![]() ![]() His CV is filled with one project more impressive than the next, reiterating his renaissance-man ability to produce impressive work in multiple creative fields. Gambino is at once soulful, melancholic and wildly optimistic, and this latest offering marks a defining moment in Donald Glover’s eclectic chronology of creative work. ![]() Still a hip-hop album, Awaken, My Love is an intensely ambitious creation, coming from an artist who’s at the prime of his discipline. He also touches upon the complicated sadness of being a non-custodial father two of the most lyrically soulful songs are odes to his child: “Baby Boy” and “The Night Me and your Mama Met”.Īlthough Gambino is usually identified and known as a rapper (it’s noteworthy that the closest he seems to come to actually rapping is the spoken word part of “Baby Boy”), this offering is a funky digression. Gambino showcases his penchant for horror with some sinister but enjoyable pieces (the R&B “Terrified”, the clearly Funkadelic-influenced “Boogieman”, not to mention the scary album cover). The funky, psychedelic 70’s-style riffs are present all over the track, and are most masterfully on display in “Me and Your Mama” and “Zombies”. Glover, already blessed with an impressive vocal range, takes it one step further with artful pitch-shifting in more than one track: in “Redbone”, he transforms his voice, taking on on a Prince-like baritone, while in “California”, Gambino’s nasal, auto-tuned verses are spat out with an incredibly whacky, dance-friendly barrage of guitar and maracas.īroadly speaking, the album can be grouped into a few themes. Releasing “Redbone” as the other promotional song was a tactful move, because it couldn’t be more sonically and stylistically different from “Me and Your Mama,” showcasing a different side of the multi-faceted Bino. My initial fears of this being another Kid Cudi, IndiCud-type mishmash of psychedelic rock-rap were dispelled swiftly, and as Gambino shrieked out “Girl you really got a hold on me” and the background gospel bellowed “Let me into you heart,” I realized the new Gambino already had a hold on me. The second half of the song is a euphoric implosion, heavy Hendrix-inspired electric guitar ripping through a sublime gospel chorus, swiftly taking the song from space-themed to rollicking rock and roll with reckless abandon. Immaculately produced, what made it even more exciting was how different it was from anything he’d released before. The first minute itself would catch anyone familiar with Gambino’s work off-guard. “Me and you Mama”, also the first album of the song, starts with a celestial sequence, music box-styled melody layered with smooth, slow vocals and high pitched synths. What stands in its place is far more enigmatic: his third studio album has Gambino as the conductor of his own orchestra, his voice taking multiple different forms, with the whole album coming together as a journey between multiple genres. One thing became certain: the pensive, romantic and almost breezy Bino from the 2013 album Kauai was now tucked away in the distant past. The two singles Donald Glover (singer alias Childish Gambino) released three weeks ahead of the album, “Me and your Mama” and “Redbone,” raised many more questions than they answered.
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