Childish Gambino‘s “This Is America” was praised upon its 2018 release as a searing, poignant commentary on race and police brutality in the nation. But, honestly, according to a new GQ cover story interview with Donald Glover, the song started as something much less noble: a jokey Drake diss track.
“I had the idea three years before. I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’… The idea for the song started as a joke,” he said in a video accompanying the interview in which the actor/rapper broke down his most iconic roles, including Lando Calrissian in Solo, Earn in Atlanta and Troy Barnes in Community. “To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line. It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this s–t sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let…
