December 2nd, 2016. That date, I think, is when
the script just completely flipped. Oh, absolutely.
If you were into hip hop back then, you remember
it. You had childish Gambino Donald Glover coming
off this massive success with, because the internet.
He was the witty punchline guy. Exactly. The
existential rapper. Yeah. The assumption was,
okay, for his third album, he's just going to
double down on the bars. And instead you press
play and the first thing you hear is a scream.
A literal scream. And then. Was it a glockenspiel?
A glockenspiel, yeah. And this heavy distorted
guitar, it sounds like it was pulled right out
of, you know, 1971. We are, of course, doing
a deep dive into Awaken My Love. It's been a
few years, but looking at the sources we've got
here, production notes, the rollout, the reviews,
it's so clear this wasn't just another album.
No, it felt like a career suicide mission that
somehow turned into a total resurrection. That
is a perfect way to frame it. And that's our
mission for this deep dive, right? To figure
out how he did it. It's more than just the sound.
It's the whole methodology. How do you go from
Fruity Loops rap beats to recording live funk
that sounds like it was pressed on vinyl 40 years
ago? And we also have to get into the cost of
it all. The cosplay accusations from some critics
and, of course, the controversy around the cover
art. Yeah, that's still a lingering issue. Okay,
so let's start with what you call the great departure.
It's easy to just say, he stopped rapping, but
it's, uh, it's... so much deeper than that it's
a complete change in his musical vocabulary completely
well look at camp or because the internet the
music's engine was the lyricism the beat was
just there to carry the words on awaken my love
the engine is the groove it's all psychedelic
soul p funk rmb and glover's voice here it's
an instrument it's about texture not just rhymes
You mentioned the screaming at the top. For a
first -time listener, that's got to be the most
jarring part. Oh, for sure. The critics call
it a bold departure, which is, you know, polite
critics speak for what on earth is happening.
He's really straining his voice. Whispering.
Yes. All these wild inflections. It's straight
out of the George Clinton and Funkadelic playbook.
He isn't trying to sound pretty. He's trying
to sound effective in that very specific funk
world. OK, let's define that context for a second.
We keep throwing around P -Funk. So for anyone
who just knows Redbone from the radio, what are
we actually talking about? So P -Funk is basically
the Parliament Funkadelic universe that George
Clinton created in the 70s. It wasn't just funk
music. It was a whole mythology. Like Afrofuturism?
Afrofuturism, psychedelia, sci -fi, all mixed
with these heavy, almost rock guitars and soulful
harmonies. So when Rolling Stone called this
album an enthralling trip, they were getting
it. He didn't just borrow a beat. He tried to
recreate that whole chaotic atmosphere. It really
is like a time machine. You listen to me and
your mama. And you were just not in 2016 anymore.
And that was completely intentional. What's amazing
is that before we even got the music, he gave
us the map. Ah, the rollout. He's almost better
at marketing than he is at music sometimes. He's
a master of it. And this whole thing was an exercise
in world building. So let's go back. June 17th,
2016, he tweets a link. Just pharaohs .earth,
right? That was it. And it wasn't a pre -save
link. It was an app. And when you opened it,
you were just... drifting in space exactly looking
at this little blue planet with a clock counting
down it forced you to slow down to engage with
this visual before you heard a single note so
when the countdown finally hit zero the app crashes
you down to earth and it puts you on a map in
joshua tree california it was an invitation to
a physical event the big concert experiences
yes you could buy tickets through the app for
these shows in september 2016. this was almost
three months before they album dropped he debuted
the whole thing live in the middle of the desert
i mean talk about setting a mood and he leaned
right into it The reports from the show are wild.
Glover wearing glow -in -the -dark tribal paint
on his braids, a pink and yellow skirt. Wow.
The whole band had a similar kind of tribal neon
vibe. So this is the moment when thousands of
fans realized, wait a minute, he's not rapping.
That's the tension. You've got all these kids
in the desert who are probably expecting 3 ,005,
and instead they get this 11 -song funk opera.
It was a huge gamble. But he didn't leave everyone
else out, did he? No. Later on, he updated the
Pharos app. You could watch the performance of
Me and Your Mama through a VR headset on your
phone. Which is kind of ironic. A tech -forward
way to experience an album that sounds so deliberately
anti -digital. Exactly. Which brings us to the
production. To me, this is the most impressive
part. It just doesn't sound like it was made
on a laptop in 2016. Right, when everything sounded
like it was made on a laptop. This was the big
technical pivot. It's still him and Ludwig Göransson,
his usual guy. But instead of being digital wizards,
they just... They stripped it all back. They
went for total analog fidelity. The instrument
list in the liner notes is just wild. I'm seeing
glockenspiel bottles like literal glass bottles,
a cello banjo, harpsichord, a B3 organ. And that
cello banjo is such a perfect example of the
detail they went into. I got to ask, what does
a cello banjo even bring to the table? It's all
about the texture. It has a lower pitch, this
kind of plunky resonance sound that you just
can't fake with a synth. It gives everything.
a muddy, organic, wooden feel. They wanted that
70s grit. And it wasn't just the instruments.
It was the voices, too. Right. They brought in
Brent Jones and the Best Life Singers. That gives
you that big, choral, communal feeling, which
was so central to the original P -Funk idea.
It's a village, not just one guy. So when you
hear an album that sounds this retro... the first
thing you assume is that it's just full of samples.
That's the common assumption, and this is where
it gets really amazing. The album is almost entirely
original composition. Wait, seriously? Seriously.
The only major sample on the whole record is
on the track Riot, which samples Funkadelic's
Good to Your Ear Hole. Everything else, Have
Some Love, Boogeyman, all those grooves that
sound like they were ripped from 1974. They made
them from scratch. From scratch. Glover, Gernson,
and their team of musicians. I mean, that's incredibly
difficult. It's so much harder to write a song
that sounds like a classic than it is to just
sample one. It requires a level of music theory
that, frankly, a lot of rappers don't have. They
studied that era so closely they were able to
basically manufacture a fake memory for the listener.
So let's talk about the key tracks, Me and Your
Mama. The lead single. It's really the thesis
statement for the album. It starts as a lullaby
and then that beat switch hits you and it's like,
OK, abandon all expectations right now. And then,
of course, the monster hit Redbone. The breakout
won a Grammy for best traditional R &B performance.
Think about that. Traditional. The Academy basically
said, yep, this rapper now fits in the canon
of traditional soul. And that high pitched vocal.
It sounds like it's pitch shifted up, but it's
not. It's not. That's him singing in his head
voice, pushing his falsetto to its absolute limit.
It gives the song that vulnerable, almost paranoid
feeling. Then there's terrified. A smoother cut.
A little more sinister, kind of prince -esque,
but still in that same analog world. Okay, we
have to talk about the visuals. The album cover.
If you see it once, you just never forget it.
It is so striking. It's a photo by the creative
director Ibra Ak of the model Giannina Oteto.
The look on her face. It's like ecstasy and terror
all at once. Her eyes are rolled back. It's incredibly
intense. And the headdress was designed by Laura
Wass. But what's really cool is if you were watching
Glover's show Atlanta, you might have actually
seen it before the album even came out. Oh, right.
The Easter egg. Exactly. The artwork was just
sitting in the background in the Juneteenth episode.
He loves to cross pollinate his projects like
that. And the cover itself is another one of
those homages. A very direct one. It's a nod
to the cover of Funkadelic's 1971 album Maggot
Brain, which has a woman screaming with her head
coming out of the dirt. But we can't really talk
about the cover without getting into the controversy
that came out later. No, we can't. And it's a
serious issue that really clashes with the whole
utopian community vibe of the music itself. So
this is about the model, Jeannie Notato. What
exactly happened? Well, years later, she came
forward and accused Ibraak and the whole team
of mistreatment over payment. She said she was
paid very little for the shoot. Extremely low
pay. and she says the promise was that they'd
get residuals or royalties once the album blew
up the classic do it for the exposure line basically
and according to her that money never came she
said it's been an exhausting emotional and overall
sad thing to deal with she felt really exploited
did she ever pursue legal action She said her
lawyers tried to contact Gambino's team but were
reportedly ignored. It's just, it's a really
bitter footnote on such an iconic image. Yeah,
it definitely complicates how you see that cover
now. You see the art, but you can't unknow the
allegations behind it. It makes you ask, can
the art really be about community if the process
of making it wasn't? Shissing back to the reception.
The album drops. Fans are shocked. What did the
critics think? Was it a masterpiece or a mistake?
It was completely divisive, a total love it or
hate it situation. Let's start with the praise.
Okay, so you had the New York Times. They called
it both homage and parody. They thought he captured
the whole spirit of the 70s, the sensuality,
the politics, the humor. And The Guardian was
on board too. They called it a prog -tinged freak
funk opus. Rolling Stone loved it. The positive
reviews all basically respected the ambition,
the big swing he took. But not everyone was convinced.
No. The main criticism was about authenticity.
Vice was probably the harshest. They called it
pure funkadelic cosplay. Ouch. Cosplay is a loaded
word. It implies he's just dressing up. And that
was the core of the critique. Is this a genuine
expression or is Donald Glover, the actor, just
playing the role of a 70s funk singer? Pitchfork
questioned if it was just mimicry. Even Robert
Criscow, the dean of American rock critics, had
an opinion. Yeah, he called it overrated and
romantic P -funk rec show. So you have this huge
divide. Is it a brilliant tribute or is it just
a hollow imitation? But despite what the critics
were arguing about, the audience seemed to love
it. They did. Commercially, it was a big success.
Debuted at number five on the Billboard 200,
went platinum. And the awards followed. Well,
Redbone was the awards magnet. It won the Grammy.
And the album itself got nominated for Album
of the Year. So the Recording Academy, at least,
saw it as a legitimate and important R &B record.
So why do you think it connected so deeply with
the audience, even when some critics were so
skeptical? I think for a lot of Glover's younger
fans, millennials, Gen Z, this was their first
real exposure to this kind of funk. They'd never
listened to Maggot Brain. Exactly. So to them,
this sound was new and original. Glover was the
bridge translating 1970s analog soul for a 2016
digital audience. So when you zoom out, we started
with a punchline rapper. And we ended with a
Grammy -winning funk singer. It's a story of
total reinvention. He looked at what everyone
expected him to do, make another rap album, and
he just did the absolute opposite. It's all about
expectation, isn't it? If he had dropped a mediocre
rap album, people might have just shrugged. But
because he tried something this hard, he forced
everyone to listen differently. And that tension
we talked about, imitation versus innovation,
that really is the album's legacy. It is derivative.
It sounds just like the 70s, but it was presented
to an audience who had never heard that before.
And the fact that they built it all from the
ground up with real instruments. Yeah. That feels
like the innovation part. It wasn't lazy. It
was a reconstruction, a very heartfelt one, even
if the business side of the cover art makes that
whole love and community message a little more
complicated. It's a complex legacy for a very
complex album. So here's a final thought for
you to chew on as you go about your day. We always
say we want artists to evolve. Right. But when
an artist completely changes lanes like this,
do we judge them on how well they pull off the
new style? Or do we kind of penalize them for
leaving the old one behind? And to add to that,
thinking about the payment controversy, how do
we square the utopian spirit of the music, the
choirs, the stay woke message with the cold business
reality behind the curtain? Can the art truly
be utopian if the process wasn't? Heavy questions.
for a very funky album. Go listen to Redbone
again. Maybe you'll hear it a little differently
this time. Thanks for diving in with us. Thank
you.