Did Childish Gambino deserve today's brutal Pitchfork review? →

So, minutes after I posted the thing about Childish Gambino here, it was decided that it’d be worth expounding on more fully on CultureMap. Give it a read, unless you’re really and truly sick of the guy 100% (which is understandable).

He defended his work’s misogyny with comparisons to other artists and half-hearted deflections (“It sometimes can be crazy and misogynistic and unfair, but so is life,” he insisted, and his publicist pulled him away to take care of a quick stage task as I started asking a follow-up). He generally seemed uncomfortable with the line of questioning. On Camp, he’s opposes it more overtly: “You better shut your mouth before I fuck it,” he raps to a critic who claims that she “wrote about rape culture” in the song “Backpackers.”

It’s weird. A guy whose stand-up material is thoughtful about a culture that can be tough on women is not someone that I’d expect to threaten to mouth-rape people who are critical of the misogyny in his music that he personally acknowledged when I asked him about it.

Pitchfork's review of Childish Gambino's 'Camp' →

Every attempt Glover makes to present himself as an inside operative confounding stereotypes about mainstream rap rings totally false. In “Fire Fly”, he brags about the ease of scoring college gigs and college girls (while rhyming “LSU” with “molest you”) and then complains: “No live shows because I can’t find sponsors/ For the only black guy at a Sufjan concert.” Bullshit. OK, look: I realize that there’s a chance some kid will hear that line and feel validated, and you know, the last thing we need is an armchair cracker like myself relating contrary anecdotal evidence about the demographics at Sufjan Stevens’ last concert. So let’s just look at the facts: Jay-Z and Beyoncé could be seen at Grizzly Bear shows in 2009, Justin Vernon has a free pass to jump on any track he chooses, and producers spent the year sampling Beach House, the xx, and Tame Impala. How does Glover explain Drake? Is he “crazy or hood,” or just a half-Jewish, former child actor from Toronto who’s already sold 600,000 copies of Take Care while signed to Lil Wayne’s record label? I mean, sub-major hip-hop isn’t a post-cred, post-racial utopia by any means, but I can’t think of another time when there were more options for listeners of just about any race or background seeking to identify with rappers on a non-allegorical level. I just have to assume Glover has completely ignored the success of Lil B, Main Attrakionz, Curren$y, Kendrick Lamar, Odd Future, Danny Brown, and especially Das Racist when he meekly moans, “Is there room in the game for a lame that rhymes/ And wears short shorts and tells jokes sometimes?” It’s the perfect summation of Camp: preposterously self-obsessed, but not the least bit self-aware. Tell me that ain’t insecure.

The last paragraph of that review is pretty fucking devastating. It kinda hits at every insecurity Glover reveals in his music. I’d imagine that a person could laugh off a 1.6 rating from Pitchfork as proof that the site is pushing an agenda (though ask Travis Morrison how easy that sort of thing is to shake), but having someone say: “Here is proof that this carefully-constructed persona designed to prove ‘realness’ is not only fake, but also completely irrelevant for these specific reasons I will lay out below” has to sting.

We’ll see if the review has any lingering impact on the Childish Gambino act. I think it’s one of the more interesting stories of the year, generally — how he’s blown up, but how there doesn’t seem to be a lot of place for that to go. People ate up his set at Fun Fun Fun Fest last month, but there’s such a strong element of novelty to the Gambino thing that it seems like it really could be punctured by a mean, accurate review from Pitchfork.

Fun Fun Fun Fest in review →

At a time when trend-chasing (or even, if you want to be generous, attempts at trend-setting) is the only way anyone can think of to try to keep up with a music landscape that is ever-changing, uncertain and laden with an extremely short attention span, Slayer is a singular, iconic artist. It’s more appealing now than ever, to more people than ever, to hear a band that just does what they do without any of those other concerns. They like to play fast songs about death, destruction and Satan. They’ve been doing it for three decades. If you don’t like it, go watch Odd Future.

We live in uncertain times, but some things do not change. All hail Slayer.

I spent most of the weekend at Fun Fun Fun Fest, which lived up to its name. I was there, officially, to scout out some neat bits of music-culture weirdness for MTV Hive, which will start rolling out shortly, and did some moonlighting for my pals at CultureMap while I was there.

The above paragraphs come from the write-up I did for Slayer (duh), and there is more to be found in the links below.

I had a good time trying to contextualize all of the things I saw, because I think small festivals like Fun Fun Fun offer some interesting opportunities to get at the pulse of what people are into culturally in an increasingly fractured culture. The festival was huge, and absolutely packed with people, but it’s not an all-things-to-all-people event like Austin City Limits or Coachella — there’s a definite aesthetic here, and it’s designed to appeal to a few different types of people, finding what they have in common. How do Odd Future and Slayer and Major Lazer and Danzig and Passion Pit and Blonde Redhead and Public Enemy and Spoon all fit together? They all appeal to the nebulous beast known as the American Hipster, but there are people who feel passionate toward all of those artists who don’t fit that descriptor, if it means anything at all, in the slightest. What does the opportunity to see them all together offer?

I don’t know for sure that I found any answers, but I enjoyed very much trying to piece it together. Here are the CultureMap stories:

• FFF6 in review: Danzig Legacy an epic disappointment 
• FFF6 in review: Okkervil River eschews nostalgia for rock and roll 
• FFF6 in review: Wugazi proves itself worthy of the name 
• FFF6 in review: Childish Gambino owns the blue stage 
• FFF6 in review: Henry Rollins is your cool punk rock uncle now 
• FFF6 in review: All hail Slayer, deliverance from Danzig

Common and Childish Gambino and Karl Rove and me.

“Yes, let’s invite a misogynist to the White House.”

— Karl Rove on Common’s appearance at the White House poetry event.

This has all been super weird. I don’t believe for a second that any of the conservative outrage regarding Common has come from anyone who’s even dimly aware of Common’s recording career. I am fairly certain that anyone who’s outraged by the fact that “a misogynist” was invited to the White House (like Common is the first one EVER to get that phone call!) got a context-free crash-course in Common’s lyrics over the past week, at best, and is just making assumptions because he’s a rapper, more likely. If people are going to whine about “the race” card when they’re called out for describing Common as “a thug,” then it’s really, really clear that it’s just an attempt to silence people, because the real racism is pointing out racism. “Oh, I hadn’t even noticed he was black when I said that!”

That said: I kinda agree with Karl Rove a little bit here. Which is weird! But so much of the outrage-to-the-outrage has revolved around the fact that this is Common! He’s one of the good guys! And I get it — socially-aware hip hop fans have pointed to Common as a shining star for over a decade. I mean, I’m talking about myself there — I used to love H.I.M. I quoted the dude in my wedding vows. But this kerfuffle has reminded me of something I’ve been putting off writing about for a while now, at least since I interviewed Donald Glover a couple months ago. 

Which is: I think it’s actually worse for me when someone who’s thoughtful and insightful and expresses viewpoints I relate to starts dropping thin misogyny than when it’s over-the-top, Nate Dogg or Odd Future shit. That’s a thing that really bothers me about Glover — as a comedian, he says a lot of things that I think are insightful and perceptive and challenging. As a rapper, meanwhile, he says a lot of shit like “cumming on her face” and “fuck a bitch to pass the time” and “I’m a rapist!”

So when I got the chance to talk to him in March, I asked him about it. His answer wasn’t really satisfying — basically, he got kind of defensive and made excuses, and then his publicist pulled him away because he had to shoot a video thing, and when I asked a follow-up after he came back, he took the question in another direction (incidentally, he talked about his defensiveness about being called “faggot,” where he was once more thoughtful and making decent points). I’m never quite clear, with entertainment journalism, how much you’re supposed to poke these issues. I know that I am very interested in Donald Glover’s misogynistic lyrics, but I don’t think my editors particularly want an interview that’s 1500 words of me trying to get him to admit that he’s full of shit. Furthermore, he’s not on camera — he can always blow me off if he doesn’t like the questions. So in this case, I took the fact that he didn’t really engage with the questions to mean that I needed to move on to something else. Which means I never got at what bothers me, which is this: When you have a guy who has obviously given some real thought to the social forces at work behind gender issues — one of the “good guys” — and then he starts dropping this sort of casual misogyny, he’s saying some ugly things about the concept of being a responsible dude. He’s saying, A, that it’s a part-time job, and B, that at the end of the day, it’s still totally cool to cut loose and go on about all the bitches you want to fuck.

I’m not a prude. I recognize that Glover is a single dude in his 20’s who is suddenly rich and famous and who is rapping about his life. I don’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong about rapping about horniness — when he drops his line about how he wants to “fuck small girls / minus SM / meaning fuck all girls,” I’m not sure he’s doing anything besides honestly talking about himself. It’s the “fuck a bitch to pass the time” shit, where he’s so obviously posturing in a way that’s actually dishonest that bothers me. Because if you’re a thoughtful, insightful dude who’s socially conscious and who talks about women respectfully, you gotta drop a no homo in there somehow, right?

And I don’t think that was ever more clear to me than on Common’s verse on “Make Her Say” by Kid Cudi. The song is awful — I love Cudi’s first record, but that’s not a highlight of it, with a lazy, obviously lying-around Kanye beat and sleepy rapping from Common, Kanye, and Cudi — built around the fact that the words “poker face” sound like the words “poke her face.” Like with your dick!

But Common’s verse is offensive even within offensiveness. Because he is so quick to dismiss everything that made people like him to express this shit. “They say, ‘you be on that conscious tip,’” he raps, “Get your hair right and get up on this conscious dick!” And — man! What a bummer. Because that’s the point he’s making, expressly and explicitly — just because he’s got a reputation as a socially conscious guy, that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to treat women like total shit. Haha, poke her face! Because it’s not about horniness — it’s about violence.

And so when Karl fucking Rove starts talking about how wrong it is to invite a misogynist to the White House — because lord knows we’ve never done that before! — I want to be able to point to the guy who wrote “The Light” and “I Used To Love H.E.R.” and say that he’s obviously full of shit. But I can’t, because even the leading example of what a progressive, conscious rapper is can be accurately characterized with that word. And I fucking hate agreeing with Karl Rove.

I interviewed Donald Glover for the A.V. Club. →

Also, here is a picture with him and my wife, because it makes her happy when she looks at it and she will probably see this post on her phone while she’s on the bus ride home! Hi, Kat!

Anyway: This time out, we talk about his IAMDONALD tour, the fact that he hits on Rashida Jones in his songs kinda a lot, and the six years he spent working hard to become an overnight success.

(My previous interview with Glover ran on MTV Hive earlier this month, if you’re interested.)