“Awaken, My Love!”

This is frankly just a really pleasing collection of sounds for my ears, the whole album. It's smooth, it's funky, and the vocals throughout are strong. I feel many in the mainstream (including myself) see Donald Glover as a rapper first, before anything like this, especially due to his biggest hit being a trap hit more than anything. However, if anything, I think that assumption going in leads to an album that only catches you more off guard with its dream-like rhythms, and tight synths, all while a funky riff you'd find on a Sly and the Family Stone record gets your head bopping and your toes tapping. It just is a cool experience that always feels like it's building up to something, and the final track certainly delivers. I could see some turned off by the use of auto-tune at times, and it catches me off guard at points, but those strong vocals in the rest of the album more than make up for it. I only hope that someday Gambino revisits this sound and really perfects it, because the slip-ups here are small and infrequent, and another real try, and it could lead to something astonishing, and this already is fantastic.

Ok poppista. On laulaja toki taitava, muttei säväytä. 3/5

Love Gambino. This album took a bit to grow on me since I was used to his stuff being more hip-hop oriented but I’ve grown to love the more funk direction of it.

While not quite having moment to moment music theory perfection, the psychedelic dream state of profundity and beauty is something really special

This is a super cool George Clinton inspired album.

I went in expecting a hip-hop record. What I got was a psychedelic funk odyssey. From the first moments it’s clear that Donald Glover is digging into Parliament, Funkadelic, Sly, Rick James, Prince - the whole 70s funk and soul canon - and then filtering it through a 2016 lens. Even the cover nods straight to Maggot Brain.

At first, it feels like a lot. There’s swampy guitars that sound like Hendrix, woozy Parliament grooves, smooth Marvin Gaye-style soul, and flashes of neo-soul à la D’Angelo. But on headphones, it all clicks: like someone else said in the reviews here: this is a journey record. The production is dense and layered, sometimes overwhelming, but always feels deliberate. The paranoia, love, and vulnerability running through the lyrics tie it all together, making it far more cohesive than it first appears.

It's eclectic but it works. It’s confident, clever, and full of little surprises. Redbone became the big hit, but the whole record rewards close listening.

Annoyed with myself for not listening to this sooner! Reminds me a lot of Kanye, but more soulful and less rueful.

He was on a real hot streak during the 2010s. Not quite what I was expecting, it's baseline R&B, but he's bringing in a lot of old-timey funk influences. Kinda sounds Diet Prince at points. In conversation with different things than I thought it'd be.

Never actually intentionally listened to Childish Gambino before, wasn’t was I was expecting completely blown away by this album. Superb 👌🏼

Absolute genius, from one of the most interesting artists (and actors) of the last decade.
Sounds like Prince and OutKast had a party in ATL and decided to make a Parliament/Funkadelic tribute album - and nailed it!

Kinda blown away by this guy's range of talents. A dazzling postmodern hybrid that evokes a wide range of influences.