Childish Gambino’s Controversial New Hit Has Everyone Talking
Hip hop royalty Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino, released his new track “This Is America” this past weekend, after performing it on Saturday Night Live.
Following his incredible performance, Gambino released the track with a controversial music video, which addresses a lot of the pressing issues in America today.
The video is full of hidden meanings, and is an artistic masterpiece… so what does it all mean?
Check the video out here:
The opening scene sees Gambino walk behind a man who is sat playing guitar, before continuing to shoot him in the head. He then hands his gun off to someone waiting with a red cloth, perhaps to suggest how American’s value their prized firearms.
That’s not the end of the gun references either – Gambino proceeds to shoot a choir with an automatic rifle, no doubt a reference to the church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.
Perhaps the most interesting concept in the whole video is how there are scenes of joy and dancing all around the chaos, perhaps a reference to how social media is consumed through the tragedies occurring ever-more frequently in the US. Childish himself spends most of the video dancing around from scene to scene, distracting the attention away from the violence and murder in the background.
Directed by Hiro Murai, the long time directive partner of Glover’s who has also worked on videos for A Tribe Called Quest and Michael Kiwanuka, the video definitely needs to be watched more than once in order to pick up on the messages delivered.
Without doubt, the main message is gun violence. Gambino’s over-the-top dance moves suggest people are more focused on viral dance moves (remember the whip?) than the real issues in America going on right in front of us.
The fact that Childish Gambino’s “This is America” tackles police brutality, gun violence, media misdirection, and the use of African-Americans as a brand shield, all while dancing in Jim Crow-style caricature, shows a transcendence or mere performance and demands attention.
— Jon Spence (@reallyjonspence) May 7, 2018
One other thing you might have missed from the video is a cameo from SZA. The pop star posted a picture to Instagram sat on the set, suggesting she and Gambino could be working on a new project.
The Maplewood native SZA can be seen sat on the hood of a car right at the end of the video, which could be a reference to Philando Castile. Castile was murdered in his 1997 Oldsmobile in 2016 by Jeronimo Yanez of the Minnesota Police Department.
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