childish gambino — Writing

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day. Not best. Not most influential. Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow. Just my favorite, ranked in order.

8. childish gambino – because the internet

First of all, let’s establish the flaws here. Even when Childish Gambino is flowing (he can do that well enough), he’s prone to dropping lines that make him sound like he picked up a mic for the first time yesterday (“Girl why is you lyin’? Girl why you Mufasa?”). The second half of the album is a mess of ideas, musical motifs, and average verses. And the album really requires you to read a seventy-page screenplay to understand what’s going on. That’s what’s bad. But even given that, it’s one of my favorite albums of the year. Part of it’s just my personal preference for innovation and my need to applaud anyone doing anything particularly different; stagnation is a much more frightening prospect than homogeneity. The rest of it? For a second, I’ll stop being a Music Critic and be a Music Fan. A lot of how you view Because the Internet is going to hinge on your opinion of Gambino before you even hit play – if you like him, the flaws will read as endearing; if not, they’ll just reinforce your views of Gambino as a subpar rapper. I’m of the former opinion. Maybe it’s just my romanticized view of him as a musician, but he seems like the rare artist who’s more consumed with pursuing his artistic vision than with perfection (no surprise, then, that my favorite artist, Kanye West, happens to be the poster-boy of that artistic approach). Rather than analyzing exactly what’s wrong with Gambino’s music (and there are many things that are wrong, believe me), I’d prefer to chant “All she need was some…” on “The Other Guys” and sing along with Gambino on “3005.” The album is listenable, a quality that’s often lost in the search for a good Pitchfork score. Because the Internet is the best when you don’t take it too seriously.

8. danny brown – “odb (prod. paul white)”

Lots of Danny’s music deals with the pains of reality in his hometown of Detroit: in fact, he’s pretty proud of the fact that he refuses to dodge or duck the facts, as he seems to think fellow Motor City rappers like Big Sean tend to do. And even though the music video for “ODB”, the lead single off of Danny Brown’s album “Old” (even though it never ended up on the album thanks to sample clearance issues), is a psychedelic affair, the music’s still grounded right in Detroit’s grimy streets. It’s only a rapper like Danny that could snarl “So when the night fall I be getting head in the alley/By a low down nothing 2 dollar skully” without losing all of his credibility, or lay down a hook like “But in the end I’m just a dirty old man/With a pill in my mouth and my dick in my hand” without coming off ridiculous. Paul White’s production is brutal, screeching; his synths grinding and whining to jerky stops and starts. At times it’s discordant, but that’s where Danny does best.

The first thirty seconds or so of “Yaphet Kotto” is arguably the best thirty to ever emerge from Glover music-wise - Gambino’s rapidly improving as a producer (sure, Kanye-tinged, but who’s really going to be tight over drum breakdowns and wailing Manchild samples this polished), and for a few bars, he keeps the elements that occasionally made him so grating before to a minimum. But the second he lets his voice skip up a few notes in pitch (“Headlines saying he’s leaving to be a rapper”), it’s all over.

After the opening four bars, he drifts back into the same tropes and cliches - black disadvantages (“Cause they tryna get my demo, young white kids with money”), his acting career (“But niggas saying, ‘This dummy; he’s eating off of his acting, I mean/Who the fuck wanna be a rapper, it’s stupid’”), stilted gimmicky delivery (“Who knew every rapper with a new crew/Wanna do shit on Hulu”), annoying voice inflections (“Yeah they know me/happy face emoji”), his struggles with fame (“I wet the bed first night on the tour bus”), his shit-talkers (“The same dudes who laughing after you go/Be the same dudes who emailing asking you 'bout your show”), and dumb jokes (“Khalifa’s first name, now there’s urine on him”). I could go on, and on, and on.

Any other rapper and I might just dismiss him as a lost cause. But Gambino’s capable of brief moments of brilliance interspersed among long stretches of borderline musical self-sabotage, and there’s just enough to suggest that he’s capable of much, much more than being a punchline. He’s come a long way in his journey to merge the wry, quirky self-awareness of his first album, CAMP, with the dexterity and maturity of his mixtape Royalty.

Gambino’s music is only so frustrating because the only thing holding him back is himself and his own pathological need to return to the gimmicks that vaulted him to relative fame. Donald Glover has enough going for him that he doesn’t have to be a famous musician to be set for life - he’s a remarkably talented actor, comedian, and writer. But clearly that’s not the route he wants to go, if his impending withdrawal from NBC's Community is any indication. But unless he wants to be the hipster younger brother of Drake who likes rapping about his dick for the rest of his career, Childish Gambino will have to figure out a way to make it all work for longer than thirty seconds. It’s like he’s insecure, returning back to what he thinks he knows works - but for a thirty-year old creative, there’s a limit to how far repetition can get you.