Donald Glover, known in the music world by Childish Gambino, surprise-released a new album Sunday, but in a very unusual way.
The rapper, actor, comedian, writer, producer and director created a website called “Donald Glover Presents,” with 12 tracks featuring artists like Ariana Grande, 21 Savage, SZA and even his own son.
The 12 tracks were on a continuous loop, with no information about the album or even song titles present. All fans can see is a four panel mockup design for the album cover, inside and back. There’s also a small blank space at the bottom where listeners can type a message and send it, but there isn’t any information as to what the submissions are for.
However, about only 12 hours after the album’s release on the website, it’s currently unavailable for listeners, and there’s no information on when it will be officially released.
Though the stream opens with the 2018 Childish Gambino hit “Feels Like Summer,” the rest is all Glover. The tracks also feature “Wardlords,” a song debuted at Glover’s 2019 Coachella set and “Algorythm,” a track Glover performed during his This Is America tour that was also used in a Google Pixel commercial.
Genius, a website specializing in hip-hop lyrics and their meanings, has listed song titles for the album, but at the current stage of Glover’s release, it is probably just using educated guesses. Here is its guess at the tracklist for listeners of the stream to follow along:
- Intro (Warlords)
- Little Foot Big Foot
- Why Go To the Party
- Feels Like Summer
- Don’t Worry About Tomorrow (The Violence)
- Under the Sun
- We Are (Interlude)
- Algorythm
- Time (feat. Ariana Grande)
- Vibrate (feat. 21 Savage & SZA)
- To Be Beautiful
- Sweet Thing / Thank You
Donald Glover Presents is also the name of the artist’s Adidas partnership, which, unlike the album, has been heavily advertised. Glover’s last full-length LP was Awaken, My Love! in 2016, which garnered him the Record of the Year award at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. Aside from “Feels Like Summer,” Glover has also released singles such as “Summertime Magic” in 2018 and “Mood 4 Eva,” a collaboration with Beyonce and Jay-Z for The Lion King: The Gift companion album in 2019.
Glover has said for years that he would be ending his run as Childish Gambino, so there’s no telling whether or not this is his last run as his alter ego or if he will emerge on the music scene as the new and improved rapper, Donald Glover.
Fans of his music are going wild, as he dropped the stream in the middle of the night, marking his first release of a full-length project in over 1,000 days. Though the album’s sound has the same integrity and vibe that his music typically possesses, he also brings a more techno-vibe to his sound. It’s always so fun to watch how his sound evolves over the years, but no matter how much he experiments, Glover has yet to release a project his fans don’t love.
Here’s how fans are reacting on Twitter:
