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And it's an especially prescient message when, according to the NAACP, "African-Americans represent 12.5% of illicit drug users, but 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated in state facilities for drug offenses. Quite honestly the music video subplot is a mystery. The shots above are clear parallels, although we never see any clear action or indication of their relationship. In Telegraph Ave, there’s a mysterious creature swimming with him. In the end, Glover says, police care more about black men using drugs than gun violence. The videos both spend significant time at the beach, with Gambino swimming in the ocean. Some people understood it as him running from "The Sunken Place" from "Get Out," a metaphysical place that holds the black consciousness while a white mind takes over a black person's body.(When Glover performed the song on "Saturday Night Live," "Get Out" star Daniel Kaluuya introduced him.) It could be read as Glover trying to escape simply being a body to be used by white people for distraction.Īnother reading understands it as Glover as a slave running through the woods, which may hold a similar metaphorical meaning.Īnd some viewers read the scene as being directly connected to the pause in the video where Glover lights a joint. The final scene of the video shows Glover running from what seems to be white riot police officers. But the music video's iconoclastic images and many layers deserve close examination to fully parse.Ĭhildish Gambino at the end of "This is America." "Like something that people could play on Fourth of Julys."ĭirected by his frequent "Atlanta" collaborator Hiro Murai and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the music video touches on gun violence, the precarious state of black bodies in the US, and how we've historically used entertainment to distract us from pervasive cultural and political problems. "I just wanted to make a good song," Glover told E!. In typical Glover fashion, he dismissed close readings of his work in an interview at the Met Gala Monday night. Watch the music video for 'Telegraph Ave ('Oakland' By Lloyd)' by Childish Gambino on Apple Music. The track's tone swerves from happy-go-lucky psalmic readings to more alarming verses. Like much of Glover's work, "This is America" is cryptic and loaded with shocking imagery and metaphor. Glover released the 4-minute opus under his musical alter-ego Childish Gambino, after performing the song on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." It launched a storm of conversation on social media and quickly became one of the most trending videos on YouTube.