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Adultish Gambino
On Bando Stone, Donald Glover spends one last night in a scene he believes he’s outgrown.
The decision to end his alter ego was perplexing; Glover seemed like he’d finally figured his shit out as a performer, making incredible strides since I first saw him rap, in 2011, while he was promoting his somehow simultaneously beta and aggro debut, Camp(“That well-spoken token who ain’t been heard / The only white rapper who’s allowed to say the N-word,” “Backpacks” announces). The wealth of talent in the periphery says, “You don’t need me to do this anymore.” The album flubs some turns — “Got to Be” manages to make the Prodigy sound tinny and the Future impression on the Yeat collaboration “Cruisin’” is less interesting than the gorgeous high notes and riddled shouts elsewhere in the song — reaching for and occasionally grasping the command of half a dozen genres demonstrated on SZA’s SOS. Bando largely avoids the classic Gambino pitfalls — fetishization and exoticization of women of color, geek-flavored misogyny/misanthropy, catastrophic couplets, a dripping self-pity about being young, Black, and bohemian — and sticks to the original idea of just weirding people’s expectations.
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