Childish Gambino Album Release
. Within a few months of the release of ’s debut album, Camp, I played the electronic-infused “Heartbeat” on my college radio show in Berkeley, CA.
Sure, this was likely the poppiest song played that day – or week – on the notoriously obscure KALX, but I wasn’t quite expecting the reaction I received from a man calling the DJ hotline, who said something to the effect of “this is the worst fucking song I’ve ever heard on this station.” His voice was reaching a fever pitch; he seemed legitimately angry and offended that I would play such a track. Of the hundreds of sets I played throughout my three-plus years DJing at that college radio station, this was the only time I ever had anyone call in to debate my song selections remotely along these lines. But that man wasn’t alone – Camp was one of the most critically derided releases of 2011. Though we published a glowing A- review of the album on this site, publications like and absolutely trashed Donald Glover’s first major foray into rap, with Pitchfork most famously leading the way with. “The album maintains some of the overweening humor of Donald Glover’s sitcom Community, but Glover’s exaggerated, cartoonish flow and overblown pop-rap production are enough to make Camp one of the most uniquely unlikable rap records of this year (and most others),” reads the review, eventually listing some of the record’s most cringe-worthy one-liners, including “Asian girls everywhere / UCLA,” “You can kiss my ass, Human Centipede,” and “I made the beat and murdered it, Casey Anthony.”. Fast-forwarding to 2018, these overly negative critics are nowhere to be found, and Donald Glover is suddenly one of the most widely admired artists in music today.
Childish Gambino Album Download Free
He’s totally dominated the music news cycle over the past couple of days following the one-two punch of his SNL episode, where he both hosted and performed, and the release of “This Is America”, complete with one of the most viral and capital-I Important music videos in recent memory. Not only has Pitchfork hit a complete 180, giving the song their coveted Best New Track label, but Glover has graduated from music publications; “This Is America” launched a horde of thinkpieces across all media, including overwhelmingly positive articles at,. Glover’s Wu-Tang Name Generated rap alter ego was the butt of seemingly every joke for years, yet he’s now suddenly held in the same critical regard as Chance the Rapper or Radiohead, headlining some of the biggest festivals in the country, and was even named as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2017.
How did that happen? Glover has been in the public eye for a dozen years now, but for the majority of that period, he was seen as a comedian. Beginning with his work with early era YouTube comic wunderkinds Derrick Comedy, he rose to Internet prominence through clips like “” and ““, two videos that, in retrospect, have aged terribly. Moving on to a writing gig at 30 Rock and a starring role in the Dan Harmon-helmed Community, Glover was suddenly in the center of the nerd-comedy universe. His portrayal of the ultra-hyper Troy Barnes earned him the love of the blogosphere as Community became a cult classic.
By the time Community was introducing us to in season three, Glover was gearing up to release his debut full length, Camp, via Glassnote Records. Though he had released a handful of mixtapes over the years preceding, this was the first time the general public was exposed to his music (with the exceptions of “” and “”). With only Glover’s acting to go off of, it made sense that music critics at the time saw Camp as a pseudo-comedy record, honing in on lyrics that played like ill-informed tweets (“I’ve seen it all like I’m John Mayer’s penis hole”). As a result, it was easy to see Childish Gambino as Glover’s side project – a comedic actor first and a musician second – and it probably didn’t help that Glover opened his first Gambino tour with a 90-minute stand-up set. But while the critics and hip-hop heads were dismissing Childish Gambino almost entirely, he started to play bigger and bigger rooms, including the festival circuit in 2012, where he performed daytime sets at Coachella and Bonnaroo among others. By the time Because the Internet dropped in December 2013, there was quite a lot of hype surrounding the release, especially in the aftermath of his worrying on why he left Community and his public troubles with Glassnote, who wanted to push the release back to 2014 against Glover’s wishes. But even with so much publicity going into his sophomore full length, critics still weren’t all taking him seriously, with the most critical review – an “F” from Philip Cosores – coming from this very.
“The truth is, with regards to Childish Gambino, most people have already made up their minds regarding Donald Glover, in the sense that they know whether their opinion of Glover and his over-arching celebrity matter when listening to Childish Gambino,” Cosores wrote, inferring that by 2013, Gambino was either an icon or a farce with little middle ground between the two. He continued, “So, it’s no surprise that Because the Internet arrives fists raised, ready for the challenge of rap purists who wouldn’t accept Gambino under any condition (his opinion) But, if you are coming into an album like this, Gambino gives you about as much benefit of the doubt as the rap world gives his music.” That uneasy feeling critics had going into this album was perhaps best summed up by Eric Sundermann at Noisey. In his 2013 “You Don’t Like Childish Gambino’s Because the Internet Because of the Internet”, he explains, “When the record did indeed arrive, I was wary of listening because, holy shit, what if I actually like this Childish Gambino record?
Polymath Donald Glover is a comedian, actor, writer, and under the name Childish Gambino, a creator of off-kilter rap and psychedelic soul. Jul 16, 2018 - While fans wait for Gambino's next album, the 'This Is America' rapper recently released a two-song project featuring the songs 'Summertime.