The Racial Politics of Childish Gambino
Donald Glover may be just the voice hip-hop needs
As brilliant as hip-hop can be when it comes to weaving social themes into music, it has often felt like a disappointment. Not since the late 1980s and early 1990s has hip-hop consistently evoked themes of justice, inequality, race and integration (or lack thereof).
The big guns like Jay-Z and Kanye West have produced flickers of truly meaningful songs. But it would be hard to argue that flash, ego and misogyny don’t overshadow social commentary.
Not that they’re obligated to speak truth to power, but it might have been nice.
Beyond the music, when it comes to a spokesman, hip-hop has had similar problems. Kanye saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was sort of great, but his recent ranting and raving has bordered somewhere in between self-centered and incomprehensible. Then you have Jay-Z claiming that just his presence is a charity.
Meanwhile, there is a glut of hedonism from the likes of Rick Ross, Drake, Wiz Khalifa and their many imitators. Plus the half-cocked conspiracy theories of a Lupe Fiasco.
It hasn’t been since Tupac and early Ice Cube that we’ve had major stars offering really smart, provocative commentary about what’s going on in America today. Before that, we of course had Public Enemy and KRS-One, but that feels like ancient history even to me, and I’m in my mid-thirties.
That’s why Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino (a moniker created by an online Wu-Tang name generator), has an opportunity to take on a unique role in the culture. The writer, actor and rapper has things to say—things you probably won’t hear from anyone else. He’s also a beloved figure in a variety of different circles: comedy writers (he’s a sketch and standup artist); fans of the show Community (where he starred for five years); music (his last album Because the Internet reached No. 1 on the Billboard rap charts) and online (where he has 1.6 million followers on Twitter).
In other words, he can speak to people—black, white, artistic and everything in between.
All these factors make his racial politics that much more interesting.
On Race and Poetry
“I wanna be so big, and so white,” Glover said on Twitter recently as part of an extended poem. What did he mean by such a statement?
“White people are a blank slate… we are not,” he told New York City morning show The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1. “As a black person I constantly have to know what people are assuming about me.
“The truth is… we have 400 years of data saying they’re not going to let us in.”
As it relates to hip-hop, Glover goes on, “Hip-hop is changing, it’s popular music. Hip-hop is not doing the thing it was originally set up to do… to help young blacks get money.”
Instead, the new artists getting money right now are white, using black culture as their template—Iggy Azalea, G-Eazy. Those from Chicago’s drill movement, on the other hand, are mostly left behind.
“Right now that blueprint is taken,” Glover told the Breakfast Club.
We’re Not Good
As the Twitter poem goes on, it becomes more poignant and its meaning becomes more clear:
“I hope I’m so big and white i can go to Clippers games and it not be a statement…
“Hope I’m so big and white my cousin wasn’t shot and stabbed twice in the neck twice last month…
“What if everyone starts to get big and white? What if this works for everyone and everyone can experience this whiteness and this bigness?”
Glover is essentially trading the word “white” for the word “equal.” Or for the word “free.” He’s making what’s really a daring statement in the age of Obama and an increasing minority population in the U.S. He seems to be saying that being white is still a major advantage.
He doesn’t want to be white by color or culture, mind you, but by experience.
Because the flipside of having a black president is Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And Glover himself says he has been bullied by police three times while out on tour, as a celebrity rapper/actor whose fashion choices sometimes include wearing an old man’s sweater. Not exactly a threatening pressence.
“He kind of, in a weird way, he made it harder,” Glover said of Obama on the radio show. “Because now everyone’s like, see, we’re good.”
Glover’s message: we most decidedly are not good.
Dad lost his job / Mama worked at Mrs. Winner’s / Gun pulled in her face / She still made dinner / Donald watch the meter / So they don’t turn the lights off / Workin’ two jobs so I can get into that white school / And I hate it there / They all make fun of my clothes and wanna touch my hair.” — Childish Gambino
The Outsider Becomes The Insider
Growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia—home to a Ku Klux Klan revival in 1915 and mentioned in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—Glover has been an outsider since childhood.
He’s continued that trend, breaking into the mostly white world of network situation comedy, getting a job from Tina Fey when he was a college student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Thanks in part to a viral campaign on Twitter, he’s going to be the first black Spider-man on the Disney XD series Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors.
Now he’s working to gain legitimacy as an MC in the ultra-competitive hip-hop game. It’s a genre that’s long been obsessed with authenticity and street credibility. While he’s not gangsta or street by any stretch, he’s establishing a different kind of credibility by essentially being himself.
Is he one of the best MCs? At a concert in Sydney, Australia, he put himself up there with Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q. I don’t know if he’s on that level, but off the mic, he’s at least saying something meaningful.
And he’s apparently not afraid to speak his mind. Asked if he was gay during the Breakfast Club interview, he at first said no, but qualified: “Maybe I am… I don’t know. I never tried.”
How many rappers would be brave enough to even say something like that?
His albums, mixtapes and EPs, along with their themes, characters and even companion screenplays, seem like not just an expression of his ability as a rapper, but his boundless creativity. He’s released two studio albums, seven mixtapes and a recent EP, Kauai.
Both his most recent albums, Because the Internet and Kauai, made it to No. 1 on the U.S. rap charts. His debut album, Camp, was No. 2. For those questioning whether this actor/comedy writer can become a legit rapper, his track record is impressive. Plus, he’s been developing a rep for dropping some ruthless freestyles during radio appearances lately. He’s also working on a book and a new show for FX about growing up in Atlanta.
Glover has his hand in a lot of different worlds, and while he entered each of those worlds as an outsider, he’s also earned acceptance in each of them. Some people know him from Community, others from Twitter and still more from his music. Three different audiences, three different avenues for unique expression.
It’s certainly possible he’s spread too thin. Or that his talents won’t continue to develop enough for him to make an impact. But the exciting part of his career is that now that he’s worked his way inside of these various industries, he’s able to be a much-needed voice for those on the outside.
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Follow Stefan Schumacher on Twitter @DeathStripMall.
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