Lav's Music Corner

Childish Gambino   is an artist whose career has taken him through a dynamic range of sounds and styles. From the humor-laced hip hop of the still solid Because The Internet  to the Funkadelic soul of the excellent Awaken My Love , calling Gambino a "rapper" has been increasingly inadequate of a classification as the years go by. Earlier this year Gambino shares ATAVISTA , a finished, and marginally improved version of his divisive 2020 album. But that merely set the table to Bando Stone,  which has been marketed as the "final" Childish Gambino album.  To be completely honest, I think the Bando Stone  era got off to a great start. Lead single Lithonia  is easily the best song here and that was obvious to me from the very first time I heard it. It piles one catchy refrain after another on top of a roaring rock instrumental to great results. He also shared In The Night  which is a pretty nice song that gets solid contributions from Amaarae and Jorja Smit...

Here is a quick summary of all the records I reviewed this month. With some major production issues and a lack of true highlights Shadows  is one of the most inconsequential rap albums of the year Review After a long break fro releases under the Caribou moniker Dan Snaith returns with a bright, catchy and relentlessly sweet series of glittery electronic songs that sound so refreshing this year. Review The biggest fault on Changes  is that no part of who Justin is as a person or an artist makes into any of these generic focus-grouped contemporary pop tunes. Review Eternal Atake  may have sounded cool in 2017. But three years past Uzi's peak the record is bloated, behind the times and is filled with songs that sound like nobody involved even tried. Review The Uzi record that did a much better job at living up to expectations was his surprise second release. Filled with great features, much improved beats and a newfound swagger in Uzi's delivery LUV ...

Childish Gambino is the long term moniker of the extraordinary multi-talented Donald Glover. He was worked as an actor, comedian, writer and producer on TV shows and even a short film of his own. But one of his most popular ventures has been the music of Childish Gambino which began in the early 2010's as a snarky wordplay heavy rap persona but evolved as Glover got older. The last Childish Gambino studio album abandoned hip hop altogether in favor of a more funk and soul inspired sound om Awaken My Love . The last time Gambino made a major splash with a release however was in 2018 with the mega hit single This Is America  which fuses the worlds of hip hop with politically charged messaging and numerous instrumental switch-ups. Review By Lavender: Pretty much everybody my age grew up with Donald Glover. In middle school we all watched his stand-up comedy and downloaded DatPiff files of his early mixtapes and debut record Camp . In high school everyone started watching him on...