Here we are again, young Geordan, dipping his feet fully into the hip-hop world looking for experimental music to listen to except this time no jumping without a rope needed. I was a Childish Gambino fan for years and an even bigger one nowadays. But the buzz around him at the time wasn’t as artistic as it is now, and it mostly started with the creation process of his album, “Because of the Internet”. He diminished his popular role on the hit show “Community”, faded away from social media use and rented a house he would go on to call “The Temple”. This was my first experience seeing an artist make a drastic change in his life in preparation for an album and being very excited for whatever he would release.

In the summer of 2013, he surprised his fans by dropping a song “Centipede” on his sound cloud spontaneously which had a very different sound compared to his last few projects. And about a month later on August 15, 2013, he released a short film that was a “prelude” to the album named “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons” which featured many famous rappers and some of the music from his upcoming album. But enough of the prelude, there’s a whole album that has to live up to the enormous amount of hype he produced and it did.

The album stood out for its incredible production, meshing jazz and industrial noises with conventional hip-hop. Also, Gambino incorporated more singing in this album with songs like “Shadows” and “Flight of the Navigator”. And the abnormal production was very strong in “Worldstar” and “No Exit”. But also the album told a very strong story of “the boy” going through a phase of his life where he feels alone and doesn’t trust the motives of his friends.

The album has its moments where the music style is straightforward and takes a dive at the end “Sweatpants” and “Crawl”, but throughout most of the album, the sounds it produces are simply crazy. Songs like “No Exit” and “The Party”, go crazy instrumentally towards the tail end but don’t start off that normal in the first place.

The album received mixed reviews from people saying it was either great or disappointing, but I think an opinion on this album depends on where you are in your own life and if you’re able to dissect yourself emotionally. At the time of my life when this album was released, I was going through phases of finding myself and understanding other people, and it helped me greatly. To me “Because The Internet” is more than just an album, it’s a moment in my life I remember vividly, even where I first heard the noise of pages flipping.

 
Most Favorite Songs: Crawl, Worldstar, The Worst Guys, Shadows, Sweatpants, 3005, The Party, No Exit, Zealots of Stockholm, Urn, Earth: The Last Computer, Life: The Biggest Troll
Least Favorite: Flight of the Navigator (because I had to pick one)
Rating: 10/10