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Donald Glover has established himself as a comedian, writer, actor and rapper. He has writeen for such shows and “30 Rock” and acted in the show “Community” in addition to a handful of stand up routines.
Despite all of the other titles, Glover a.k.a. Childish Gambino, may be most widely known for his rapping. With four mixtapes and a overly successful debut album, “Camp,” under his belt, it looks like his second album, “Because the Internet,” doesn’t live up to “Camp.”
The album is split into two and a half spectacular tracks and songs that aren’t really songs. It starts with a four-second intro which rides into a catchy track, “Crawl.” The chorus includes a women with a voice like Rihanna, and you can’t go wrong when Childish takes care of business.
From there the album rolls into a song that got my blood boiling, “Worldstar.” Gambino goes hard with rhymes on point, until he is interrupted by a call from what seems to be a friend telling him to check out a video of a fight. It ruins the song, but the first half is so good that I can deal with it.
After the first of many skits there are five consecutive songs, “The Worst Guys” featuring Chance the Rapper, “Shadows,” “Telegraph Ave.,” Sweatpants” and “3005.” Despite Chance the Rapper not having a verse, all three songs are different but effective. But if Chance gets a verse on a Justin Bieber song, then I believe he should get one here, just saying.
My personal favorite track, however, is “Telegraph Ave.” It takes me back to the Childish Gambino that I could listen to for hours. A close second is the first single “3005,” a love song that says that he will his girl until 3005. Genius.
After “3005” the album takes a hard left turn, and never really takes a turn back, with four tracks in a row that aren’t much at all. Three skits and a song with a funky beat lost me. In fact, this funky beat, which sounds like it would blow out the speakers in my car or my headphones, is a consistant on the second half of the album. With almost every song starting off sounding like it will be raw rhyming with a banging beat but turning into something that is hard to listen to, I found myself annoyed.
I see what Gambino is trying to do, and I enjoyed parts of the album. But people listening to him for this first time won’t get it. To them, he is going to come across as weird and talentless. But that’s not true. Gambino has a lot of talent,he just doesn’t effectively showcase it here.
I would give this album a 7/10. He provided a handful of songs I will listen to for awhile, but otherwise I have come to expect more from Childish Gambino.
