Donald Glover, known more commonly by his stage name Childish Gambino, has come a long way since rapping over Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks.” His show at the Cuthbert Amphitheater last night came with a 7-piece band, an interactive messaging board projected behind the stage and a healthy dose of symbolism.
On tour in support of his recent record Because the Internet, Gambino has proven himself to be an artist, using his music and performance as a commentary on the Internet’s strength and capability. Beginning in 2006 with Derrick Comedy (his college sketch comedy group) Gambino used YouTube to release videos, which caught the attention of Community’s Dan Harmon and Tina Fey, thus skyrocketing his career. The Internet has great power, and Gambino knows how to harness it.
Behind the stage was a large screen showing projections of concert attendee’s drawings and Tweet-sized messages. On his Deep Web Tour, Gambino includes the Deep Web App where fans can download at the show and then interact in real time. It was quite the novel and exciting addition to live music but leave it to crowd of anonymous Millennials to treat it like a YouTube comment section. Crude drawings of penises and bongs were accompanied with tweets like “@johnray I masturbate to pictures of dogs.” The Internet is the most powerful tool mankind has created, and so far, we’re still finding ways of abusing it.
Following opening act Danny Brown was Gambino’s touring DJ Stefan Ponce who hit a few buttons and played a prerecorded mix of contemporary hits and past favorites. The crowd reacted strongly for DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here)” and the Fresh Prince of Philadelphia theme song, but it was strange that the mix included two Gambino tracks, considering we were already present at his show.
Nothing summed up the vibe of the audience better than Ponce’s remark towards the end of his set. “Shout out to Eugene,” he said to a cheering college and high school-aged crowd. “Y’all said ‘nigga’ and y’all are white as hell!”
At 9 pm the old, obnoxious sound of dial-up Internet started blaring through the speakers, reminding the crowd of how much they all hated that noise. After a few minutes, the band took the stage followed by Gambino who was casually dressed in knee-length white shorts and a long-sleeved black shirt. He sat at the piano and began playing the soft interlude track “Playing Around Before the Party Starts” but then blasted into “Worldstar.”
“Yeah, mothafucka, take your phone out to record this, ain’t nobody can ignore this,” raps Gambino in “Worldstar.” Against a sea of illuminated screens, these lyrics felt comic and rather tongue-in-cheek.
About midway through the show, another screen was lowered down on the stage disconnecting Gambino from his audience. The vibe took a turn to the serious and sincere while Gambino sang in a falsetto backed by light flamenco guitar and thrusting bass. This addition of another screen provided more substance to the technological symbolism that wraps around Because the Internet. We’ve become the most connected generation of people in history but it’s through glowing, hollow screens.
Since this is the most interactive show currently on tour, a mid-show survey was cast where the audience could respond feeling either lost, some type of way, (wide eyed Emoji) or Roscoe’s Wetsuit. Consensus was “some type of way.”
Much of his performance was dedicated and orchestrated to material off of his new album but towards the end, the backdrop scenery changed to a campfire, a nod to his first album Camp, where Gambino dusted off a few of his early hits. A colorful rendition of “Heartbeat” began with an alternate intro and included a gripping slap bass rhythm. But the best change up was the very end when Gambino switched the final lyrics to, “But not really because I got some head in Eugene and it was –” inaudible, due to the loud cheers. The show came to a close with “Bonfire” and as the song began, so did the rain.
Childish Gambino has found success, because of the Internet.