Camp (2011)
or… F**K YOU BELANIE: The Album (an audio companion to Saturn Unleashed by Jeffery Eckman)
Album: Camp
Artist: Childish Gambino
Original Release Date: 11/15/2011
Approx Date of Purchase: 11/15/2011
Format: CD
Amount of Stars: Somewhere between 2.5 and 3.25
Length: 56 min, 13 tracks
Favored Tracks: “Outside”, “Backpackers”, “Sunrise”, “That Power”
So here is my first review of an album on the internet. Disclaimer: I am biased towards my own personal tastes of music and I have poor grammar practices. I hardly care about this. And this is less a review of an album and more of “let me tell you a story about me and this album.” I will also do write ups on the packaging. Also, almost none of my reviews will be on recently released albums. Sorry. I will begin with the controversial topic of Childish Gambino.
I’ve been a fan of Donald Glover since the days of the Derrick Comedy videos and I loved those, as well as his work in Mystery Team and Community and many other things associated with his comedy performing/writing. I find the guy incredibly talented and I’ve always thought very highly of his work. Because of this, I put off listening to his music forever. I was afraid of an Eddie Murphy type situation (even though that wasn’t really all that bad) happening. Sure, if he was a comedy rapper it would have been a different story, but as far as I knew he was pretty serious about rapping. So… we go back to the night of Nov 14th, the night before the release date, and I’m having one of my “stay up all night looking at the internet/waiting for direct deposit to come through” adventures. I look at twitter from time to time and I’m a fan of Community so I follow all of their twitters, so of course I kept seeing endless hype from his fellow cast members. So I decided to give it a try. I listened to “Bonfire” (which is on this album) on his SoundCloud page and I HATED the shit out of it. The beat was interesting, but the lyrical content rubbed me the wrong way. It was kind of like the first time I tried to listen to Wu-Tang Clan in high school, I wasn’t ready for it.
So the next day I wrote off the whole Childish Gambino thing and I could have gone the rest of my life ignoring the rapping version of Donald Glover. Then, I was back on the twitter again and saw this here tweet:
That is Vernon Reid, the guitar player from Living Colour. One of my biggest guitar/music/everything heroes. And yes, just because Vernon Reid liked it, I decided it was worth a second try. I am that easily persuaded. Halfway through listening to the preview on NPR I decided I needed to drive to the nearest place that sells CDs (Best Buy… could be worse) and buy it (also the Stevie Wonder Christmas album). Then I proceeded to drive around Howard County and listen to it twice all the way through. At this point it was a five star album, not because of quality, but because of shock value. The image I had of Donald Glover up to that point had been shattered. The amount of serious and personal in his lyrics caught me off guard and for some reason, even though it was potentially ruining Donald Glover for me forever, I couldn’t stop listening to it for a whole week. Maybe it was because I was going through a period of “mad depressed” and I just wanted to hear a whole lot of sad and angry? Or maybe I wanted to hear the “dark side” of Donald Glover?
Lyrically, it is not actually that great. He sticks to a handful of topics (racial/identity issues, childhood gripes, girls he sleeps with, girls who broke his heart, and his genitalia) for the entire 56 minutes and doesn’t really add anything new. Now, on hip-hop nerd message boards and reddits his fans will constantly will defend him with “He’s doing it as satire. He’s not serious about it. He’s a comedian. Duh.” but that is most certainly not the case. He’s not a great rapper, but he is very serious about this rap thing. Even on the first listen I couldn’t shake the feeling of “This shit reminds me of Drake.” And I don’t like Drake, probably never will, and I am okay with that. But there is a sincerity to his delivery that I don’t find in guys like Drake, Kid Cudi, Lil Wayne, etc. Even though he is basically making the “same kind of music” as those guys. Also, I think his punchlines and pop culture references are the best and if he was just doing comedy rap there would be no challengers to his throne.
“Runin’ this thang, Money insane, Busy gettin’ brain like Krang.”
So I listened to an album about bitches and swag every day for a week straight. And on top of that it was by somebody who I wished wouldn’t make songs about bitches and swag. This type of behavior I usually reserve for Kanye West albums. But among all the references to sleeping with hot asian girls and lines about his penis, the overlying theme is pain. Comedians have lots of pain, it may not always be over stuff that actually matters in the grand scheme of things, but it’s true, and as a result they come off as big fucking jerks a lot of the time (which is why I don’t ever want to meet Dave Chappelle.) BUT… to put all of this “inner demons” on an album is something I really respect. For every “move white girls like there’s coke up my asscrack” there’s a story about his cousin he used to take baths with hating him because he left the hood, or his drug addict uncle, or something about making out with his best friends baby sister who he used to babysit. I can’t really relate to any of those things, but I respect him for laying out the negative aspects of his life and personality for everybody to see and not being afraid of it. That is something I can relate to.
So yeah, that is the rapping. The composition of the instrumentals are typical of modern day hip-hop, but there’s this element of musicianship and attention to detail that comes from Ludwig Goransson (Donald’s producer/composer pal) that you really can only get from The Roots these days. Layers of sound and instruments, a really nice sounding xylophone on “Kids (Keep Up)”, and Goransson’s piano and guitar playing make the album. The vocal/chorus production was another highlight as well as Donald Glover’s singing ability which is surprisingly good. He won’t be singing slow jams any time soon, but it holds up in the context of the album. I will single out “That Power” as the standout musical track. It’s the same chord progression over and over again, but it’s a good one and stuff get’s added and subtracted as the beat goes on (like most beats.) The kicker though is an outro where Glover takes us on a journey with him on the bus ride home from summer camp. The instrumental is stripped down at this point with ?uestlove playing the drums and Goransson playing the guitar while Donald tells the story, and the way they follow the story with their instruments was something that appealed to me greatly and wrapped up the album on a high note. There is nothing quite like musicians telling a story on their instruments.
Packaging: Regular fold out cardboard cd packaging. The art is well done enough. The sleeve is composed entirely of woodsy themed photographs and a very short thankyous section on the back page. The only issue I have is that the credits are listed underneath the plastic part that holds the CD. But I guess they figure you’ll be listening to the disc while you’re reading it. It was designed by Glover with photography by Ibra Ake and Art Direction/Layout by Chris Scully… just in case you were wondering.
Overall, it will probably not stand the test of time in my car CD player rotation, but I will always remember the first time I listened to this album and look back on it with fond memories. Hearing “Bonfire” in the context of the rest of the album, I had a different perspective about it and stopped minding the obscenity and swagness of it all. Donald Glover is not a great rapper. If I wasn’t already a fan of his this would have been a mediocre album at best. But I respect the gamble and I hope he continues to make music and evolve as an artist.
IN THE FUTURE: Reviews of the best The Beatles album, the only John Mayer album worth owning, Cody ChesnuTT, Undun, and more…
