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One of the most celebrated songs of the last decade had surprising origins.
In a new video interview with GQ, Donald Glover reveals that his 2018 song “This Is America”, released under his rap name Childish Gambino, was originally a Drake diss track.
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“I had the idea three years before,” he explains. “I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’ The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line. It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”
The song was released on May 6, 2018, alongside an incendiary music video directed by his “Atlanta” collaborator Hiro Murai.
Dealing with themes about the Black experience in America, including gun violence, the 2015 Charleston church shooting, police abuses and minstrelsy, both the song and video were met with great acclaim, and won the Grammy for Best Music Video.
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Glover also talks about the approach to the music video, which he says was initially inspired by Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” video.
“How do you make people care about anything anymore?” he says of his approach to the song. “There’s just so much s**t. You have to have a moment in real time.”