Interview

An interview with Mr. Talented, Donald Glover.

Donald Glover, a very talented and successful individual, known for acting, directing, and among other things, it can be argued that his most notable 'career' would be music. Going by the stage name, Childish Gambino, Glover has made a name for himself in the music business, innovating the way an artist presents himself as his songs and albums vary in terms of genres and winning a Grammy Award for "Best Traditional R&B Performance" for the song "Redbone" and being nominated for "Album of the Year" for "Awaken, My Love!". We were lucky enough to get him to interview with us about his music and his intentions of it as an artist.

Donald, given the amount of attention, is being ensued into your latest single "This is America" and the success you have obtained from "Awaken, My Love!", you would expect us to ask you about these recent musical achievements. But because of recent interviews, it seems that you refuse to explain "This is America" and your album as "that's not for you[me] to say". So, we wanted to delve into your past songs and albums. 
Oh, we're going back to the past? As the saying goes, "old, but gold".

Yes. Your song "Outside" from your album "Camp", what would you say the overall theme of this song would be? 
I think the theme of how black kids live in this pseudo-reality, an illusion, where they confuse "black shit" for "hood shit" is clear from the start since I'm pretty sure I even blatantly say that "hood shit and black shit is super different".

Can you elaborate further on why you wrote and released this song?
I guess you could say that the song is a criticization of how society and the current generation marginalizes black kids and it's to remind these kids just because they're black that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be crack heads.

That's interesting, I can't help but notice then that perhaps the underlying theme in your music is to "stay woke". Wouldn't you agree?
I see what you did there, that's very clever. But I guess, yeah. I know I refused to explain my recent music, but I just think it's worth mentioning how many of my songs are interpreted to be love songs, but in a different interpretation it can be seen as very existential. So, for example, "Redbone". While "Redbone" could be talking about my failure in satisfying my woman, it also could be talking about the systematic oppression in America. You get it? Being "woke" essentially means being socially aware of current events and social trends. So, while I literally say it in "Redbone", I subtly say it in "Outside". But, I'm not denying or confirming anything.

Continuing off of the theme of "staying woke", it has come to our attention that there was a theory that you were referencing Plato's Cave Allegory. Have you heard it? 
Yeah, I have and it is pretty cool to see my fans to be able to come up with this stuff.

Would you care to elaborate on the allegory?
Uh, yeah sure. From my understanding, Plato, the philosopher, envisioned that the world is a dark cave and we were all trapped as prisoners. It would go deeper and say that their only source of entertainment was a puppet like they got into it. And then suddenly, one prisoner escapes and they venture out of the cave to see the real world and it was bizarre like there's something even better than the puppet. So the free prisoner tries to tell the others about this, but since he's introducing this surreal, unimaginable, idea and concept to them, they think he's crazy or something. He keeps trying to tell them, sure a few listen to him, but the majority just shun him. And it's really depressing. Especially since this theory is a representation of the current status of black kids and society. I see myself as the freed prisoner, I know it sounds pretentious, and I was able to break the shackles of the cave because I was... I don't wanna say brought up right, but when you look at the conditions that I was put in, you can say they were better. And I have to thank my parents for that. And the sad thing is, my cousin was brought up in the "hood" and in the song I say that his dad took drugs and stole money from some drug-dealers and they, uhh, ended up beating him. And then my cousins uses this bottled of anger of this lack of presence of his dad against me, even though we were raised together. And I try to tell him, and of course, others like him, that there is a good place for them in the world and they're fates aren't permanently set because of society saying that blacks will only amount to hood shit.

From this interview and past interviews, we can determine that Donald Glover sees himself as this saint for African-American kids. This is because he was once one and so he believes it is his duty to advocate for a change of the way African-Americans see themselves because of the society.  However, this can be debated against due to the fact that Childish Gambino has stated that his music is very open-ended and can be interpreted in many ways and each interpretation could be valid for the person.