Childish Gambino’s ‘Bando Stone and the New World’: Album Review

Donald Glover doesn’t do something by half, and the huge multifaceted undertaking he’s launched for what he says is the ultimate assertion from Infantile Gambino, the long-running alter-ego he rode to musical stardom, is not any exception. “Bando Stone and the New World” is an album, a movie and a sprawling world tour, which had been all introduced concurrently again in April (together with one other album, a completed model of “Atavista,” the nearly-complete set he’d quietly rush-released within the early days of the pandemic and re-released final Could).

The movie and tour stay to be seen, but when the “Bando Stone” album is any indication, Gambino goes out with a bang: It’s not solely his greatest and most far-reaching musical undertaking up to now, with a brain-busting mixture of musical types and friends starting from singers Jorja Smith and Amaarae to rappers Flo Milli and Yeat to alt-rock virtuosos Khruangbin. It’s additionally simply one of many high albums of the 12 months.

We’d count on nothing much less. Glover is so gifted at so many issues it doesn’t appear truthful — rapper, singer, actor, songwriter, screenwriter, director, dancer, who is aware of what else — however it comes with a deep contrarian streak, which isn’t the one factor he has in frequent with one other nice contrarian, Prince. He makes blink-and-you-miss-it bulletins to followers with no advance discover on livestreams that aren’t archived; “Atavista” was initially launched as a stream on a one-off web site for simply 24 hours; he dropped his closely coded video for his Grammy-winning music “This Is America,” in the course of his “Saturday Night time Reside” double-duty hosting-musical visitor stint in 2018. And though Glover’s predilection for being, as Tyler, the Creator as soon as put it, “all secret and cryptic like a dickfuck” can lead folks to “miss out on some actually cool shit,” his work almost at all times rewards the time and endurance it takes to look or watch for it.

Nonetheless, killing off an alter-ego is an odd conceit. David Bowie abruptly and publicly assassinated his Ziggy Stardust character onstage simply as his meteor-like rise was peaking; Eminem, at 51, has hatched an advanced dying plot for his juvenile, quarter-century-old Slim Shady alter-ego that’s apparently ongoing. Regardless of taking part in Gambino off in such an elaborate trend, Glover is low-key about his causes: “It actually was similar to, ‘Oh, it’s completed,’” he instructed the New York Instances not too long ago. “It’s not fulfilling. And I simply felt like I didn’t must construct on this method anymore.” (Nonetheless, it appears a good guess that Glover turning 40 final 12 months had one thing to do with it.)

All that backdrop appears to have little apparent affect on “Bando Stone,” and aside from some transient bits of dialogue between songs (seemingly from a plotline a few comically squabbling household misplaced in a jungle), advancing a plot doesn’t both. Though the which means behind the lyrics will probably turn into clearer as soon as the movie is launched, intriguing traces float by like “I’mma make a billi’ like I’m Eilish,” “I obtained a ego ’bout as massive as Lake Tahoe,” and “Shoot a motherfucker, I’m the brand new Spike Lee/ Everyone Devil and I’m G-O-D.” However the album is such a grand slam of musical types that its ideas wouldn’t be the very first thing you’d discover anyway.  

Over the course of 17 songs and an hour, it leaps between types and moods dramatically and at occasions abruptly — the otherworldly digital haze of “We Are God” cuts instantly into the emo-pop of “Working Round” — but additionally surprisingly easily. There are energy chords on “Lithonia”; “Steps Seashore” is a candy, Stevie Wonderesque acoustic ballad with a tinkling electrical piano and delicate backing vocals; there’s an orchestral, virtually Marvin Gaye-esque idyll on “No Excuses.” There are additionally two full-on indie-pop songs with “Actual Love” and the emo-ish “Working Round”; and forays into alt-R&B with the Chloe-featuring “Survive” and “Within the Night time” (a tag-team with Jorja Smith and Amaarae); there’s even one sung by his eldest son, 8-year-old Legend. Followers could also be upset that there’s nothing as sumptuously vintage-R&B as his 2016 basic “Redbone,” however to be truthful, that might be onerous to high.

He’s additionally rapping far more than he has on latest albums, in a method that typically recollects each Kanye West’s early materials and his abrasive “Yeezy” period. However the album’s most brain-busting second comes on the Kendrick Lamar-esque “Yoshinoya,” the center part of which options Glover rapping onerous over a thudding beat and a wild looped vocal snippet. There are traces of African and Caribbean rhythms and vocals all through, and all of it climaxes with the closing observe, the epic “A Place The place Love Goes,” which mixes a menacing rap with an inane chanted loop of kids singing “We don’t care concerning the occasion/ We simply need to dance” and even a Daft Punk-esque vocoder’ed section and an anthemic refrain.

Not surprisingly, the album options dizzying dozens of numerous collaborators, hardly ever for greater than a music or two, however most often are his longtime co-producer Ludwig Goransson, Dahi (Kendrick Lamar, Drake), “Sir Dylan” Wiggins (the Weeknd, SZA), Michael Uzowuru (Frank Ocean, SZA), and Tyler Johnson (Harry Types, Miley Cyrus), with Max Martin, Steve Lacy, saxist Kamasi Washington, singers Willow Smith and Syd and a great deal of others dropping in; “Received to Be” even samples British electronica titans Prodigy. It’s additionally notable that Glover has chosen to collaborate with younger or rising artists like Amaarae, Foushee and Khruangbin, quite than the superstars he might have enlisted.

In some ways, the hard-hitting “Yoshinoya” — named after a century-old Japanese restaurant chain that Gambino makes use of as an emblem for his longevity — is the centerpiece of the album, and is fairly clearly autobiographical in ways in which appear to fall outdoors the movie’s storyline.

“It is a code crimson for outdated heads
Who by no means appreciated my brief shorts and pro-Keds …
Informed me that cash make you lonely, it ain’t so unhealthy
N—a’s jokes are so dad…
Bought some Apple inventory to purchase a farm, I wanted to stunt
I instructed ’em take the back-end factors, he wished to entrance
Now his profession’s in a blunt …
These n—as virtually fifty they usually dressin’ like a hype beast
Used to get the peach milkshake and add the eight-piece
White boy throwin’ grime on my title for the assume piece…
Put they fingers on a girl for the clout however mentioned I’m wildin’
Dying earlier than dishonor
On my mother like Keke Palmer
I’m allergic to the drama, you noticed me and Tyler…
Fuck with my children, you fuck together with your life
You fuckin’ these hoes, I’m fuckin’ my spouse.” (Courtesy Genius.com)

Is that Gambino’s parting shot? In that case, it’s a robust one, and though he doesn’t title names, if anybody takes exception, he’s obtained a complete tour to reply even when that is his final album.

However presumably “Bando” is simply the curtain name for the alter-ego Glover rode to stardom, an admission that such issues aren’t for grown-ass dads, and hopefully he’ll proceed his musical profession’s development for years to come back. “Bando” is a mind-blowingly numerous and versatile album that finds him adopting an enormous variety of types convincingly — and truly lives as much as the drum-roll that launched it.