«Sweatpants»
One of Glover’s breakout songs as Childish Gambino was his 2013 song «Sweatpants.» On the surface, the song seems to just be Glover flexin’ his wealth and success. «Still spitting that cash flow – DJ Khaled/ I got a penthouse on both coasts – pH balance,» he raps. And he ends the song with the refrain «Don’t be mad cause I’m doing me better than you doing you.»
However, Glover’s music video added a new element to the song. In the video, Glover is stuck in a loop: he enters a dinner through the front door, walks past people eating, sits with his friends, gets up to put music on the jukebox, and then walks out the back door where he sees someone puking in the bushes and two people kissing. Then he looks up…only to suddenly be transported to the front door where he enters the loop again.
It’s a trippy concept by itself, but as Donald Glover goes through each loop, slowly people in the scene are replaced by versions of Donald Glover, which adds another layer to the video.
» the idea of you doing you so hard that you can’t do anything else,» Glover explained to Complex in 2014. «I never wanted him to freak out when he saw himself. I wanted him to be like this is what I’m supposed to be but it’s scary at the same time. Being you to the utmost is scary because you don’t know what you’re capable of. You may turn into a version of you might not like.»
That idea of a multitude of versions of yourself comes back in the «This Is America.» In that video we see scenes of Donald Glover dancing with kids in a carefree, nonchalant manner contrasted with scenes of the rapper perpetuating horrific violence. Details like his clothing, poses the rapper strikes, and more allude to Jim Crow in America. Put together, «This Is America,» like «Sweatpants» seems to be highlighting a multitude of selves, but this time instead of showing differing versions of Donald Glover, in «This Is America» we see different versions of the black experience.
Gambino running away in the closing moments
The final moments of the video show Gambino running, terrified, down a long dark hallway away from a group of people as Young Thug sings “You just a Black man in this world / You just a barcode, ayy.” Gambino’s sprint goes back to a long tradition of black Americans having to run to save their lives, according to Ramsey, who says one song dating back to slavery in the 19th century was called “Run N— Run.”
“A black person running for his or her life has just been a part of American culture dating back to slavery,” he says.
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«3005»
Donald Glover’s video «3005» toned down the level of weird Glover exhibited in past videos, but it still uses some strange elements to highlight an argument.
The video finds Glover at a fair, sitting on a ferris wheel next to a stuffed bear. Throughout the video, two things happen: first, the bear begins to move, blinking and interacting with Glover. Second, the camera rotates, revealing the what’s happening in the rest of the fair.
As the ride goes round and round, both of those scenes, the stuffed bear and the fair, begin to fall into chaos — the bear gets increasingly ruined and the environment in the background of the fair burns in flames. However, neither Glover nor the other riders on the ferris wheel seem to notice. At the end of the video, after panning to reveal the blazing landscape, the camera returns to the ferris wheel which is now empty except for the bear, which is in tatters.
In 2015, Vice writer Trey Smith speculated that the video is about the loss of innocence.
«The change from ‘3005,’ a light feel-good song, to the second section of ‘Zealots of Stockholm,’ a much more dark and menacing track, is representative of how his views of the world have changed. It is no longer the cheerful place he knew it was—now that he’s seen the violence it is capable of in more than one way, he can’t continue to believe any other version of it.»
Of course, that’s the same transition we see in «This Is America.» That video opens with Glover dancing while a man strums the guitar. However, that peaceful scene is quickly shattered when Glover suddenly shoots the guitar player.
The loss of innocence is also echoed with the kids that accompany Glover. Throughout the video, even as Glover commits acts of violence, he is accompanied by children who are either unaware or unconcerned by what Glover has done. That is until he holds up an invisible gun in the middle of the group. Scared, they kids flee and join the scenes of chaos unfolding around them.
Ultimately, «This Is America» is making waves because it seems to be signaling a new era for Glover. «What ‘This Is America’ suggests is that the next—and apparently last—Childish Gambino record will be far more pointed and political and uncomfortable,» writes Rob Harvilla for The Ringer. But look closely and you can see that Glover has quietly been infusing his videos with social commentary all along.
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The gunned down choir
Toward the middle of the video, a choir sings enthusiastically in a happy tone before Gambino shoots them all. The massacre and its quickness recall the 2015 Charleston shooting in which white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church basement, Ramsey says. The image and what it evokes shows how people struggle to reconcile with and separate different instances of violence, according to Ramsey. As we consume violence on all sorts of platforms, be it in the news, through music videos or television shows, it becomes difficult to absorb very real instances of mass murders.
“You can’t escape the violence,” Ramsey says. “But you’re being forced to separate how you feel about it in our digitized world. The virtual violence, the real violence, it’s all confused.”
Gambino dancing with schoolchildren amid violence
Gambino and a group of kids clad in school uniforms dance throughout much of the “This Is America” video, smiling through impeccable moves as violence erupts behind them. The moment could be open to numerous interpretations — for example, Ramsey says, the dancers could be there to distract viewers in the same way black art is used to distract people from real problems plaguing America. But, Ramsey says, it’s better to absorb the video as a whole because America itself is a country of “very strange juxtapositions.”
“Even though we think of popular culture a a space where we escape, he’s forcing us to understand that there’s actually nowhere to run,” he says. “We have to deal with the cultural violence that we have created and continue to sustain.”
The style of dancing by Gambino in the video also calls out the way we consume culture. Gambino samples at least 10 popular dance moves derived from hip hop and African moves, including the South African Gwara Gwara dance, . Ramsey says the use of so many famous dance moves show how ultra-popular pieces of culture lose their specificity over time as they become more ubiquitous.
“It’s really a commentary on how much violence and contradictions there are in the consuming of pop culture, particularly in the violent elements of it,” he says. “With all the conspicuous consumption that global capitalism inspires, part of what we are consuming is this appetite for violence.”
«Bonfire»
A big theme explored in «This Is America» is the question of who is seen and what pain is acknowledged. In that video, every time Glover shoots someone, the gun, which is delicately placed on a cloth, is treated with more care than the actual victims, who are dragged away.
But Glover actually broached idea that certain people and certain pain is invisible in 2011 in his music video for his song «Bonfire.»
The video is directed like a horror movie. At the start Glover wakes up in a forest with a rope around his neck and he coughs up blood. In the distance he sees a bonfire with campers sitting around it, one person telling a story. As he runs toward the bonfire, he also notices another person in the woods walking towards the group holding a noose and a knife. Donald gets to the campers and tries to warn them but none of them are able to see Glover. The man with the knife then jumps out of the woods and it’s revealed that it was all an elaborate ghost story.
At the end of the video, as the camper walks away, Glover falls to the ground, and once again wakes up with a noose around his neck, suggesting that the victim of the story was Glover himself.
At the time, the video seemed to be about Donald Glover’s reputation — everybody is talking about him but nobody can see him. «It’s a bonfire, turn the lights out/ I’m burnin’ everything you muthafuckas talk about,» Glover raps. But now the video carries new meaning when watched alongside «This Is America.»
An Analysis of Childish Gambino
It is well known that Glover received his moniker “Childish Gambino” from a WuTang Clan rap name generator, so it would seem the name loses some of its meaning, but he still chose to use this specific name. The word “childish” embodies Glover’s energy and reflects his upbringing. He was surrounded by foster children so he gained his quick wit and energy from the constant new children he had to entertain. His first album, Camp, is entirely about his childhood and his eventual maturity by the end of the album. This is purely coincidental, but “Gambino” is an Italian word directed towards people with short legs. The retirement of the moniker “Childish Gambino” may shine light on his ultimate maturity as he might continue under a different name or focus on film and television.
The first gunshot
The opening moments of “This Is America” show a man strumming a guitar alone to choral sounds. Within the first minute, Gambino shoots the man, who has been tied up with a head cover. Childish Gambino hands the gun to another man, who safely wraps it in a red cloth as the obscured man is dragged away. The moment goes right into the first rapped chorus: “This is America / Don’t catch you slippin’ up.”
Ramsay says the timing — that this happens during the song’s move from choral tones to a trap sound — allows Gambino to straddle contradictions and also allows the viewer to identify with his humanness.
“He’s talking about the contradictions of trying to get money, the idea of being a black man in America,” Ramsey says. “It comes out of two different sound worlds. Part of the brilliance of the presentation is that you go from this happy major mode of choral singing that we associate with South African choral singing, and then after the first gunshot it moves right into the trap sound.”
The early moment shows, too, that Gambino “could be anyone,” according to Ramsey. “You have him almost unadorned, as if he were totally without all the accoutrements of stardom,” he says, noting that Gambino dances in neutral colored pants, dark skin and with textured hair. “It’s just him, and therefore, it could be us.”