Friday , March 29 2024
Searching for new music leads me to listen to... an actor? Yes. Yes, it does.

Checking out the Childish Gambino

Even though work has been insanely busy enough to keep me from writing as frequently as I might like, it certainly hasn’t slowed down the influx of new music that I’ve been listening to over that time.

With no other way to get to them without simply getting to them, the piece of music I’ve been listening to the most over the past week is surprising, at least to me. The reason it’s something I wouldn’t have expected is that it is someone I didn’t know was even doing music. The only way I knew this person was as an actor: Donald Glover, one of the actors I’ve seen on the NBC comedy, Community.

As a musician Glover goes by a few pseudonyms but the one I’m most familiar with (granted, how familiar can I really be as I’ve only been listening to his music for about a week?) is Childish Gambino. Turns out he came upon this name by use of online Wu Tang Clan name generator. I wonder what my own name would be? (Hmm. Turns out my Wu Tang Name is Scratchin’ Killah.)

The release I’ve been listening to so much is his recently released Freaks and Geeks EP. Only five tracks long, it’s an insanely full and solid piece of music. In fact, I enjoyed it so much it led me to go out and find the one full-length album he’s released under the same name, entitled Cul de Sac.

Freaks and Gesks is filled with the usual braggadocio of hip hop (in five short tracks he must mention his penis or love of sex with women at least 575,485,757 times) but it is also filled with wit and charm, two things that are rare in any musical genre these days.

References to pop culture are delivered with sly word play as is nearly everything on this EP. Glover’s lyrics are smart, funny, crude, nerdy and imminently enjoyable. If this is just a taste of what this guy is capable of, then I am going to go ahead and tell you that I shall be first in line to listen to anything he releases.

By the way, Cul de Sac is solid as well. There are all the things I happen to love about Freaks and Geeks in that album, so I think the only reason I like this little short release more is that it was the way I was first introduced to the artist. Pretty much I have both of them on random/repeat throughout my work day, lately.

Find out more about Donald Glover / Childish Gambino at these places:

http://www.iamdonald.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Glover

And, here is the official video for the title track off of the EP Freaks and Geeks:

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