Childish Gambino just dropped his surprise album, ‘Atavista’

With the discourse and chart-dominating beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake now (seemingly) over, we’re likely to see plenty of artists emerging out of the woodwork to get their rollouts back on track. 

First on that list is Childish Gambino (AKA Donald Glover), who has been teasing new music throughout the past month after playing some tracks on Instagram Live and telling one fan “It’s a rollout dummy”. He continued that energy with a second Live later in the month dubbed Gilga Radio, named after his new production company/creative initiative. Still, fans weren’t quite prepared when the artist dropped Atavista out of the sky on Sunday evening (May 12th).

Sadly, it’s not quite the completely original body of work fans were expecting (more on that later). Atavista is, in fact, a revamped version of the album Gambino dropped four years ago just as the pandemic began, 3.15.20. The latest version of the project features new production arrangements, additional guests including fellow Atlanta rapper Yung Nudy, and most importantly, well, actual song titles.

 Upon its release in 2020, the tracklist featured songs named for their timestamp in the album’s cumulative timeline. As you can imagine, that had a major impact on the replayability of the album at the time – some of us can barely remember our phone numbers let alone an album full of number arrangements. 

“That’s just what I was going through,” Gambino told Complex last year when quizzed on why exactly he took that approach. “People are always going to want what they want, but I have to express what I’m going through. I had just lost my father, I had just had a kid, and I was going through a lot. I was having a lot of different new experiences and that’s what I expressed.”

Despite the reimagining of the project, the core, laidback essence of the project remains even with new additions like the Summer Walker-assisted ‘Sweet Thang’ and a Yung Nudy feature on ‘Little Foot Big Foot’ – which was accompanied by a video.

While this may be a fresh listen for some, Gambino’s fans will still be expecting a completely original album sooner rather than later – thankfully, it looks like the wait will be a lot shorter than expected. A totally brand new album, Bando Stone & The New World (which will double as a soundtrack to a film of the same name), will be released in “the summer”, alongside a new tour. But until then, sit back and enjoy the revamped Atavista.