{"id":762,"date":"2024-09-23T15:36:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T15:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=762"},"modified":"2024-10-18T12:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T16:42:02","slug":"childish-gambino-becomes-adult-ish-gambino-the-schottenstein-center-stop-on-the-new-world-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/childish-gambino-becomes-adult-ish-gambino-the-schottenstein-center-stop-on-the-new-world-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Childish Gambino Becomes Adult-ish Gambino: The New World Tour @ The Schottenstein Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the past five years, Donald Glover has been everywhere and nowhere: from the finale to his afro-surreal dramedy Atlanta<\/em> to the launch of his company GILGA, he\u2019s kept busy. Before taunting the excited crowds on the New World Tour about being \u2018real fans\u2019 (DonGlovers, some might call them) he even collaborated with minds as talented as Malia Obama to write the satirical dark comedy Swarm<\/em>, a biting commentary on stan culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glover\u2019s career trajectory from NYU college DJ to the endearingly corny improv (and borderline homoerotic friendship with Abed) that earmarked his role as Troy on Community feels like it can be only described as dad lore. And that\u2019s not even mentioning how his stand-up inspired the popular Spider-Man variant Miles Morales \u2013 who may as well be the<\/em> Spider-man to children. Childish Gambino has been outside living every kid\u2019s dream for the past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black creative Willow Smith accompanies him on this tour, fresh off the release of her new album \u201cempathogen.\u201d Her slam-poetry jazz rock style setlist accomplished setting a larger-than-life tone for the night. If you wanted boring artists who\u2019d just give you the DSP version of the songs over MP3s, you were in the wrong place. If you wanted a transformative live experience that took cherished songs and evolved them in organic ways, Willow invited you with open arms and unbridled Black joy. Both icons shine to me as paradigms of what artistic expression can do as a form of healthcare. Despite their controversies (like Willow\u2019s odd relationship with her pseudo-Buddhist\/Hindu gurus, or Glover\u2019s bluer sense of humor in his early career,) they\u2019ve been beacons of inspiration to many \u2013 especially minorities \u2013 who\u2019ve felt like outsiders everywhere. This really shows in the hodgepodge that showed up to the Columbus show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few Columbus concert flops reshaped the city\u2019s perception to a pitstop sandwiched between bigger city spots like Toronto or New York, I was worried about turnout, especially considering that his farewell album was marketed as a soundtrack for a movie I\u2019m not fully convinced is real. Bino, however, was met with a surprisingly lively farewell. Vicarious Spider-Man variants \u2013 some even masked \u2013 peppered the seats, buddied with Bando Stone cosplayers in floral shirts and artsy hipster girls like the ones described in the song L.E.S.<\/em> A few transfers sporting spiritwear from Community\u2019s Greendale College stopped by as well. Some might argue there were fashion dog-whistles for male manipulators in the queue. I\u2019ve personally never seen so many people of color with white partners concentrated in one place; it\u2019s honestly quite impressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His latest album Bando Stone and the New World<\/em> dominated the early chunk of the setlist. The album acts as an earnest parting with the Childish Gambino persona. Like SZA\u2019s SOS\u2019s, Gambino\u2019s ultimate album sounds more like shuffling through radio stations in an alternate reality where every song is performed by Childish Gambino than a concisely curated album. The schema uniting the soundtrack\u2019s sound is \u2018stranded on a futuristic island\u2019 \u2013 which drove me to an epiphany: Childish Gambino is truly not a real person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my mind, I have always used Childish Gambino and Donald Glover interchangeably. However, with the release of this album, I\u2019ve realized that Childish Gambino is really Glover\u2019s imaginary friend \u2013 a hallucination he crafted when he felt isolated \u2013 comparable to Wilson from \u201cCastaway.\u201d After growing from an aloof yet ambitious existentialist into a gyrating family man, Glover has to let Gambino go. In Bando Stone<\/em>, we hear Childish Gambino\u2019s life flashing before his eyes before he fades like Inside Out\u2019s Bing Bong. We amble through every past sonic experiment and watch as he gets some final ideas off his chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The set design struck me with awe from the first synth pulse on the set\u2019s industrial-tropical fusion track \u201cH3@RT$ W3RE M3@NT T0 F7\u00a5.\u201d The track works even better as an opener live, complemented by the space-age haunted chandelier \u2013 mythologically dubbed as the light-binder <\/em>\u2013 that Gambino\u2019s visage possesses alongside raindrops, skulls, and shimmering stars. It transitioned well into the oddly direct tongue-in-cheek sermons on \u201cSurvive,\u201d but his addition of The Worst Guys was the moment I fell in love with his discography all over again. How many rap songs do you know with a guitar solo? Of those, how many rappers have a guitarist shredding it live? Grown men cried beside me that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modest but impressive backup dancers\u2019 choreography really shined on \u201cIn the Night\u201d and \u201cTo Be Hunted\u201d\/\u201d19.10.\u201d However, Glover\u2019s choice to include the shocking KAYTRANADA collab \u201cWitchy\u201d\u2019s proves another thesis of the tour; the highlights are never what you expect. Hardcore fans may rightfully come for the churchlike experience of \u201cHuman Sacrifice\u201d or the ironically extravagant and clever bars on \u201cSweatpants\u201d, but features like the bongos on \u201c3005\u201d, the harmonies on \u201cSober,\u201d the new tropical outro for \u201cFeels like Summer\u201d, the desperate belting alongside the Yeat hologram on \u201cCruisin\u2019\u201d, or the molasses bass on \u201cUrn\u201d really made the night. (I\u2019m a little butthurt about the audience picking the ephemeral Urn over the hailed unreleased Latin track Saturday, though.) Overall, the show was an opulent extrasensory audiovisual wonder of the world and my favorite concert experience so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple behind us told us that this was their first date, and I honestly can\u2019t imagine how romantic the starry intermission with the Afro-soul track \u201cNo Excuses\u201d\u2019s soundscape must\u2019ve resonated for them. I cannot compliment enough whoever put Gambino onto Fela Kuti. The funky sax was the final puzzle piece that kept the mostly instrumental track from getting stale. As if curated for them, his honeyed rendition of N.E.R.D.-influenced falsetto ballad Steps Beach was addressed to everyone who\u2019s ever fallen in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside of mature tracks like the passionate \u201cMe and Your Mama\u201d, he introduced a final thesis to the show in the second half with his unapologetic showcase of all his eras \u2013 even his most juvenile. I only expected him to retreat as far back as the artistic puberty \u2018Hamilton-meets-Lil-Wayne\u2019 album Camp<\/em>, but he dared to guide us all the way to his mixtape era with \u201cDoYaLike.\u201d After publicly enjoying \u201cBonfire\u201d for the first time since 2019, he really took it further and threw \u201cFreaks and Geeks\u201d at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dreams come true on the New World Tour. For Gambino,\u00a0Bando Stone<\/em> realizes his dreams for Because the Internet<\/em> without the burden of proving his worth to the world as a young artist. and the budget constraints forbidding him from pairing it with a film. We know Glover always dreams of endings, and the way \u201cRedbone\u201d (which almost made me cry) ended twice, there was a full end credits sequence, and then another ultimate ending with the biblically cathartic \u201cLithonia\u201d is a true testament to his desire to make them rewarding for all the real fans<\/em>. Gambino has cried that each album since 2016 was his \u2018final album,\u2019 but something tells me he\u2019s serious this time. This album cycle turns the final pages for yet another \u201cblog era star.\u201d This tour bookends Glover\u2019s youth as he graduates to a new chapter featuring middle age and fatherhood. Luckily, endings only invite new beginnings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this \u2018last\u2019 Childish Gambino album can only be a segue to our first<\/em> Donald Glover album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past five years, Donald Glover has been everywhere and nowhere: from the finale to his afro-surreal dramedy Atlanta to the launch of his company GILGA, he\u2019s kept busy. Before taunting the excited crowds on the New World Tour about being \u2018real fans\u2019 (DonGlovers, some might call them) he even collaborated with minds as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[24,25,27,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}