Hey blog! Welcome back to Current Faves and boy do I have a jam for you! Childish Gambino came out with another song called “This is America” on May 6th and it’s AMAZING. I admit on the day it came out, I only listened to the first 30 seconds before adding it to my Current Faves playlist BUT I went back two days later to listen to the full song and WOW is it great!

The song is great but the music video is the real meaning of the song. The song is a mix of South African melodies and Southern United States’s trap music. It defines how juxtaposed black culture is in America society and entertainment. The lyrics and the video describe the relationship between dancing and partying and violence that combine to make up so much of both entertainment and black life in America.

The music video further describes the reality of being black in America. Childish Gambino is seen shooting and killing people but all of that is masked by the fact after he does it, he continues to dance.   Childish Gambino did this to show the problem that black culture is about dancing but also killing. Another tidbit in the video is the way the guns are handled. After Childish Gambino shoots someone with a pistol, the pistol is handed off to somebody with care but after he mows down a choir (a reference to the Charleston church shooting in 2015) the automatic weapon is thrown to the handler. Later in the video when Gambino aims his empty hand but is making a gun gesture, everyone runs away scared. This could be a reference to the justification most police officers use when they’ve killed an unarmed black person is they thought they had a gun.

While I can’t go into a full dive all the aspects of this song, I highly advise you to watch the music video and reflect on what the song means to you. I’ll post the links to the sources for my research underneath the music video and as always the link to my Current Faves playlist.

https://genius.com/14498854

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/11/entertainment/childish-gambino-this-america-youtube/index.html

#rap #spotify #new #music #childish gambino