Everything we know about rapper Childish Gambino's new album and tour
Childish Gambino is officially back.
Multi-hyphenate Donald Glover is slated to go on tour under his musical moniker (which he notably chose from the online Wu-Tang Clan name generator) after recently releasing "ATAVISTA," the reworked version of his 2020 album, "3.15.20"
Glover on Monday revealed on X/Twitter that the new album was already available on streaming platforms, noting that it was the "finished version" of its precursor. "There's a special vinyl coming soon with visuals for each song," the musician said, also observing that a larger project would be rolled out in the coming months. "The all-new Childish Gambino album comes out in the summer."
Glover in the announcement also shared the link to the music video for his song "Little Foot Big Foot" featuring rapper Youngy Nudy. The video is roughly six minutes of black and white footage directed by Hiro Murai, Glover's frequent collaborator who has directed the artist's music video for the profound 2018 hit, "This Is America," as well as episodes of "Atlanta," the popular FX series Glover created, wrote and starred in. The video was also posted to Glover's Instagram account, which was barren before the "ATAVISTA" reveal.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C66xgRavUrD/?hl=en
The album release was accompanied by news of an upcoming world tour. As NBC noted, During his September 2018 concert at Madison Square Garden, Glover had previously stated there wouldn't be more.
“If you bought a ticket to this concert, that means you bought a ticket to the last Childish Gambino tour ever,” Glover as Gambino said at the time, per Billboard. "You don’t need to record this s**t. This is that moment. This is not a concert. This is church.” At the time, Glover was riding the success of "This Is America" and his popular 2016 album, "Awaken, My Love!"
He doubled down on the notion of retiring his stage name in January of that year, after winning a Grammy for best traditional R&B performance for "Redbone."
"I like endings and I think they're important to progress," Glover said at a news conference following his victory.
Now, "The New World Tour" will kick off on Aug.11 in Oklahoma City, touching down in major North American cities before moving on to Europe, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, according to The Associated Press. Artists Amaraee and Willow (also known as Willow Smith) will serve as opening acts for parts of the tour.
Though the release of "ATAVISTA" came as somewhat of a surprise to fans, Glover had teased the drop in the weeks preceding it. In April, he appeared as a guest during rapper Tyler the Creator's headliner set at the Coachella music festival in California. Following his performance, Glover in an Instagram Live feed shared that he would debut two new — and final — albums ("ATAVISTA" and the upcoming summer project).
On March 15, 2020, Glover shared a series of new Childish Gambino tracks on the website, DonaldGloverPresents.com; however, the songs were scrubbed shortly thereafter, seemingly replaced with the release of "3.15.20" a week later. The album featured the talents of pop singer Ariana Grande and rapper 21 Savage. It would subsequently be removed from streaming services as well, as noted by The AP.
Since Glover's last tour, he's completed "Atlanta," rebooted the 2005 film "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" as a television series for Prime Video, and flipped his Star Wars spinoff, "Lando," from a Disney+ show to a Lucasfilm movie.