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“Are we going to die?” a child’s voice asks. “Not tonight,” comes the reply. The child is 7-year-old Legend Glover, the son of multi-talented showbiz personality Donald Glover. The answer is his father’s.
This exchange is the first sound we hear. Bandō Stone and the New WorldThe fifth full-length album from Glover’s shape-shifting musical project, Childish Gambino, represents a certain death. Bando stone It was his final album as a farewell, as he called it, in his Gambino “character.” At 40 years old, Atlanta To be a star, you need to be childlike.
Bando stone “It’s more like a lush but unruly garden, overgrown with weeds than grown-up. This is an epic album, a 17-song hour-long adventure that’s also been used as the soundtrack to a musical of the same name. The range of styles and musical influences here is staggering.” Yeezus It’s on display in the rugged electronica of album opener “H3@RT$ W3RE M3NT TO F7¥,” and his flow sounds distinctly Kanye-esque during the verses of “Survive,” a pop-rap classic with smooth harmonies and a rolling bassline. Then suddenly, it sounds like you’re listening to a different artist entirely, whether it’s the breezy, utterly addictive pop jam “Real Love” or the Afrobeat-infused “In the Night,” one of the album’s two singles, featuring Amaarae and Jorja Smith.
Glover has a very special reputation in the music world, and he’s arguably one of the most successful actors to have made the jump to the film world, but Glover’s earlier work has a somewhat complicated legacy. campHis 2011 debut was notorious for its sweaty, raunchy one-liners and many risqué jokes about Asian women, but his sound has changed significantly over the years, and on occasion, he’s proven he can create something original and enduring: his bouncy, uniquely Funkadelic venture, “Redbone.” “Wake up, my love”or the combative, politically charged “This is America,” which spawned one of the most talked-about music videos in recent years.
there is nothing Bando stone The song is impressive enough to supplant either of those tracks as the pinnacle of Glover’s music, but there are plenty of strong cuts, like the mellow, jazz-inflected “No Excuses” and the triumphantly catchy “Running Around (feat. Fousheé),” which shows off an uncanny knack for Sam Fender-esque indie-pop choruses. camp Defenders will also like vestiges of Glover’s penchant for goofier wordplay: “I make billies like an Irishman,” Glover raps on “Talk My Shit,” and “With my son, Bluey We’re both like clips.”
Glover said, Bando stone Looking ahead to his upcoming stadium tour, he said: “I wanted this album to have big, anthemic songs that we could play in big venues and fill the venues.” This is especially evident on tracks like “A Place Where Love Goes” and the truly anthemic pop-rock ballad “Lithonia.” The album’s production is sublime throughout, drawing from a roster of heavyweight technicians including Ludwig Göransson, Max Martin, Steve Lacy and Glover himself. There are also some welcome features from Yate, Flo Milli and his son Legend, who contributes some decent bars on “Can You Feel Me,” a track conceptually reminiscent of Eminem’s “My Dad’s Gone Crazy.”
Bando stonea novel so sprawling and extremist that it will do little to dispel the impression that Glover is self-conscious. ArtistTake, for example, the introspective interview he gave in 2021 in which he acted as the interviewer: “I have an ego as big as Lake Tahoe,” he admitted in “Dadvocate.” But what’s distinctive about Glover is that while he may have grandiose ideas about his artistry, it’s often Atlantaor his best music recordings, live up to that expectation. Bando stone It may be the work of a man high on his own metaphorical supply, but it will probably get you high on it too.