Donald Glover says he decided to retire his Childish Gambino moniker after a swift moment of realization.
“It really was just like, ‘Oh, it’s done,’” he told The New York Times. “It’s not fulfilling. And I just felt like I didn’t need to build in this way anymore.”
Glover first announced he was done with Childish Gambino back in April. His new album, Bando Stone & the New World, will be the moniker’s sixth and last when it releases on Friday. In the profile this week, the musician opened up about what led to his retirement realization, saying in part the choice was influenced by becoming a parent.
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“I’m not 25 anymore, standing in front of a boulder like, ‘This has to move,’” he said. “You give what you can, but there’s beauty everywhere in every moment. You don’t have to build it. You don’t have to search for it.”
He added, “When I put my son on my shoulders, I feel deep joy. That’s real. No one on their deathbed is going to look back and say, ‘Thank God I avoided being cringe.’”
Glover started the Childish Gambino alter ego over a decade ago and rose to fame over the course of six albums and five Grammys. As his artistic process evolved, so did his definition of success. “Success to me is, honestly, being able to put out a wide-scale album that I would listen to,” he said. “For this album [Bando], I really wanted to be able to play big rooms and have big, anthemic songs that fill those rooms, so that people feel a sense of togetherness.”
He continued, “If people listen to this album, and it becomes a part of their identity, if they look back a year later and are reminded of how much they listened to it and what that felt like in the summer of ’24 — that kind of real estate is way more valuable to me [than chart metrics].”
Glover wrote the new record in conjunction with a movie Glover made about a musician “recording his masterpiece on a remote island when a global calamity strikes.”
“I thought there was a really great journey in somebody making music and not knowing what the purpose of it was,” he said. “I feel like everybody goes through that, not just artists. That feeling of like, ‘What is any of this for?’”
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