Childish Gambino aka Donald Glover. He is a very well established internet rapper, he's released a number of mixtapes and commercial albums. Also recently he has been coming up as an actor as well. He has been in a couple pretty big movies, most recently "The Martian" with Matt Damon. As a musician I tend to enjoy his music but it's something I have to be in the mood for. He has a quirkiness and a natural awkwardness in his personality that can make his music and his lyrics interesting. He definitely tries to portray himself as a nerdy character, and whether that is authentic to his normal self or not I do not know, but what I just said you can throw it all out the window for this project because this is an album completely seperated to anything else Childish Gambino has created up to this point.

This album is not even a rap album, this is straight up soul music with a large number of influences. It mixes in all kinds of genres from funk, rock, hip hop, latin rock, jazz, name any musical genre and there is a good chance it shows up on this record at some point. This record is totally out of left field for Childish Gambino. Now this is a question that I had going into the record and I feel like it would be good to tell you now that CHildish Gambino does not rap on this album. He sings on most of these tracks and most of the time he gets guest vocalists. But this is strictly a soul album, rather than a hip hop record. If you can get past that and be prepared for that going in. Then I think you will be able to appreciate this record a lot more. Because not only is this album excellent, but it is also wildly creative. This is a soul album, created by a rapper, and infuses many different genres together.

I love the sound this record has. I could rave for the rest of this review about the instrumentals on this album. They are immaculate. I love the funky smooth jazz beat of "Zombies," which may be my favorite song on this record period. I love the opening instrumental, it has really great development and sets the tone for this album. I enjoy the instrumental to "California" even though that may be my least favorite track on this record. I also love the instrumental of "Riot" even though that song was a little too short. I thought he could have stretched that song out a little bit more, because I really liked that song. Childish Gambino himself is a very good singer too. I didn't even realize that it was him who was singing on these tracks until I looked it up. I was shocked, his performances were spectacular. Except for "California." There is no excuse for that.

The song writing is very strong too. Childish Gambino has always been a strong writer, but he goes the extra mile here."Zombies" is a beautifully written song depicting record labels as zombies. Who will feed off of your money rather than your brain. Despite the obnoxious vocal performance I love the overall theme of "California." This song is about an ex girlfriend who moves to California to be a movie star and makes all the wrong decisions and basically ruins her life. If you can decipher through the singing it is a very beautifully narrated song. It has a great line where he basically says she is looping all of her bad decisions like a vine. "You keep losing your mind
How you want to loop this shit but looking like a vine." (Gambino: California: Awaken My Love.)

I don't really want to talk too much more about this album though because for a lot of it you would benefit from not knowing what to expect. The only things I would say you should know going in is that this is not a rap album. If you can get past this and just listen to this album for the good music, and great songwriting, then you will greatly appreciate this record. It has beautiful instrumentals, and very solid songwriting complemented by strong performances. I'm thinking a strong 8/10 and a strong recommendation. Donald Glover really got creative with this project, and I could tell he really wanted to push himself to do something different. And he did, as I've said this is very unique from the rest of his discography. If you read this far. Thank you. You're the best. Next week we will be tackling J.Cole's newest album, which I just purchased and began listening to as I was typing this review up. So be ready for that. Until then, keep living, and keep loving.