

Only time will tell if Childish Gambino has remade himself into the post-millennial D’Angelo. Is “ Awaken, My Love!” just a fantastic conceit? There’s some evidence of that: The themes of “Baby Boy,” which slinks along like an outtake from Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On, and the Eddie Hazel-like scratch-guitar instrumental “The Night Me and Your Mama Met,” sound as if they could be coming from the mind of Earn Marks, the Princeton dropout, babydaddy and would-be rap manager at the center of Atlanta. Shop your favorite brands and sign up for UO Rewards to receive 10 off your next purchase Shop Childish Gambino - Awaken, My Love LP at Urban Outfitters today. Discover more selections just like this online or in-store. When he serenades a girl moving to the Golden State over the kitschy calypso beat of “California,” it adds well-timed comic levity to his heavy soul odyssey. Shop Childish Gambino - Awaken, My Love LP at Urban Outfitters today. The wah-wah guitars and rolling percussion of “Riot” crackle with psychedelic energy. On “Have Some Love,” he swings with a leisurely gait akin to Funkadelic’s “Can You Get To That” as he implores us, “Have some time for one another/Really love one another.” He subtly underlines his excursions with a message: “Stay woke … now don’t you close your eyes,” he cries in a high, Prince-like falsetto on “Redbone,” a spacy boogie exploration that thumps with thick lowrider bass.

The result is an experiment in time travel: Through sounds of the past, he captures the tensions of the present.Whether it’s rocking his best George Clinton impression over the platform boot stomp of “Boogieman,” or delivering a deep-hued spoken word manifesto on “Baby Boy,” Childish Gambino fully inhabits his funkadelic guise. Coming from an artist known for taut wordplay and manically constructed similes, the broad strokes of Awaken are a shift: You’ll think eventually, but mood comes first.Īnd in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that followed the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and so many more, Glover’s choice to echo a period in Black music when artists took on an explicitly revolutionary cast is a canny complement to albums like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and Solange Knowles’ A Seat at the Table, both of which explored Black identity with new urgency. Joji Ballads Turntable Lab Exclusive LP Vinyl (Edition of 1500) Cloudy Clear & Red. Childish Gambino Awaken, My Love Vinyl Record. Red Hot Chili Peppers Unlimited Love Urban Outfitters Exclusive 2XLP Vinyl Light Blue. uicideboy sing me a lullaby, my sweet temptation Vinyl record Music > Handmade. It makes for a tonal fluidity that also marks his work on the television show Atlanta, which he created. Juice Wrld Death Race for Love 2XLP Vinyl Black. Like a funhouse mirror, he stretches his influences into weird shapes: The freak-outs are exaggerated to the point of comedy (“Me and Your Mama”) and the ballads romantic to the point of creepy (“Terrified”).

Glover said he’d started with childhood memories of his parents playing Funkadelic and The Isley Brothers on the stereo: specific sounds and songs, but more importantly, a general feeling-one that Glover wasn’t quite old enough to grasp. On the face of it, Donald Glover’s “Awaken, My Love!” is a museum-quality rip of early-’70s funk and soul: the faded vocals, the fuzzed-out guitars, the collective sense of chaos and exuberance.
