With a busy year ahead with both an upcoming tour and the release of his new album, Childish Gambino has finally appeased his fans with a new music video and two new songs. Gambino performed both “This is America” and “Saturday” live on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. His new video for “This is America” has definitely caught the attention and raising awareness from people it may concern. But, we’ll get into later.
Zoe Kravitz (daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet) introduced Gambino, who would eventually join both him and his band on stage to enjoy the vibes with other partying people. For the enthusiast that enjoys 70’s soul music, combined with a Caribbean vibe, Gambino’s new song “Saturday” ideally fits that description. Unlike his most previous album Awaken, My Love!, Gambino seemingly recaptured his sound from his 2014 mixtape release “Kauai.” It was quite refreshing, honestly, because this is the sound typical fans of his enjoy the most.
Before we get to his second performance in the show can we all agree Gambino (Donald Glover) was phenomenal as the Saturday Night Live host? His skits entitled “Friendos,” and “A Kanye Place,” were both amusing and appealing to the SNL audience. Not to mention topical since Kanye West has obviously been in the headlines for the past couple weeks sparked by his unprecedented return to Twitter. With his hit television show “Atlanta,” it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone how big of a hit Glover was on SNL.
Later in the show is where the controversy begins. Gambino not only performed another song, but decided to release a politically-influenced video for “This is America.”
Not that his performance wasn’t captivating, but the video is what stole the show. The entire video took place in what looks like some abandoned warehouse somewhere and features a significant amount of subliminal messages that are there to help raise awareness of some of the issues we have in America today.
Recently, Gambino decided to leave Glassnote Records and is now signed to RCA Records and will release his new album coming later this year under his new label. As mentioned earlier, he is also going on tour with special guests Rae Sremmurd and Vince Staples. Of course, Gambino has announced this will be his last album, so many anticipate it to be superb.
