Ever since, genre descriptors have grown increasingly useless-he shrewdly treats genre like more of a suggestion than a limitation-but terms like hip-hop, R&B, funk, and indie electro-pop, all pushed to their experimental bounds, are good jumping-off points. But Childish Gambino's earliest mixtapes, from the late 2000s, are the reflections of a cultural sponge who simply desired to create on his own terms. Glover's first recordings-which he once said sounded like a “decrepit” version of Drake-predate the name change and never formally saw the light of day.

While not exactly the kind of backstory many rappers and singers would readily admit to, it's a fitting place to start in order to understand his idiosyncratic approach to music, which manages to strike a delicate balance between artful and whimsical.

Glover was born in 1983, at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, but Childish Gambino came into existence, famously, with the aid of an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator, sometime around 2008, when he decided to use the moniker so that fans of his comedy wouldn’t think his music was just a bit. Shirking definition is key to his allure, a superpower of sorts that keeps onlookers entertained, intrigued, and altogether baffled in turns. Then there's Childish Gambino, the Grammy-winning multi-hyphenate musician and producer who's not as easy to describe-but that's also kind of the point. On the one hand, there's Donald Glover: the writer, actor, comedian, and director extraordinaire best known for his work on the sitcom Community and his original series (and homage to his hometown) Atlanta.

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