I AM JUST A RAPPER: A Lyrical and Cultural Analysis of Childish Gambino's Rise from Outcast to King

Williams, Alexander

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

I AM JUST A RAPPER: A Lyrical and Cultural Analysis of Childish Gambino's Rise from Outcast to King Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6395w8294

Abstract

The Childish Gambino persona created by Donald Glover is a Romantic and Marxist hero stemming from Glover’s experience as an African American within the cultural, socioeconomic, and artistic confines of the contemporary United States. At his conception, Childish Gambino was an outcast shunned by both mainstream and African American media outlets alike, but through lyrical and intellectual prognostication, the persona blazed a new trail into the fabric of American pop culture. Like other rappers, Glover’s construction of such a complex figure is primarily rooted in the historical turmoil between enslaved Africans and the racist, hegemonic state that commodified them.

In this paper, I will argue that by fulfilling his lyrical prophecies, Childish Gambino becomes Plato’s philosopher king: a leader proving his claim to the throne through his weaponization of intelligence, philosophy, and guardianship. I wish to show how Childish Gambino represents a symbol much larger than Glover’s individual existence. This is an important distinction to note when examining both Glover and Childish Gambino, as the very small barrier separating poet from persona allows for analysis of each individual as their own entity and together as a sum of their parts. To conduct this analysis, I will first present a summary of the Black male rapper archetype to give the proper historical, critical, and cultural contexts in which Gambino’s work can usefully be analyzed. Second, I am connecting my research to prior scholarship on African American studies, hauntology, Romanticism, Black Marxism, and trauma theory. The last piece of my methodology is to use Gambino’s lyrics as poetic support to illustrate how his ascension to philosopher king is a transcendent contemporary moment of resistance against the resurgence of white nationalism under the banner of Trumpism and a triumphant model of Black reclamation in the age of Black Lives Matter and police militarization. I believe this lyrical and cultural analysis will demonstrate the potential for rappers to spearhead intellectual movements and advance the literary archive.

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