Stone Mountain rapper Childish Gambino garnered a flurry of concern from fans late last year when he posted a handful of handwritten notes on his Instagram page. In the melancholy notes, written on hotel stationery, Gambino addressed his fears, relationship problems, and more.
The rapper/actor has since commented on the notes in a handful of interviews and has again shared his thoughts on the letters during a cover story for Complex magazine. According to Gambino, sharing his thoughts publicly proved that most people suffer from the same fears. He also spoke briefly on suicide and shared his belief that everyone has suicidal thoughts at one point.
“Everybody has the same fears,” he said. “If my letters did anything, they proved that everyone kinda feels the same way. I’m not special. Those letters were not special. They were just louder because I have a platform. You have to be real with yourself. No one is doing that. People are too concerned with making everything look nice and calm and pretty…I’m still here. I obviously still like it here. Everybody feels that way. Everybody has suicidal thoughts. Everybody is on the verge of suicide every day. You could die at any moment! You could have a brain aneurysm.”
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With a newly-released album titled Because The Internet, the former “30 Rock” writer also offered his thoughts on the internet, comparing it to repeatedly going on a first date.
“Everything online—even the fucked-up stuff—is curated,” Gambino said. “It’s the same thing as going on a first date. The Internet is going on a first date over and over and over again. The last thing I want to be is somebody who’s like, ‘The Internet is wrong.’ I don’t believe that. This is how we connect. I love the Internet. We’re the first ones to have to deal with this kind of stuff. Our generation is very important because we can still remember shit before the Internet. We remember just enough.”
Gambino continued with his comparisons during his Complex interview, comparing music to advertising before questioning why a person would buy music when it’s so readily available.
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“I believe that music has just become advertising for a brand, and if that makes music less magical, then fuck you,” he said. “I understand people being like, ‘I worked really hard on this song and I’d like some payment for it.’ It just needs to be done differently…Trying to make somebody pay for music is like a bakery trying to get people to pay for smelling the bread as they walk by. This is the way information works now, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. There’s another way to capture that feeling in a more succinct, faster fashion. That’s what the Internet does with everything. So how do you package that?”
Childish Gambino received his first break in the entertainment world as a writer on the NBC sitcom “30 Rock” before starring on “Community.” His rap career was officially solidified with the release of his Camp album in 2011. Prior to the release of Camp, Gambino released a handful of mixtapes including Culdesac and Royalty.
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