Malia Obama will make her debut as a director for a short film in the future, and it will be produced by Donald Glover’s production company, Gilga. Obama has also written for Glover’s show, Atlanta. Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, will make her directorial debut for a short film by […]
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Popular comedian-actor Hannibal Buress is adding another skill to his resume. After comedian and actor, Buress can also add rapper. Recently, he performed in Austin, Texas, at the SXSW festival. The TAG actor goes by Eshu Tune when he is rapping. During his set, he performed songs from his self-titled album, such as “Knee Brace”, “Donde Esta”, and “Veneers”. Buress has a remix to “Veneers” that features rappers Paul Wall and Danny Brown.
Before he performed, Buress let fans know that being on stage is new to him-but not in the way you may think.
“This is a new feeling for me. Not the rapping thing-it’s just usually when I play show is Austin, I get paid a lot of money.”
The Spiderman: No Way Home actor kicked off his set with a live band and entertained the audience with not only his songs but his commentary as well. Buress told jokes throughout his set, and his songs were comical as well. Since the Chicago native is known for being a comedian, the audience assumed he would perform a stand-up routine. This was like when Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, performed at the SXSW festival in 2011. Fans were ready for jokes but instead witnessed Gambino rapping.
Actor Hannibal Buress raps
And has a song with Danny Brown and Paul Wall
pic.twitter.com/CjoKBOoXYb
— FMHipHop (@_FMHipHop) March 17, 2023
Buress and Gambino are similar as music and comedy have gone hand in hand for them. The Get Out actor has participated in battle rap, hosted open mic nights, and has been on rappers’ albums performing skits. When the coronavirus pandemic called for a lockdown, Buress decided to step in the studio and give rapping an actual chance. The 40-year-old specializes in making funny, witty music, which is right up his alley. His debut album, Eshu Tune, was released in April of 2022.
The post Hannibal Buress Speaks on Performing as a Rapper: ‘This is a New Feeling For me’ appeared first on The Source.
Childish Gambino, real name Donald Glover, has made weirdness into a pretty lucrative career. Of course, in the beginning, his music wasn’t received as well. Just listen to his story about being booed while opening for Kid Cudi. Fast-forward to the present day and the multihyphenate talent has developed the creative formula to covert creepiness into a financial cash cow (see: Swarm).
During a recent interview with GQ, Gambino said that not all of his weird ideas get to see the light of day. When discussing his breakout Grammy Award-winning song “Redbone,” the musician revealed that the version that fans have come to love wasn’t the first version of the track.
“I wish you guys could hear the first version of ‘Redbone,’” exclaimed Gambino before bursting into laughter. “It was so weird. I was actually listening to it the other day. I was like, ‘what a weird song this was.’ Then [Ludwig Göransson and I] cleaned it, and we were like, ‘oh yeah.’”
“Redbone” was released in November of 2016, which marked Gambino’s long-awaited return to music. The song appeared on his third studio album, Awaken, My Love!, which interpolated elements of the 1975 funk classic “I’d Rather Be With You” by Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The song went on to earn the recording artist several awards, including a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance.
Watch the full interview above.
It might sound weird to think about now, but before Donald Glover was the celebrated artist he is today, he used to struggle to get any positive feedback on his work at all. In fact, he used to get booed. In a new profile in GQ, the artist alternatively known as Childish Gambino recalled a particularly hairy incident during his early career when an opening set for Kid Cudi went left.
“At the time I had a full band and a violinist,” he recalled. “I just kept turning to the band and telling them, ‘Next song! Next song!’ I put on a really intense show through the boos.”
Of course, that was a long time ago. Donald, who recently revealed he wasn’t quite ready to retire the Gambino persona just yet, has been receiving praise for his show Atlanta, as well as a related series, Swarm, he co-created with Atlanta writer Janine Nabers. He’s been Grammy nominated and has landed a string of plum roles, from Lando in Star Wars spinoff Solo to Simba in the Lion King remake.
He also intimated to GQ that a return to stand-up could be in the offing as well. He says this was encouraged by Chris Rock, who asked him, “‘Why aren’t you doing this sh*t?’” It looks like his tenacious desire to overcome negative reception is still intact.
The 2018 single “This Is America” is arguably Childish Gambino’s (aka Donald Glover) biggest song; It’s his only No. 1 single to date, but 2016’s “Redbone” is his most-streamed song with 1.3 billion Spotify plays (vs. about half a billion for “This Is America”), despite its lower Hot 100 peak at No. 12. Either way, it turns out the hit track stemmed from, as Glover put it, a “Drake diss.”
Glover discussed the single in a new video interview with GQ shared today (April 4), and while he said the initial version of the song took digs at Drake, it sounds like that was more of a creative exercise than it was an expression of any actual malice towards Drake. At 17:28 into the video above, Glover said:
“It started as a… the idea for the song started as a joke, to be completely honest. ‘This is America’: that was all we had, was, like, that line. And it started as a Drake diss, to be honest [laughs], as like, a funny way of, like, doing it. But then I was like, ‘This sh*t sounds kind of hard, though, you know?’ So I was like, ‘Let me play with it.’ So we just had that for a long time.”
Watch the interview above and revisit the classic “This Is America” video below.
Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) has officially had a lawsuit against his 2018 song, “This Is America,” dismissed. In 2021, Kidd Wes (real name Emelike Nwosuocha) sued Glover and claimed that the track was “practically identical” to his 2016 track, “Made In America.”
However, according to Billboard, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled yesterday (March 24) that there is no reasoning and tossed the lawsuit.
“A cursory comparison with the challenged composition reveals that the content of the choruses is entirely different and not substantially similar,” Marrero wrote. He claimed that Nwosuocha’s words were a “short, simple, self-aggrandizing proclamation” and Glover‘s were on “what America means and how it is perceived.”
“More could be said on the ways these songs differ, but no more airtime is needed to resolve this case,” he added.
Nwosuocha’s attorneys, Imran H. Ansari and La’Shawn N. Thomas, offered a statement to the publication about how their client felt about the ruling, citing that he was “understandably disappointed.”
“He stands by his music, creativity, and the independence of grassroots artists to create their own music, and receive credit where credit is due, without the fear of it being apportioned by another,” they shared.
His team has also noted that they aren’t ruling out appealing the decision, but only time will tell.
Swarm is Donald Glover’s latest project, and it’s taking social media by storm following its premiere on Amazon Prime Video earlier this weekend. The show specifically explores celebrity stan culture and what happens when it goes too far. Seeing as the actor – also known by his musical moniker, Childish Gambino – has spent a fair amount of time in Hollywood, he’s no stranger to obsessive followers going above and beyond to get his attention. In fact, the Atlanta star recently revealed that a fan once asked him to have sex with his girlfriend.
“There was one time after a show, a guy asked me to sleep with his girlfriend,” Glover recalled. When presumably asked if he took the fan up on the offer, the multi-talent jokingly replied that he was busy at the time. He later followed up by saying, “I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is a good idea.’”
In stans we trust
@SwarmOnPrime pic.twitter.com/pvocJGLybj
— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) March 16, 2023
As it turns out, Glover isn’t the only member of the Swarm team who has had an unusual encounter with an over-enthused fan. Damson Idris, who plays Khalid in the popular new series, also had a story to tell. “Someone once ran up to me and began to let me know exactly why we’re married. Why we have a bunch of kids together, and the food I ate that morning with her,” the actor recounted.
While the seven-episode project may be a serial killer satire, it focuses on the same type of toxic attachments that lead to celebrities having these types of run-ins. Swarm follows Dre, played by Dominique Fishback, a fan of singer Ni’Jah who is clearly based on the real-life music icon Beyoncé. It explores how the main character’s parasocial relationship with the vocalist sends her to strange and dark places.
The show has an all-star cast that features the likes of Billie Eilish and Chloe Bailey (who made waves thanks to her steamy sex scene with the English actor in the first episode). In the clip where Gambino and Idris were asked about their wildest stan experiences, their co-stars all shared things that they believe deserve to have stans. The R&B singer said she believes The Karamo Show and Legos were underrated. As for Fishback, she feels as though Brooklyn deserves more love. Nitrine, on the other hand, believes that New York pizza is stan-worthy. Have you turned into Swarm yet? Tell us in the comments below.
[via]
It’s been out for less than 24 hours, but already, Donald Glover’s Swarm series is the talk of the internet. All seven episodes are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and have earned both an 80% audience and critics score so far on Rotten Tomatoes. Viewers obviously can’t stop reacting to the wild sex scene between Chloe Bailey and Damson Idris in the first episode, but the show’s soundtrack is gaining plenty of attention in its own right as well.
Those who have already watched Swarm know it centres around a young woman with a serious obsession for Ni’jah, her favourite pop star. It reflects some of the lengths stans currently go to for artists like Nicki Minaj and Cardi B online, though our lead character, Dre (played by Dominique Fishback) takes things further than most people would ever dare. The singer’s presence is notably similar to Beyoncé’s, though she’s actually voiced by independent artist KIRBY.
Before working on Swarm, the Memphis-born songwriter worked with stars like Jennifer Lopez, Timbaland, and Brandy. She helped write “FourFiveSeconds” by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney, as well as Queen B’s “Die with You.” Her first solo album, titled Sis, arrived in February 2020 and had two tracks featured on the fourth season of Issa Rae’s Insecure.
KIRBY’s name was kept relatively quiet within the industry before, but after this new project, she’s certainly going to be high in demand. It remains unclear if we’ll see Glover’s new TV series return for a second season, though fans are already expressing their desire to hear more from him and the rising female star. Other songs emerging as favourites on their new EP so far are “Something Like That” and “Agatha.”
Stream Childish Gambino and KIRBY’s “Sticky” on YouTube above. Afterward, read more about Swarm‘s infectious soundtrack here. Make sure to check back later this weekend for more release recommendations on our R&B Season playlist update.
Quotable Lyrics:
Out in my country, you’re on your own
Porch and the palm trees, you’re all alone
Sunlight is watching, so watch your back (Your back)
Don’t look back
I’ll come and find you, stay on track
[Via]
