In a new interview with Wired, Donald Glover continues winning all our hearts and minds by emphatically being Donald Glover.

Star Wars fans and Atlanta fans looking for details on what’s next for either project will be disappointed. Writer Allison Samuels doesn’t showcase Glover’s work — she gives Glover the chance to express what good things come when you are yourself.

He explains that the secret behind Atlanta’s excellence isn’t his comedic sensibility or Hiro Murai’s trippy visuals. It is that the show emulated what was best about two of Glover’s favorite shows, The Bernie Mac Show and Chapelle's Show. “Those shows were so honest and true,” Glover said. And so Atlanta had to be as well.

Photo: Joe Pugliese/Wired

His new music, a change from what listeners are used to hearing from Childish Gambino, has been lauded, he thinks, because he drew upon the music of his youth and the emotions he experienced upon becoming a father. "I remember listening to some of my dad’s music as a kid, like Parliament," Glover said. "I’d hear a woman moaning and groaning, and it was so scary because she sounded terrified. That music was filled with so many different real emotions and feelings that you could listen to it again and again.”

When it came time to unveil his new album, he tried to share his focus on feeling by forcing concert-goers to surrender their phones, saying, “We wanted to give them a complete show and have their attention.”

He had their attention, and has all of our attention. Whatever strange and wonderful thing he does with it, we can be sure, it will be uniquely Gloverian.

Photo: Joe Pugliese/Wired

When she greeted Glover, Samuels gave him a hug. He chastised her, "What’s up with that hug? That didn’t have any feeling!" She tried again, getting it right. That's how every Donald Glover project feels, and how the next ones will too: a warm hug, full of feeling.

Troy Barnes

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