No better depiction of America has ever been portrayed.

Donald Glover really surprised me with this one. I heard this song a few times before watching the video and I just tuned it out. I did not like this song at all. It was way too abrasive for my taste. After watching the video I realized everything about the tempo and lyrics are really just supporting the message of the music video.

I went from strongly disliking this song to having a very uncomfortable respect for it, much like these Youtubers watching it for the first time on stream.

Not all of these guys fully understand the message, but they are left with the same feeling: Extremely uncomfortable respect.

And I won't pretend that I fully understand the message either, but watching a few more video's about it and reading some analysis gave me a little more perspective.

The song obviously has very heavy-handed racial overtones. Make's sense. Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) is black and America is pretty racist, with a rich history of worsening racism cascading into the past. His show called Atlanta is pretty good and I need to catch up on it. It has similar themes.

More importantly, the song has strong themes of money, power, greed, corruption, and chaos, with resulting derelict governance/environment.

I found this to be a helpful analysis for the more deeply cut references:

• Confederacy
• Jim Crow
• blackface
• apartheid
• prison-state
• apocalypse

The ending is very clear: ESCAPE!

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