The Existential Ramifications of Because The Internet by Childish Gambino

/TWP
May 22, 2021
3 min read

After the massive success of his debut album Camp in 2011, Childish Gambino's second album Because the Internet was released in 2013, and it also was highly acclaimed by both critics and fans. Childish Gambino is the musical name of Donald Glover which during his first album was also on NBC's TV Show Community. To define who Donald Glover is, is beyond complex, his artistic essence runs deep and abundant.

He started making comedy videos on Youtube with NYU colleagues called Derrick Comedy in 2008, which became viral and launched him on many successful endeavors. He was on the writing staff for 30 Rock, then acting on Community while having his own stand-up special for Comedy Central. And in 2016 he left Community to create, direct, write and star on his show Atlanta. The critically acclaimed show has won him Golden Globes and Emmys. He also appeared in Spider Man: Homecoming, Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Lion King. And his song 'This Is America' won 4 Grammys (Record of the Year, Song of The Year, Best Music Video and Best Rap/Sung Performance) in 2018.

The album Because The Internet dives into an existential thread as he deals with the fame and the internet's effect into his life. According to the podcast Dissect, before this album, Donald, disappeared from the internet as he was dealing with existential crossroads in his personal life and came back, not posting his regular fun content but actually posting handwritten notes with his deepest fear and insecurities. Those were subversions of the pressure to project perfection in social media.

Because The Internet (2013)

The album has an ambitious scope, but it is just not an album, since Donald doesn't believe in them, he wants to create an experience and create worlds through art. Because The Internet is an expansive transmedia world that features installation and performance art, screenplay, web content, film, apps, live performance and more.

It is an examination of the internet and the underlining existential loneliness inherit to human existence. Where even though every one of us are connected and exposed, the internet breeds loneliness and emptiness. While at it, Gambino also acknowledges how he is also a product of that same internet, by growing up with it and by first achieving fame from it. It’s isolating, nostalgic, vulnerable and an extension of what we always have been.

Throughout learning about it, I designed my own versions of the album cover, here's the first:

This one refers to the concept on how Gambino likes to create worlds through his art, which I translated into the early nostalgic tech version of it, the Paint software. And the ocean being just as the Internet, in which is deep, massive and connected. The smiley deflated and drowned ballon is a conceptualization of how the internet and social media breeds loneliness and emptiness while having a culture that pressures its users to project perfection.

The second one is:

This one reflects on the internet as an extension of what we always have been. And the album's main character (as seen in his songs and screenplay), an internet troll: the anonymous/faceless human.

And lastly, the third: