Hip-Hop’s Perennial Outsider
Rawiya Kameir has it right when she says: ‘Childish Gambino (pictured), aka Donald Glover from Community, is an angsty, post-Internet messiah. “Because the Internet” isn’t just an album—it’s performance art.’ Further: ‘Rap hasn’t been concerned with “street authenticity†in years, and anyone who tells you the opposite is living in a past that’s long since been shattered by the likes of Kanye West, Drake, Kid Cudi, and a wide array of performers who represent the culture’s well-documented shift from the so-called inner city toward the formerly peripheral middle class. It is no longer exclusively the domain of “the ghetto†from whence it came.’ It’s been about money and swag for a very long time now.
