I had never heard of Donald Glover until a couple of years ago, when I was impressed by his small but fun turn as astrophysicist (or at least astronavigator?) Rich Purnell in “The Martian”.
Right now, of course, he’s getting a lot of hype as young Lando Calrissian in “Solo”.
Today I looked him up, though, and learned that he’s done a ton of awesome stuff:
Donald McKinley Glover Jr. (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, singer, songwriter, rapper, and DJ. He raps under the stage name Childish Gambino and performs as a DJ under the name mcDJ.
He first came to attention for his work with Derrick Comedy while a student at New York University (NYU) and, with the help of Tina Fey, was hired at age 23 as a writer for the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. He later portrayed community college student Troy Barnes on the NBC sitcom Community. He stars in the FX series Atlanta, which he created and occasionally directs. For his work on Atlanta, Glover won various accolades, including Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series,[2] and Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
In film, Glover has appeared in Mystery Team (2009) Magic Mike XXL (2015), The Martian (2015), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) as Aaron Davis, and has been cast as the young Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story.[4] He will also provide the voice of Simba in a remake of the Disney film The Lion King (2019).
Anyway, I wanted to learn more about him because this morning I watched...this.
All I can say is...holy crap.
I don’t know what to think of this. It’s both brilliant and deeply disturbing. It’ll take me awhile to digest.
Oh, yeah...and it’s been watched more than 10.4 million times in 24 hours.
I should also note that Donald Glover created his Twitter account in 2009...but has only a single tweet...the one linking to the video, which he posted last night (Twitter says he has 19 tweets total but he must’ve deleted the rest or something).
Anyway, no one had posted anything about it yet so I figured I should.
Wow.
Note: OK, apparently he performed the song on SNL last night...but I’m guessing the video is a bit different from the live performance?