The song's accompanying music video was directed by filmmaker Hiro Murai, a frequent Gambino collaborator.[9][10] "This Is America" became the 31st song to debut at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming both Gambino's first number one and top ten single in the country. It has also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The song won in all four of its nominated categories at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance and Best Music Video. This made Gambino the first hip-hop artist to win Record of the Year and Song of the Year, and "This Is America" the first rap song to win these awards.[11]
Media outlets reported that a number of listeners accused Gambino of plagiarism over "This Is America", pointing out the similarities between the song and "American Pharaoh" by Jase Harley.[17][18]CBS News stated, "The tracks have a similar sound, and share similar themes in the lyrics." Harley stated that he felt "This Is America" was influenced by his song. At the time, he did not have an issue with this.[19] However, when Gambino did not acknowledge him at the Grammys, Harley was upset and called Gambino a "house slave".[20][21] Glover's manager, Fam Rothstein, denied any plagiarism.[22]
In the music video, Gambino assumes a stance similar to the Jim Crow caricature
The music video was directed by Hiro Murai and released on YouTube simultaneously with Gambino's performance of the song on Saturday Night Live. The video received about 12.9 million views in 24 hours,[23] and has over 880+ million views as of June 2023.[24] In an interview with the New York Times, Murai discussed his upcoming season for Atlanta, a show created by and starring Glover. He stated: "There's sort of a world-weariness in both this season and the music video. They're both reactions to what's happening in the world."[25]
The video contains many scenes involving violence. It starts off with a shirtless Gambino dancing through a warehouse, interacting with a series of chaotic scenes. According to Murai, the video was inspired by the films Mother! and City of God. Prettyman states "The video tests us, taunting us to keep pace as we try to decode every gesture and calculation".[26] Choreographed by Sherrie Silver, Gambino and his entourage of young dancers perform several viral dance moves including the South AfricanGwara gwara and "Shoot" popularized by BlocBoy JB, who is one of the ad-lib contributors on the song. Gambino's dancing is contrasted against moments of violence. Only 53 seconds into the video, Gambino shoots a man in the back of the head with a handgun, while assuming a comical stance similar to a Jim Crow caricature. The first person depicted as being shot in the video, a guitarist who had been accompanying Gambino's singing up to that point, was musician Calvin the Second. This first shooting also marks a transition in the music, from an African "folk-inspired melody" to "dark, pulsing trap".[27] At a later point, Childish Gambino uses a Kalashnikov patternedautomatic weapon to gun down a church choir.
In both scenes a child appears from off-screen holding a red cloth, on which Gambino gently lays the weapon used, while the bodies are simply dragged away. A group of children in school uniforms join Gambino in dancing, only to panic and scatter when the music imitates the sound of gunfire and Gambino positions his arms as if firing a gun, after which he lights a joint. Other schoolchildren are seen on a catwalk above, using their cell phones to record the chaos happening in the video as Gambino sings the lyrics "This a celly / That's a tool". Martha Tesema, writer for website Mashable, stated that "cell phones have been used as tools to broadcast police shooting, rioting against, or choking black people in this country". Throughout the video, numerous vehicles from several decades ago are featured, many of them with their hazard lights flashing and the driver's side door ajar. American singer SZA makes a cameo appearance towards the end of the video, seated atop one of these vehicles. The video ends with Gambino in a darkened portion of the warehouse, fearfully running towards the camera while being chased by several white people.
The music video received widespread critical acclaim. Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic described the initial reaction on Twitter as "a gushing river of well-deserved praise" and the video as "the most talked-about music video of recent memory."[10] Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone commented that the video "is a surreal, visceral statement about gun violence in America".[29]Pitchfork awarded the song the distinction of "Best New Track".[16]Billboard critics ranked it 10th among the "greatest music videos of the 21st century."[30] Mahita Gajanan of Time quoted music history professor Guthrie Ramsey at the University of Pennsylvania:
He's talking about the contradictions of trying to get money, the idea of being a black man in America. It comes out of two different sound worlds. Part of the brilliance of the presentation is that you go from this happy major mode of choral singing that we associate with South African choral singing, and then after the first gunshot it moves right into the trap sound.[31]
Glover hosted the May 5 episode of the 43rd season of Saturday Night Live, and performed two new songs as Childish Gambino on the same episode, the second of which was "This Is America". Daniel Kaluuya, best known as the star of the film Get Out which the music video reportedly references, introduced the song's performance.[35][36]
Cover versions, adaptations, and in popular culture
Several artists attracted attention and millions of views for creating covers of the song and music video with altered lyrics and themes, retaining the song's instrumental and the general structure of its music video.[37][38]
Bay Area rapper Lil B featured a remix of his own on his Options mixtape entitled "This Is the BasedGod" in October 2018.[39][40][41]
"This Is Australia" (January 2023), by Australian dance company Marrugeku, with vocals led by Noongar rapper Beni Bjah, features many local references, and criticises Australia's treatment of refugees, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and migrants.[53]
Chart performance
"This Is America" debuted at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the 31st song to do so in the chart's history. It debuted with 78,000 downloads sold and 65.3 million US streams in the first week. Its music video accounted for 68% of the song's streaming total. "This Is America" is also Gambino's first top 10; he previously reached number 12 in August 2017 with "Redbone". "This Is America" overtook Drake's "Nice for What" from the top position for two weeks. Gambino is also the second Emmy Award-winning actor to reach number one on the Hot 100, the first being Justin Timberlake, who topped the chart with "Can't Stop the Feeling!" in 2016.[54] It topped the Hot 100 for two weeks, and left the top ten after five weeks.
^Jenkins, Craig (May 17, 2018). "The Internet Has Already Devoured 'This Is America'". Vulture. Retrieved May 20, 2018. The same night he dropped off the video for "This Is America," a combination trap and afrobeat banger with a beguiling message about race and gun violence.
^Oatman, Alexis (April 4, 2023). "Donald Glover's 'This Is America' Was Originally A Drake Diss Record". hiphopdx.com. HipHopDX. "It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it."
^Prettyman, Michele (2020). "The Persistence of 'Wild Style': Hip-Hop and Music Video Culture at the Intersection of Performance and Provocation". Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. 59 (2): 151–157. doi:10.1353/cj.2020.0008. ISSN2578-4919. S2CID214502969.
^"ČNS IFPI" (in Czech). Hitparáda – Digital Top 100 Oficiální. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Change the chart to CZ – SINGLES DIGITAL – TOP 100 and insert 201821 into search. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
^"ČNS IFPI" (in Slovak). Hitparáda – Singles Digital Top 100 Oficiálna. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select SINGLES DIGITAL - TOP 100 and insert 201820 into search. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
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