Album Review: Because the Internet by Childish Gambino
Clever and full of potential, not even half goes down in trademark Gambino style — but if that’s a good or bad thing is anyone’s guess.
I reviewed Childish Gambino’s Camp in mid-December of last year, commenting on his incredible flow that bounced from one difficult topic to the next faster than the listener could even register. To save you from reading the entire thing, I’ll sum it up quickly — I liked it, even though it got a bit boggy and slow in the details. The backing content itself was enough to set the album apart, but I also hoped that Gambino’s style would have some time to refine itself in later albums. Because the Internet, Childish Gambino’s only other studio album, followed Camp roughly two years later. Unfortunately for Gambino, save for a couple of key tracks, Because the Internet feels like the budding recording artist’s craft took two years worth of steps back instead.
My initial gut impressions of the album, against my more positive hopes, ended up being more or less representative of the entire runtime. Tracks felt overly produced, overly sampled, and overly scattered — while still as lyrically clever as Camp, each individual song felt like it lacked the bite, charm, or even pace of the previous album. Even when the train starts figuratively moving with ‘The Worst Guys’ (no. 5 of the 19-track list mind you), the build-up isn’t paid off. I found myself waiting with bated breath for a spitting verse that never came, and instead collapsed disappointed back into my office chair. This cycle continued repeatedly all throughout the album’s 57-odd minute runtime — almost painfully disjointed, Gambino would spin together a nice jazzy groove only to throw it away with a frustratingly misplaced interlude. I understand that I myself am part of the problem — I’m not a rap or R&B fan, so whatever I do enjoy typically ends up being super commercialized or a pre-existing biased classic. However, that being said, I’ve heard modern rap done exceptionally well in Kendrick Lamar, and the first several tracks of Because the Internet never stand up to the contemporary standard. For Christ’s sake, Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly even managed to own the smoothy jazz vibe that Gambino insists on haphazardly splashing across the clumsy opening.
‘Sweatpants’, the third released single from Because the Internet, represented a beacon of hope as it was the first track (no. 8 of 19 overall) to finally hit the track running. For the first time in my listening, I actually found my head bobbing consistently for more than sporadic 15 second chunks. In the track Gambino deftly addresses his own wealthy upbringing and shits all over his detractors — now this is the real Childish that I remembered and enjoyed from Camp (about time!). Even the following ‘3005’ has the staying power that you’d expect from at least one song on any given album, but the positive qualities essentially end there. The remainder of the album dissolves into a spiral of overwhelming and unnecessary noise, providing so many potential opportunities — such as the interesting rolling pitch-shifted laughter sample in ‘No Exit’ — that just end up feeling purposeless, regardless of Childish Gambino’s production intentions. While late tracks ‘Pink Toes’ and ‘Earth: The Oldest Computer’ felt slightly more conventional and exciting, they were simply too little too late as I had checked out mentally much earlier and was completing the album on principle alone. And to be honest, I think anybody else would as well: you can only handle the intrusively looping “WO-WO-WO-WO-WO” in ‘Flight of the Navigator’ for so long before the rambling existential double-voice signalled your cue to quit paying attention, too.
Verdict: There are literally only two songs worth listening to, and they’ve both been linked above (unfortunately their official videos also contain some tail-end bleeding into other tracks — might want to skip those). I really hope that Donald Glover quit acting in Community for more than…this.
