I’ve been a fan of Donald Glover since I found one of his Derrick comedy videos on YouTube roughly a decade ago, I’ve followed his career ever since.
I must have been in the 8th or 9th grade, Donald at the time was already writing for 30 Rock and would soon start on Community, but I found him on the internet through videos he made while attending NYU.
I loved those videos. They were the exact type of goofy shock jock sketch comedy a 15 year old boy is drawn to.
Now they feel exactly as they are, a bunch of talented but immature college kids trying to make funny videos for the internet, and you know what, they’re still great. I re-watched a few, they hold up. The camera work sucks, they’re 480p, but crucially; they’re funny.
Donald Glover by now is one of the most influential artists in the world, the kind of multi-disciplinary talents that feels rare. But hasn’t always been the case, Glover has always been seen as immensely gifted but he’s had missteps. Famously his debut album Camp received a 1.6/10 from Pitchfork who called it “preposterously self-obsessed, but not the least bit self-aware”, and you know what, they’re not wrong. As a fan I really liked Camp, I still regularly listen to songs like Heartbeat and All The Shine off the album, but its a fair critique, it is self obsessed it does lack self awareness, but its reflective of a person in a moment of time. Donald, for the record, has put out plenty of stuff I didn’t like. His second album Because the Internet was held in much higher regard, but I liked it less than Camp (3005 being the exception) because it felt less genuine. The Derrick Comedy movie Mystery Team was also less than good, and while I thought he was fine in it, the live action Lion King was just bad.
But if you look back at what Donald Glover has created over the last 10ish years the growth is obvious. Don’t believe me, watch these four videos. In order they’re a Derrick Comedy sketch called Girls Are Not To Be Trusted, the music video for Freaks and Geeks, the video for This is America, and the trailer for season 2 of Atlanta (or just watch Atlanta, thank me later).
In particular watch the second and third links, both of which are essentially just Childish Gambino dancing in a warehouse.
That’s growth. That is video evidence of someone growing and maturing as a creator and a person and I love it. It’s amazing to see the contrast between 28 year old and 35 year old Donald, and the same is true if you compare Freaks and Geeks to his earliest mixtapes.
The older I get the greater value I see in witnessing the journey. I respect Donald Glover the artist all the more because I can remember his missteps and his less mature work and contrast that to what he is capable of now. Because I know how far he’s come and how much he’s grown as I’ve grown.
Soon after I found Donald Glover, I started listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast. It was the summer between the 11th and 12th grade. I remember because I was flying to Germany to visit my grandparents and downloaded an episode of Joe Rogan interviewing an MMA fighter I liked, along with two he did with Tim Ferriss. They were great. Joe came across as a guy you wanted to be friends with; funny, smart enough to be interesting, not so smart its annoying, and he was an excellent interviewer.
He got his guests to be real in a way I’d never seen before in the interview format because Joe himself is so open and honest that they can’t help it, they forget they’re being interviewed and start acting like it’s a casual conversation.
I was immediately hooked, I listened to all three episodes on my 10 hour flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt and downloaded more from spotty caffe wifi to listen to on the train to my final destination.
In the 8 years since then I’ve listened to hundreds of episodes of his podcast, meaning I’ve heard Joe Rogan talk for thousands of hours, and I still listen, but now it’s usually for the guest.
It turns out when you’ve heard thousands of hours of someone speak, you end up hearing pretty much everything they have to say. You know what their opinion is on most things. Joe Rogan was famous from TV long before I ever listened to his podcast, he was already an adult and in many ways he’s still the same guy who I started listening to 8 years ago, and that’s completely fine, but it means there’s a kind of shelf life. You start for the host but eventually you’re only staying for the guest, unless the host continues to grow.
Donald Glover grew up on the internet. Every single thing he has ever produced be it music or standup or TV has been available on the internet from the moment it came out, and it’s still there.
The evolution of Donald Glover is as interesting as any individual thing he has produced.
This is something that to me seems new. Evolution as art. The ability to follow a person over time and watch them change, watch them grow.
It’s something I want to participate in.
I want to be able to look back in 10, 20, 30 years and see what I was like, what I was thinking. I want to be able to look at things I did and compare them, to see the improvement, to find the flaws in thinking, and I don’t think that’s possible without committing to doing work in public.
So that’s what I’m doing, and to start I’m going to attempt to write something new in this newsletter every 2 weeks. I expect much of it to be bad, but I want to be able to look back in a year and identify why they were bad, to see myself improve.
I have a few post topics in mind already, but if you have anything you want me to write about or any feedback on this one, reach out, I’m @programmer on Twitter.