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Donald Glover Closes the Book on Childish Gambino With the Masterful ‘Bando Stone and the New World’: Album Review
Donald Glover doesn’t do anything by half, and he's killing off his alter-ego Childish Gambino with the elaborate 'Bando Stone and the New World.'
He makes blink-and-you-miss-it announcements to fans with no advance notice on livestreams that aren’t archived; “Atavista” was originally released as a stream on a one-off website for just 24 hours; he dropped his heavily coded video for his Grammy-winning song “This Is America,” in the middle of his “Saturday Night Live” double-duty hosting-musical guest stint in 2018. Although the meaning behind the lyrics will likely become clearer once the film is released, intriguing lines float by like “I’mma make a billi’ like I’m Eilish,” “I got a ego ’bout as big as Lake Tahoe,” and “Shoot a motherfucker, I’m the new Spike Lee/ Everybody Satan and I’m G-O-D.” But the album is such a grand slam of musical styles that its concepts wouldn’t be the first thing you’d notice anyway. There are power chords on “Lithonia”; “Steps Beach” is a sweet, Stevie Wonderesque acoustic ballad with a tinkling electric piano and gentle backing vocals; there’s an orchestral, almost Marvin Gaye-esque idyll on “No Excuses.” There are also two full-on indie-pop songs with “Real Love” and the emo-ish “Running Around”; and forays into alt-R&B with the Chloe-featuring “Survive” and “In the Night” (a tag-team with Jorja Smith and Amaarae); there’s even one sung by his eldest son, 8-year-old Legend.
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