While I wait for SNL‘s YouTube channel to post the sketches from tonight’s episode, the host, Donald Glover tweets a new video from tonight’s musical guest, Childish Gambino. As the video begins in a warehouse, I thought back to the first time I learned that Troy from Community also raps. The video for “Freaks And Geeks” on this very site you are on now, began my fandom for “the only White rapper that’s allowed to say the ‘N-word’.”
“This Is America” begins with a shot of a guitar seated in a chair in an empty warehouse, a man walks into frame and begins to play as the camera pans over to a shirtless, but 2 chained, Childish Gambino dances over to the guitar player, who now has a bag over his head and shoots him. Yeah, from there it becomes more abstract with gun violence (SPOILER ALERT: HE KILLS A CHOIR!), dance moves, Young Thug ad-libs, and an extensive cast of Black people in this Hiro Murai directed vision of Donald’s America (Double Entendre) with a possible SZA cameo in the end. Happy Cinco De Mayo!