![]() The songs are all as memorable as Bootsy Collins' star-shaped sunglasses, and Glover's vocal gymnastics and impassioned delivery vault things past into more rarified air. It's not an academic exercise by any means, though. Göransson and the tight crew of musicians must all be dedicated students of the era's sounds, and they play with controlled passion and fire. Empowering pop-soul songs ("Have Some Love"), gloomy tales of the entertainment biz ("Zombies"), late-night detours into true love ("Redbone") - everything Glover tries comes off just right and every note on every song is perfectly placed. Tripped-out ballads like "Me and Your Mama" and "Terrified" bump up against massive jams like "Riot" and "Boogieman," and totally oddball moments like "California" match up well with heartfelt songs about fatherhood ("The Night Me and Your Mama Met," "Stand Tall"), which give the album its heart. Glover and Göransson construct the album like a soundtrack to a nostalgic trip, hitting all the sweet spots of that magic moment when funk and soul got truly odd and inspiring. He doesn't have a classic soul singer's voice, but what he does have is personality and it comes through loud and clear, even through the murkiest moments of nasty funk. He does use his voice like an acrobat, though, sometimes crooning sweetly, other times screaming like a demon. "Awaken, My Love!" has fuzz guitars, vintage synths of all kinds, burbling organs, grimy basslines, and masses of backing vocals adorning the songs the influence of Sly Stone and George Clinton's various groups is strong, and Glover doesn't rap at all. While working on his new TV series, Atlanta, Glover and his longtime sidekick Ludwig Göransson seem to have had some kind of musical awakening brought on by late-'60s dipped-in-psychedelia soul and early-'70s earthy funk. His 2015 EP Kauai widened his approach a bit, with Glover doing more singing than rapping in a hazy modern R&B style, showing off a voice so smooth that it's almost unfair that one guy can have so much going for him. Over the course of a backpack's worth of mixtapes and a couple of albums that won him commercial success, if not critical acclaim, Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) staked a claim as one of the brainiest, weirdest, and most inventive rappers around. I kind of missed out on the psychedelic funk. “With this, as a musician I have a jazz and classical and blues background, but I still had to do the research on the funk part. “When I worked with Donald on Camp, I hadn’t produced much hip-hop before, so I had to kind of soak in that and do my research on that,” he says. Goransson, who was born and raised in Sweden and moved to Los Angeles in 2007, admits he wasn’t the most versed in funk and psych-soul traditions before Glover introduced him to P-Funk and Sly and the Family Stone records. I think that opened up a lot of new doors for us.” ![]() ![]() “But it was also taking a step away from computers and to have the whole recording process filled with more air and live performances. ![]() “The whole album started out with me, Donald and a couple musicians just being in the studio together for a week and basically just experimenting, Donald just kind of being open to anything,” Goransson says. Hot Off 'Atlanta,' Donald Glover Prepares for 'Star Wars' & Childish Gambino's Funkadelic-Inspired… The song is an unmistakable nod to George Clinton‘s seminal psych-funk collective - particularly Funkadelic’s early 1969-1975 output, before Parliament‘s party-funk horns and swirling Moogs replaced gritty guitars as the main driver of the groove - and steers home an influence that pops up again and again all over the album. What Goransson sees as a natural evolution - one that started with Glover expanding beyond just rapping on 2013’s Because the Internet, and continued with more sung vocals on 2014’s Kauai - caught most people by surprise when “Me and Your Mama” was released as Awaken‘s first single in November. “There are small little ingredients and notes that are very well-thought-out, arrangement-wise, and there’s a lot of ear candy in there happening… I feel like it’s kind of the natural evolution of sound.” “We actually built a drum room in Donald’s house just to get the exact drum sound we wanted it took a couple weeks to build,” says producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ludwig Goransson, who co-wrote and and co-produced the entirety of Awaken, My Love! and has worked with Glover for nearly a decade. ![]()
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