‘This Is America” is by far Donald Glover’s biggest accomplishment as Childish Gambino.
The track, which won four Grammys including Song and Record of the Year, was almost very different.
During an interview with GQ, Glover said he conceived the track as a Drake diss.
“I had the idea three years before,” he explained. “I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’ The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line. It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this sht sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”
Instead, they settled on lyrics about racism and gun violence.
Would have been a lot more fun if they just want after Darke.