Childish Gambino Awaken My Love!
Released: December 3rd, 2016
Must Listen: “Redbone“
Childish Gambino has been a very busy man outside of rap/music this year. He dropped his show “Atlanta” on FX this year, and that was his primary focus throughout the year. Fans who wanted a taste of his music were still left wondering, when will we hear some new Gambino? What we didn’t know was that the answer was in front of us the entire time.
Towards the end of the season finale of “Atlanta” Childish Gambino put the cover of “Awaken My Love!” in vinyl form in plain view, but of course we didn’t notice. Soon as the season ended he revealed that cover art as well as dropped a new song “Me and Your Mama.” From first listen we could tell the new album was about to be Gambino on a different wave we’d never heard him on before.
He later dropped “Redbone” and that confirmed the direction he was taking. AML has no rapping whatsoever from Gambino, so fans who were looking for that were in for a big shocker. What he didn’t have in bars he made up for in experimenting with a new sound. The whole thing sounds like straight out of the 70’s/80’s with some funk out of this world. He plays with his voice countless different ways, managing to sound like a lot of different versions of himself on the album.
The production is super left field as well, keeping up with the theme of him pushing the envelope. The xylophone on “Terrified” is crazy and little spots like this make for ax extremely dope album. “Redbone” is a slow burner that turns into one of my favorite songs of the year, and “Stand Tall” finds Childish using his normal singing voice as the album closes. He definitely caught us off guard but, we’re glad he did.