Childish Gambino's "This Is America"

About

"This Is America" is a song released by Childish Gambino, the rapper pseudonym of Donald Glover. The song and its video, directed by Hiro Murai, was widely praised upon release for its striking imagery as it related to racial politics in America. The video also sparked some object labeling memes on Reddit following its release.

Origin

On May 5th, Glover uploaded the video for "This Is America" to his YouTube channel, where it gained over 17 million views in less than three days (shown below).

Spread

After the video was released, it was widely praised by critics and social media users. The Guardian^[1] called it a "satirical masterpiece" while pondering theories about the song and video's meaning. Included in the article is a link to a tweet by Twitter user @nicky_furiosa that makes a comparison of a still from the video to a Jim Crow-era depiction of a black entertainer, illustrating the theory that Glover is wrestling with America's racial history in the video (shown below, left). CNN^[2] posted an article illustrating some subtleties in the video as well, including tweets pointing out that Glover's dancing in the video while violence occurs in the background demonstrates American enjoyment of black culture and ignorance to violence inflicted on the black community (shown below, right).

Many Twitter users pointed out the myriad subtle details happening in the background in praise of Glover. For example, Twitter user @PersonsIsiah pointed out that in one scene, Death rides a pale horse while Gambino dances, gaining 36,000 retweets and 110,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @siriouslyyy pointed out a suicide happening in the background of the video, gaining over 820 retweets and 1,800 likes (shown below, right). Reactions were covered by Twitter Moments.^[3]

Object Labeling Memes

On /r/MemeEconomy, several stills of the video were posted as Object Labeling memes. Some of the most popular examples include a post by Thehusseler that referenced recent comments made by Kanye West. It gained over 18,000 points (shown below, left). Another post by TDImig referencing Alex Jones Gay Frogs Conspiracy gained over 15,000 points (shown below, right).

Vice Article

On May 8th, 2018, Vice published an article titled "For the Love of God, Don’t Meme Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Music Video," which criticized creating memes using the music video as "dumb because the source material literally symbolizes the short attention span of the internet." Additionally, the article highlighted various tweets denouncing the image macros (shown below).

On March 9th, the /r/MemeEconomy Twitter^[4] feed replied to Vice's tweet about the article with the message "The Meme Economy is not meant for you" (shown below).

That day, several posts mocking the Vice article reached the front page of /r/MemeEconomy and /r/dankmemes (shown below).

"American Pharaoh" Comparison

On June 24th, 2018, Twitter user @RappersRActors^[5] pointed out that "This Is America" bore striking similarities in beat, flow, and subject matter to the song "American Pharaoh" by rapper Jase Harley, which was released two years prior to "This Is America."

Harley had evidently noticed the similarity as soon as "This Is America" was released, according to some comments on his Instagram page.^[6] He also noted that while he was not mad, he would have appreciated some credit.

Twitter users were split on the discovery of the apparent similarity. Twitter user @DragonflyJonez hypothesized that Harley had approached Gambino about the track and was willing to make his song "disappear" but either never got a response or never got paid (shown below, left). User @futurafunky stated that while the songs were similar, it was unfair to say that Gambino "stole" the track (shown below, right). The similarity was covered by Genius,^[7] Twitter Moments,^[8] Metro,^[9] and others.

George Floyd Protest TikToks

On April 22nd, 2020, TikToker carneyval uploaded a sound clip of a mashup between "This is America" and Post Malone's "Congratulations." The sound was used in over 390,700 videos in a month. On May 16th, TikToker @markellandroxan uploaded a video illustrating racism and gained over 4.4 million likes in a month (shown below, left). On May 28h, TikTokers began posting protest videos. That day, TikToker @kareemrahma posted a protest video that garnered over 7.2 million likes in six days. On May 31st, TikToker @suecothechild posted another that accumulated over 6.7 million views in three days (shown below, right).

On June 1st, Twitter user @vohmitdoll reposted a TikTok video made by @catharine_beauty which has since been deleted. In the video, the German TikToker wears blackface (shown below). The tweet gained over 530 likes and 200 retweets in two days. According to Insider,^[10][11] the TikToker "instantly received widespread condemnation. She has since removed the TikTok and issued multiple apologies, but the original video, which featured her painting half her face to the 'This Is America' TikTok sound, has been viewed nearly a million times on Twitter."

Search Interest

External References