Time comes for everyone. It has mostly been kind to Glover, the multiple Emmy- and Grammy-winning actor, musician, writer and director, who turned 40 last September. He has been in the public eye for nearly 20 years, since his college sketch comedy troupe, Derrick, found an audience on early YouTube in 2006. And he has been famous for 15, since starring in the hit NBC comedy series “Community.”
Childish Gambino, his rap alter ego, caught the attention of the hip-hop blogosphere in 2010, making it old enough to be sent off to high school. And now, after the release of his sixth album, “Bando Stone & the New World,” on Friday, he’s officially retiring the moniker.
“It really was just like, ‘Oh, it’s done,’” he said, describing the moment of realization. “It’s not fulfilling. And I just felt like I didn’t need to build in this way anymore.”
Childish Gambino has always been the rawest expression of Glover’s art. His work as a television creator, most notably “Atlanta,” tends toward the cerebral and abstract. And his biggest film roles have come as a cog in enormous franchise machines (“Solo: A Star Wars Story,” “The Lion King,” various Spider-Man vehicles). But his early Gambino mixtapes, “I Am Just a Rapper,” “I Am Just a Rapper 2” and “Culdesac,” were gleefully unfiltered, exposing the id of a talented but embittered outsider determined to pole vault his way onto the A-list.
Glover’s early themes on those projects, and his debut album, “Camp,” seemed to win him fans and critics in equal measure. Raised a Jehovah’s Witness in a suburb of Atlanta and sent to a majority-white high school, he needled preconceptions about cultural Blackness, lashing out at unnamed critics who called him an “Oreo” for failing to present as Black enough. As if to provoke the issue, he wreathed himself in totems of 2010s white hipsterdom, commandeering tracks from Pitchfork darlings (Sleigh Bells, Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer), declaring his preference for A.P.C. jeans and Sperry Top-Siders and deploying a nasal and overly articulate vocal style — Lil Wayne with a wedgie.
Read More: Why Donald Glover Is Saying Goodbye to Childish Gambino
