uncertainty of life in the second verse, which precedes our sight of the fire.
The fire is the active expression of the belief in the truth of uncertainty that Gambino could be striving towards after the second chorus; he leaves behind the Ferris wheel and teddy, and ventures out into the darkened city (a map of beliefs that he no longer takes to be the truth). The relative truths of the city are not lost and suddenly irrelevant, they remain, it is just the belief in their absoluteness that has changed.
In the aftermath scene if you look carefully, the fire (which was there at that angle in the chorus) is absent. While its light from its active expression is useful to catch our attention and belief in the truth of impermanence via destruction, that still is a belief, and even that belief must be relinquished, and this is why this disappears. The fire happens to prompt Gambino to leave the Ferris wheel (Saṃsāra) and live in eternal uncertainty.
So paradoxically, its the detaching from all mental beliefs, the mind, and embracing not knowing, that establishes the ‘all knowing’ truth of enlightenment. It means detaching from Saṃsāra, and that’s what Gambino does by leaving. Explaining enlightenment in words is impossible, and I do not know it. For me the focus here is on the self, the soul, and their journey to 3005, which is what 3005 explores in many ways. Infinity can be pointed to, but not articulated.
The Game Room — ‘the fun zone’
The game room is revealed in the first chorus and is a symbol of the nature of the universe; it’s full of games to play! Interpreting this is very tacit, but here’s some ideas:
- Some beings may wish to take a break from riding the Ferris Wheel (reincarnation within Saṃsāra), but there are other activities to play aside from the Ferris wheel. Some may be in the room, or resting just outside of both the room and wheel, as seen in the video.
- In chorus 2, the lights of the game room are switched off, which is consistent with the idea of abandoning belief and attaining enlightenment — the ‘one taste’ nature of it, does not allow for attaching to games anymore, but they can still be played.
Why do we play the games? Because the difficulty gives meaning, and fun. Life with no difficulty loses meaning and sustainable satisfaction. Have you ever played the Sims and cheat-coded lots of money and stuff? It won’t be long till the fun stops!
Aftermath Scene and the Shadow Man
The Teddy remains despite being tarnished, and cheerily says “we did it, yay! Nigga you so thirsty”. By saying we did it, the meaning reflects on the ‘attaining’ of enlightenment; it’s odd that having been so destroyed and abandoned, it says that so cheerily! This may be a tacit reassurance, the soul/inner child understands enlightenment is an ultimate destiny.
Perhaps the thirsty part is something of a reflection of our ‘thirsty’, striving, nature, which drives Saṃsāra through attachments to opposites. As such, it could be a final invitation to examine our own thirstiness.
The shadow man is perhaps a symbol of an indefinable person that is one with the darkness/uncertainty around him. To those of us (me included) who are attached to knowing, this presents a rather eerie figure!
Conclusion
So there you have it, that’s my interpretation. What is yours? Do leave a comment. 3005 is incredibly multifaceted and can be seen from many angles; Glover’s narrative here is truly something to appreciate in any case, and as a minimum explores what real connection is, and in the face of impermanence and change, what we can truly rely on. For me, it is the soul and spirit, which caused me to share this view. Thank you for reading :)
