For Donald Glover – “This is America”. This may not be the America that you or I experience, but I believe it’s an authentic, albeit terrifying, vision by Glover interpreted in his musical persona Childish Gambino.

What does it all mean? The lyrics suggest a theme, but don’t truly explicate. Images and poses suggesting Jim Crow iconography abound. Many have commented on the significance of Glover choosing Daniel Kaluuya, the star of Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out, with its “Sunken Place”, to introduce Glover’s performance of the work on Saturday Night Live. The immense popularity of the video (posted on May 5th it had 83 million views as of May 12th) has spawned a plethora of videos attempting to interpret the work, but to my knowledge Glover hasn’t weighed in on any of them. There’s also commentary online, and the curious may want to check out The Daily Beast’s Ira Madison, III, The HuffPost’s Hayley Miller, The Rolling Stone’s Tre Johnson or Brittany Spanos.
(h/t to Brent)

 

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