Response Template #1 Title: This is America Artist: Childish Gambino Text Type: Song Childish Gambino’s (Real name Donald Glover) latest song This is America, released on the 6th of May, has many people scratching their heads after hearing the song, as well as watching the joyful yet somehow dark music video. This includes me as well. The song appears to be a commentary on the harsh reality of black life in America and has hints of gun violence and discrimination towards the black culture. The lyrics of the song are almost in riddle form as they do not have literal meaning to them and is a bit of a mystery to find the true meaning. This is the same as the music video, directed by Hiro Murai. At many stages in the music video, it seems happy …show more content…
However, to fully understand the deeper meanings of the song, we need to pair the lyrics with parts of the video clips and the music of which it goes with it. This will give us a more comprehensive understanding of what he [Childish Gambino] means when saying these lyrics. Now, the lyrics in This is America, on the surface, are very simplistic and redundant throughout. And it almost feels repeated through different parts of the song, as in the main chorus of the song says, “This is America, don’t catch you slippin’ now. Don’t catch you slippin’ now. Look what I’m whippin’ now”. However, I feel as if Child Gambino purposefully made out the lyrics to be simple and minimalistic, and was used to counterbalance the ‘chaos’ and ‘chewiness’ of the music video. Personally, I don’t think Childish Gambino wrote the lyrics, and then made a music video separate to it, but the entire project was planned and very thought out and deliberate. With this, I don’t think This is America was meant to be experienced just as a song, but needed the whole package that came with it as well to fully grasp the true meaning behind it as well, as stated