Groovin’ to …
Donald Glover A.K.A. Childish Gambino’s Camp.
I can’t get his music out of my head, even with though he’s overdosing on cursing –which doesn’t bother me that much but as I pass the link along to those a lot younger than me they look at me with skepticism at first and once they hear it puzzlement with all the expletives.
Although they shouldn’t. If you know me then you know then you know I understand creative license and as long as you are creating art for more than just shock value and how shocking can profane words be in the 21st century when you have 3 years using them with verbal dexterity?
But perusing comments and critiques it seems everyone is trying to reach and compare him to people they already know: he wants to be hard like Jay-Z, he’s emo like Ye, he has beats like Lil Wayne.
Yeah, they influenced him, I can hear some of it in his music. But then it also sounds as if Glover has been mining his relatives LPs for the Fifth Dimension, Todd Rundgren and soul singers from the 80s/90s who switch to a falsetto register to convey the urgency of need or despair.
And his lyrics have weight, mining his recent childhood for pain over being unaccepted by blacks and whites for being inauthentically black, although there is the requisite braggadocio about his relationships with women and how great his raps are.
But the flaws are small. Camp is an album for all the young blacks out there who proudly let their nerd flag fly. Maybe now they can wave it higher and in rhythm to a Gambino beat.
