Atlanta rapper Childish Gambino sat down with Hot 97's Peter Rosenberg and gave a very in depth interview. The actor turned rapper pulls no punches when the topic of "realness" in hip-hop is brought up.
Gambino and Rosenberg spoke at length about the idea of street credibility and the barriers that he has to face to get people to respect him. Gambino brings up Drake, a rapper he is often compared to, who also has his credibility questioned frequently. "Drake doesn't get asked, 'Are you hard enough?' or anything like that even though Drake's life is really my life," Gambino said. "I really grew up in the hood." Gambino also made comments towards Drake in a live freestyle a few weeks ago, which raises more questions about the relationship between the two.
Gambino thinks his street cred constantly gets tested by interviewers, and he explicitly calls out Eric and Jeff Rosenthal (known as "ItsTheReal"), who Gambino says he is cool with even though they make fun of him on social media.
"I get it. I'm wearing a grandma sweater," he said during the interview. "But I am also a black male. I still have to wear this grandma sweater when I go see my grandma in the Bronx. Who lives in a shitty neighborhood. [Where] my cousin just got shot and stabbed twice hustling there."
Towards the end of the interview, Gambino expands on the differences between his rapping career and his comedic background and also gives a hint that his new mixtape will drop "within the next two weeks."
