Donald Glover Says He Retired His Childish Gambino Persona Because It Wasn't 'Fulfilling'
Donald Glover revealed that he retired his persona as Childish Gambino after a sudden moment of clarity.
"It really was just like, 'Oh, it's done,' " he said to 'The New York Times.' "It's not fulfilling. And I just felt like I didn't need to build in this way anymore."
Glover initially declared his departure from the Childish Gambino persona in April. His upcoming album, 'Bando Stone & the New World,' marks the sixth and final release under this moniker, scheduled for this Friday.
"I'm not 25 anymore, standing in front of a boulder like, 'This has to move,' " he stated. "You give what you can, but there's beauty everywhere in every moment. You don't have to build it. You don't have to search for it."
The 40-year-old continued, "When I put my son on my shoulders, I feel deep joy. That's real. No one on their deathbed is going to look back and say, 'Thank God I avoided being cringe.' "
Over a decade ago, Glover created the alter ego of Childish Gambino, which propelled him to fame through six albums and garnered five Grammy Awards. As his artistic journey evolved, so too did his understanding of what success means to him.
"Success to me is, honestly, being able to put out a wide-scale album that I would listen to," he stated. "For this album [Bando], I really wanted to be able to play big rooms and have big, anthemic songs that fill those rooms, so that people feel a sense of togetherness."
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He added, "If people listen to this album, and it becomes a part of their identity, if they look back a year later and are reminded of how much they listened to it and what that felt like in the summer of '24 — that kind of real estate is way more valuable to me [than chart metrics]."
Glover wrote his latest record in tandem with a film he directed, which tells the story of a musician "recording his masterpiece on a remote island when global calamity strikes."
"I thought there was a really great journey in somebody making music and not knowing what the purpose of it was," the 'Atlanta' actor said. "I feel like everybody goes through that, not just artists. That feeling of like, 'What is any of this for?' "
