Childish Gambino Wanted to Make a "We Are The World" Song With Rappers on "This Is America"
"This news came to light during
WNYC's new interview with Ibra Ake, one of the producers of Gambino's "This Is America" music video alongside Fam Rothstein."
"Elsewhere in Ake's interview with WYNC, he touches on some of the larger goals of the music video.
"Our goal is to normalize blackness, and I feel like we don’t really think of it in that editorial way," Ake notes. "It’s, like, this is how we would like to dance, but we have to be aware of the danger and the politics of how we’re perceived and the implications of the history of how we were treated. There’s all this math you’re constantly doing expressing yourself […] We’re trying to not have to explain ourselves to others and just exist, and not censor what our existence looks like as people."
“We reduced it to a feeling―a very black feeling, a very violent feeling, but also a very fun feeling," he says. "If you’re at the club and there’s a shooting outside, you still have to go get food afterwards and you have to compartmentalize that. He adds, "
Being marginalized is compartmentalizing trauma to exist in the world. I cant stop being black because of trauma and discrimination. I still have to live life and forge on."
