I have two concerts on my belt that come up at the top of my list when I get asked the question of all questions when I get a music head in my face:
“What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been too?”
Yelle, a little band from France that 99 per cent of the people I say this to never know, quickly followed by Childish Gambino in Los Angeles after he put out Camp. I paid for that album with honor. It’s hard to find a hip hop artist that was found through crappy comedy television shows that most people say they love but aren’t really loyal to. Well Donald “Childish Gambino” Glover dropped a mixtape on us and gave us more than we can handle. Or he gave us just enough to make him legit. He’s been around for a while, yet he still hasn’t been on the cover of XXL Magazine for a Freshmen class photo. After this mixtape, I feel that he’ll be on the radar. I don’t even need to tell you to buy this album. It’s a fucking mixtape. It’s free and ready for you to blow your subs in your Chevy Caprice. Royalty brings us some of the biggest names of hip hop, from Bun-B (UGK) to RZA (Wu-Tang Clan.)
The “Royalty” intro is more annoying than anything else. Please feel free to skip it faster than it usually takes you to look away from making eye contact with a police officer. You should really start with “One Up.” Speaking on the fact that the Glover family has more than just the life of one man, the track features Steve G. Lover, Childish’s blood brother. Both of them come with the heat on this track and the bass just rocks my subs. I am a bass lover, from EDM to hip hop, and I haven’t heard a album/mix-tape this heavy in a long time.
“Unnecessary (ft. Schoolboy Q and Ab-Soul) {prod. Childish Gambino}” is that “hard streets” track that I can just see all the alpha-males of the hood rolling deep to. Running through the usual subjects from guns to dropping girls like they’re a bad habit to balling out of control, we are given the quota of hip hop today in just one track and it still sounds good, in spite of seeming to be pretty front-loaded.
When it comes to putting people to sleep, “R.I.P.” breaks fast and straight from the top with Bun-B. I am betting you have heard many hip hop tracks where people are talking about how they get to work with UGK. Bun-B is 50 percent of UGK and him being on this album cranks up CG’s street credit at a higher level. It’s the only thing that CG has left to achieve in the music community.
Childish has always spoken to us in his lyrics about how hard he’s going to go. He damn well knows that he’s coming from comedic TV shows and he won’t be a legitimate part of the hip-hop community unless he comes hard like he said he would on, before and after Camp. With this mix-tape, we see him drifting into the area that he was destined to be in, and becoming the best of the best.
There are many hits on this album that work great from club hits to what to drive to work to when you’re top-down on the 405 on a Friday in sunny Southern California; with hopes that the cute girl next to you knows this part of Donald and gives you that look you crave. Just make sure you’re not playing it so loud it doesn’t sound good, you’re in the six-figure range and you’re wearing sunglasses that are worth more than an average office employee’s entire outfit.
Cliff notes? You should download Royalty for two reasons:
1.The track “Toxic” samples Britney Spears.
2.Beck is a producer on two tracks.
Artist:
www.childishgambino.com/
www.iamdonald.com/childishgambino
www.myspace.com/childishgambino
www.facebook.com/pages/Childish-Gambino/
www.twitter.com/DonaldGlover/
Download:
Childish Gambino – Royalty – [Mixtape]
