Donald Glover touched on the prospect of new music in a lengthy interview with Michaela Coel, creator and star of the acclaimed series Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You.
During the Zoom-conducted discussion, published in its longform glory on Tuesday by British GQ, Glover—who grew up as a Jehovah's Witness—was asked by Coel about his decision as a younger person to stop considering himself a religious person. Glover explained that this "technically" happened when he lost his virginity, adding that he now engages in a more broadly "spiritual" lifestyle.
"With writing, I definitely feel, like on the last project and on the project I'm working now, musically too, it's all spiritual," Glover said. "It’s all spiritual. A feeling of 'I love us. I love me.' I really do."
Coel praised Glover's most recent album (this year's Childish Gambino release 3.15.20), telling the Atlanta creator and star she and Karan Gill had a social distancing-friendly "dance night" with those songs as the soundtrack.
From there, Glover said he doesn't feel as if he's done with "that [music] project" yet, which could be interpreted as a sign that the Gambino moniker will continue. In the same answer, he also revealed he once considered writing a Bible, though it's not made entirely clear what sort of form such a project would (and/or already did) take.
"I still don't feel like I'm done with that [music] project," he said. "When the coronavirus hit, I was, like—this sounds super crazy—but a woman who I go to, almost a shaman, I told her I wanted to write a Bible." Elaborating further, Glover said that he told the shaman in question he wanted to write a Bible ("that was years ago") due to a "feeling" he kept having. The shaman responded by telling Glover that he would know when the time was right.
"And then when coronavirus hit, I was like, 'Everybody's stuck inside,' and I've been in The Temple listening to this and suddenly I thought, 'Oh, some people will get it,'" Glover added. As explained elsewhere in the interview, the "Temple" is the name Glover has given to a studio in Los Angeles where he often goes to meditate.
On top of all that, Glover revealed that he now has three sons when the conversation turned to the subject of children.
"Because adopting kids, my family adopting kids... And we actually have been talking about [it], because we have three boys so I’m like, “Oh, it might be nice to be get a girl in there.” So I think all those are great options," Glover said.
He also talked about the experience of having his third son during the pandemic. "Yeah, it was nuts. I was in the hospital bed. My son had just been born, like, an hour before and I was watching the George Floyd video," he said. "It was such a weird moment. It was such an intense, weird moment, because I’m watching that video and it’s like eight minutes long, so you’re sitting there and I had just had this amazing, joyful, expanding moment, plus my dad had passed away recently, so [my son] was named after my father... I don’t even know what, really, the word is to describe it. It was just expanding: the empathy and compassion and the terror and the joy of it."
One of Glover's sons appeared on his recent 3.15.20 project. Legend, Glover's first son, was born in 2017 while his second son was born in 2018.
Read the interview in full here.
Portions of the interview focused on the responsibility white people have in educating themselves on racism, meanwhile, have received pushback. While Glover says earlier in the discussion that the work "should be hard" and shouldn't be done to "look cool on social media," his later comments (and remarks from Coel) on the topic have been criticized:
While Glover fans will have to wait even longer for new Atlanta thanks to COVID-19, the entire first season of Coel's I May Destroy You is available now on HBO following its premiere earlier this year in the States.
