Donald Glover may have won over the nation’s full attention last night while hosting Saturday Night Live (May 5), but take one glance at Twitter today and it’s clear fans cannot get enough of the highly anticipated return of Childish Gambino.
After hosting the episode and taking to the stage, the multifaceted creative released a powerful visual to accompany his freshly debuted track, “This Is America.”
REVOLT News | Donald Glover explains why he’s done with ‘Childish Gambino’
During the four-minute clip, which was directed by Glover’s longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, Gambino makes a potent-but-poignant statement about violence, race relations and gun control in America.
The thought-provoking visual and song follows the Grammy Award-winner as he perplexedly navigates a seemingly abandoned warehouse while a man (identified as artist Calvin The Second) sits and plays acoustic guitar, with the scenes soon taking a shocking and brutally violent turn when the singer fires a gun and kills an unidentified Black man execution style.
In the moments that follow, a shirtless Gambino keeps it moving right along as a pack of dancers dressed in school uniforms join in on his consciously disjointed choreography (with some recognizable viral dance moves in the mix), all while more desensitized chaos ensues behind them and another cruel massacre wipes out more Black lives.
Naturally, many are taking to social media to interpret the symbolism woven into each frame and to praise Gambino for offering a visual displaying a variety of important, hard-to-swallow truths.
Take a look at Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” visual, below, as well as see how fans are weighing in about the new release.