The first time I encountered Donald Glover was an accident. I was procrastinating during my senior year of high school, trying to watch some YouTube video. It probably had something to do with The Lonely Island or those talking twin babies (this was 2011), but I can’t remember. What I do remember was having to watch an advertisement before the video. I remember that it was a Dwight Howard Adidas commercial, I remember it showed a lot of Atlanta, and I remember the music playing in the background.

For the first (and last) time in my life, the YouTube comment section was helpful. One of the top posts was simply: “Childish Gambino: Freaks and Geeks.” Wait. Childish Gambino? Um… OK. I copied the name and pasted it into Google.

A few months later, I had devoured Gambino’s mixtapes, I AM JUST A RAPPER, I AM JUST A RAPPER 2, and Culdesac. I had learned that “I am just a rapper” was a bald-faced lie, and that Glover (who rapped under the alter ego of Childish Gambino, a nom de plume he got from a Wu-Tang name generator), was actually a writer, standup comic, and actor as well. And he was sublime at all of it. In 2011, the then 28 year old had written for and had cameos in 30 Rock, was starring in NBC’s Community, filmed an hour-long stand-up special for Comedy Central, and released his first album, Camp. I started college and won an intramural flag football championship that year. Wild times for both of us.

Tonight, just more than five years after I first heard Donald Glover’s name, the entertainer is premiering his new TV show on FX. It is called Atlanta, and it is about the city that he and I both call home.

Like Glover, Atlanta is hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it. Like Glover, Atlanta’s identity is tricky to pinpoint even to those who know it well. Like Glover, Atlanta is something I love, and I think you should too.

The Man

“Cry when I’m writing, I don’t really know why

I think it’s cause I can’t really see myself an old guy

And that scares me, I wanna be around a while

But I feel my purpose goes beyond having raised a child

Bright lights, they tend to burn out fast

So I shine bright, but I’m scared that it won’t last” “F*ck It All,” Childish Gambino

Sometime in early 2012, a good friend texted me in all caps:

“DID YOU KNOW DONALD GLOVER FROM COMMUNITY IS CHILDISH GAMBINO?!”

I did know this, I informed him, but I could completely understand why someone wouldn’t immediately make the connection. On Community, which happens to be one of my favorite TV shows of all time (and it should be yours as well), Glover plays Troy Barnes, a goofy, innocent, and lovable community college student. Childish Gambino, as you get to know him through his lyrics, is… not these things. Not on the surface, at least.

For many people, Troy Barnes was how they got to know Donald Glover and, for better or worse, the ideas of the character and the man who played him became inseparable. While Childish Gambino might have been how I first heard of Glover, Troy Barnes was how I first grew to love him.

One of the things that appeals to me the most about the character is the feeling that Troy is who you would be if you didn’t hide who you really are. He would do anything for his friends, shows raw emotion (maybe too much), and isn’t ashamed to follow what he truly loves, whether that’s building a blanket fort, building a pillow fort (they are very different), krumping, or hosting a fake talk show. Yes, this is a TV show where things are slightly exaggerated, but I couldn’t help feeling that as the show went on, Troy enjoyed his life more because he didn’t care what other people thought. It was something to aspire to, in a sense. Also, Troy was a very emotional character, which consistently produced one of the best things on television: Donald Glover crying. (Ignore the unfortunate screenshot, please.)

But like all amazing and perfect and beautiful things, Donald Glover on Community had to end. He left midway through the show’s fifth season, and it was sad and devastating but somehow felt right. That’s not true. It felt terrible. It felt somewhat like Michael leaving The Office, which is to say it was a national tragedy and I wore black for a month straight while I picketed outside the NBC offices.

In 2013, when it was announced that Glover would be leaving the show, the actor posted a series of pictures on Instagram as a message to fans. They were written in all caps on Residence Inn Marriott stationary, and they were somber and introspective and honest. Very honest.

“I didn’t leave Community to rap,” he wrote, addressing a prevailing theory that he left the show to focus on his music career. “I don’t wanna rap. I wanted to be on my own.”

He then mentioned Bro Rape, a 2006 YouTube video put out by his sketch comedy group, Derrick Comedy. The video—a parody of To Catch a Predator, but with frat bros—has amassed more than 10 million views, but focused on what some thought was a distasteful subject. It was one of the first things to get Glover’s name out there, but it was also something he’s desperately tried to outrun in the years since.

“I’m scared I’ll never grow out of Bro Rape,” he wrote. “I’m afraid people think I hate my race. I’m afraid people think I hate women. I hate people can say anything. I hate caring what people think.

“I feel like I’m letting everyone down. I’m afraid people hate who I really am. I’m afraid I hate who I really am.

“I’m afraid this is all an accident.”

That last excerpt stayed with me. Maybe the letters were for show, or maybe they were an exaggeration of what he truly felt. Then again, maybe they weren’t and everything Glover has done—acting, writing, comedy, rapping—has been an effort to prove that he is for real. That he has talent. That his fame is no mistake. But who was he trying to prove that to?

Around this time, a different side of Glover started showing. He released “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons,” a dark, confusing and somewhat haunting short film that was meant to promote his upcoming album, but left the viewer with no discernible message. He put out two music videos: “Sweatpants” and “Telegraph Ave” that both seemed somewhat standard until they weren’t, leaving you dazed and wondering if you had just watched an episode of The Twilight Zone.

In 2013, Gambino released Because the Internet, his second studio album. It was amazing, and it gave the artist national recognition when it debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album. The signature single on the album, “3005” (which has a somewhat odd music video as well), was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance, and the album itself was certified gold in early 2016. It also gave legitimacy to what some people considered a hobby or side hustle for the actor, shedding any ill-made comparisons to The Lonely Island, a rap group started by comedy actors.

But Because the Internet still showed Gambino’s uniqueness. In a typically non-typical move, he released a 72-page screenplay meant to be read alongside the album. He also buried a hidden version of “3005” inside the code of the album’s website, becausetheinter.net, that took fans a year to uncover (and they only managed that because someone who may or may not have been Glover himself posted it to Reddit).

Since then, it seemed as though Glover was settling into a (somewhat) normal groove and capitalizing on his successes. He released a mixtape STN MTN (a reference to his home of Stone Mountain, Georgia) and an attached EP Kauai. He had small roles in the 2015 blockbusters The Martian and Magic Mike XXL, and actually managed to land a role in the newest Spiderman (there was a longstanding campaign “Donald for Spiderman” that he explains best).

And now, tonight, comes Atlanta.

If this summary has felt convoluted, then it got across the main message: I have no idea who the real Donald Glover is. In “Bonfire,” which also has a somewhat terrifying video (see a theme here?), Gambino raps the following: “Man, why does every black actor gotta rap some? I don’t know, all I know is I’m the best one.” It’s a question with an answer that only elicits more questions, which seems so perfect for Glover. Is he an actor first, rapper second, director third, comic fourth? Is he as happy as Troy Barnes seems on the inside, or is that character the true alter ego? Who is Donald Glover? And what does he have in store for Atlanta?

The City

The first time I encountered Atlanta was 23 years ago. I was originally introduced to the city by a woman in a white coat, and I don’t really remember it much, but I’ve been told I cried quite a bit.

It’s been a wild ride since then, and I’d like to think that I’ve changed somewhat since being born, but one thing that has stayed constant is my love for my city.

Atlanta is a city where summers are hot enough for the pool and winters are cold enough for weeks off after one inch of snow (and the occasional Snowpocalypse). We have festivals and great food and nationally-ranked colleges. We have music and history and culture and Coke. And yet I still have trouble explaining to outsiders what I love so much about the city.

I like to tell people that Atlanta has the perks of a big city with the atmosphere of a small town. I grew up 15 minutes from downtown and the Georgia Dome and Phillips Arena, but across the street from a giant park. Cheshire Bridge and Onyx were a mile away, but a mile the other direction sits an elementary school, a local bakery and a weekly farmer’s market.

I lived in Manhattan the summer after I graduated from college, which is not to say that I understand New York even a little, but I do remember how odd it felt to walk to work each day and see more people than I’d ever seen before not interacting with each other at all. Then I remember how wonderful it felt when I came home, went to the grocery store, and had the cashier ask me about my mom by name.

These are all things that I love about the city, but they constitute a list, not an identifiable personality for Atlanta.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to what may or may not be a lack of identity for this city. For starters, Atlanta has one of the weakest professional sports environments in the country. Save for a recent upswing, the Hawks’ attendance has routinely sat in the bottom third of the NBA, and the Braves have failed to average better than 65-percent attendance since 2007. The Falcons are the only bright spot on paper, but I think I’ve met more actual Falcons players than diehard fans of the Dirty Birds. Since I was born, the Braves have moved stadiums once and scheduled to move again, the Thrashers were born and laid to rest, and we gained and lost more soccer teams than I can remember. In the history of major Atlanta sports (Hawks, Braves, Falcons, Thrashers, Flames), the city has captured one championship.

Like it or not, sports can be a major factor in defining a city and sports problems define Atlanta. But in some ways, they also represent some of the more major problems with the city. This is explained so well by non-official-but-totally-official Atlanta spokesman Rembert Browne, who wrote an essay in Grantland about the city when it was announced that the Braves were moving to a suburb north of Atlanta:

“One of the defining traits of Atlanta is the way in which people, places, and things run away from each other. One of the most sprawling cities in the world achieves that honor, yes, because there are no geographical boundaries to stop growth, but also because people will go to great lengths to not live among undesirables. Regardless of the business deals behind the new stadium, moving the home of the Braves to a suburb just feels like a continuation of the story of demographic dynamics in Atlanta over the past half-century.”

That story Rembert mentions is one of gentrification. For the past 30-plus years, the city so known for its contributions to black culture has steadily been becoming more and more white. “According to census figures, non-Hispanic blacks went from a high of 66.8 percent of Atlanta’s population in 1990 to 61 percent in 2000 and to 54 percent in 2004,” wrote The New York Times. “In the same time period, non-Hispanic whites went from 30.3 percent to 35 percent.”

Sure, there have been benefits to recent changes in the city—new developments such as the Beltline, Ponce City Market, and Atlantic Station to name a few. But the upshot has been the steady (and not always voluntary) migration of black families—and with them, black culture—away from the center of Atlanta. The 2017 mayoral race features serious white contenders in a city that hasn’t had a non-black mayor since 1974.

In a Q&A with Creative Loafing, Glover mentioned that one character in his upcoming show talks with an Atlanta dialect that he believes will go extinct in the next 15 years. Part of his show’s mission, Glover says, is to capture those parts of Atlanta that might be history soon.

Talking about an Atlanta dialect is funny to me. I know what Glover is alluding to, but when I first went to college in North Carolina and introduced myself as being from Atlanta, I was almost always met with “But you don’t have a southern accent.” I responded that I said I was from Atlanta, not Georgia, and trust me, there’s a difference.

Being from the city is a point of pride. There’s a highway, I-285, that not only encircles the city, but also divides it. You either live Inside The Perimeter (ITP) or outside of it (OTP). Glover is from Stone Mountain, which sits just outside the east edge of 285, but he says he’s from Atlanta. The ITP snob in me wants to correct him, but the Atlantan (and Donald Glover fan) in me wants to accept that there are so many ways to experience the city, and I don’t own the right to choose which of those are legitimate. Big of me, I know.

Because even after living here for the better part of 23 years, I don’t feel qualified to explain Atlanta as a whole. I know that I’ve experienced just one sliver of what the city has to offer, and I know how different the Atlanta experience can be depending on who you are and where you’re from. That’s why I’m truly excited for Atlanta. Yes, it is a show that Donald Glover created, executive produced, co-wrote and stars in, and that would have certainly been enough for me to tune in. But that isn’t what I’m looking forward to the most. Glover hired an all-black writing staff for the show (a rarity for a major network), many of whom are from Atlanta and had never worked in a writing room before. He put them in a house together and had them approach writing the show’s storyline like they would react to events in real life. It’s supposed to be honest, but also subjective, and that’s OK.

“It’s a perspective that’s specific, and I also plan to explore everyone’s perspective,” Glover told Creative Loafing. “As a black man, I’m pretty good at giving my perspective, but a black woman’s experience in Atlanta is completely different from mine — extremely different. And a white dude’s experience in, like, Buckhead [or] going to Emory [University] is probably completely different. That’s why it’s important to show how that kind of stuff intertwines. It’s all perspective.”

That’s what I’m most excited for with Atlanta. A new perspective. Because it’s important to understand that all of your experiences in life, however varied, however important or transformative to you, are only a small piece of the puzzle. No, I do not think that watching a television show will make me an expert on the black experience in Atlanta. But I do hope that it will offer a close-to-unfiltered look at what the city means to other people who love it.

Because that’s the main point of writing this. That for how much I care about these two things, Donald Glover and Atlanta, I struggle to put a label on either of them. And maybe that’s a good thing. Labels are easy. They take away the surprise and allow you to set expectations for something before you experience it. I’ve lived in Atlanta for all but four years of my life, and every week I find something new to love about the city. I’ve been following Donald Glover for half a decade now, and in re-watching Community, or re-listening to his music, I find new lessons, new things to identify with, and new favorites. Now, something I could only dream of is happening: The two are joining forces. In theory, for all I’ve pretended to know about the man and the city, I should know what to expect when the two intertwine. But in reality, I have no idea what is coming with Atlanta.

And that’s exciting.

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