Donald Glover: how the star of Atlanta proved that I too could be cool

When I was a teenager, I sometimes got called an “oreo”. You know, black on the outside, white on the inside. I was as proud as possible of being black and I’d studied black history, but to some of my peers something critical was missing, something ineffable but essential. Some heard it in the voice: not enough bass or grit or soul or something. What they were saying was that I wasn’t black enough. Few said it directly, but some did. Why?

I played tennis. I spoke proper English. I unabashedly loved the Beatles. After years in prep school, they thought too much whiteness had seeped into me. This charge, dear reader, was without merit. I was neither white inside (whatever that means) nor did I wish to be white. I played tennis at a black tennis club, I lived for hip-hop, and I devoured Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, two books that take a deep look at blackness.

I knew who I was, but I also knew I was a little different. And I was a little embarrassed about it. The icons of blackness then were hyper black – this was the 1980s, it was all about Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy and Chuck D from Public Enemy. Their performance of blackness was far from mine. But I was not alone. There were others who wanted to do blackness differently: Prince, for sure, as well as A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. A few years later, that family had grown to include Questlove, Pharrell and Outkast.

And now the tribe is being spearheaded by Donald Glover, who at this point is probably the patron saint of black kids who love being black but still get called oreo. Glover is one of the most influential stars in America today. He is the creator, writer and star of arguably the best show currently on TV: Atlanta. A dramatic comedy about black life in one of America’s blackest cities, Atlanta is a somewhat abstract series about the challenges of making it in hip-hop. It is also about the struggle to get by and – frequently – the sheer craziness of life.

You may know Glover as Childish Gambino, though. That’s the name he gave his rap persona after playing with a Wu-Tang name generator. As Gambino, he is the force behind such songs as 2016’s Redbone, which won a Grammy, and This Is America, a shocking epic released last month whose video amassed 10m views in 24 hours. Given that he is also one of the stars of Solo: A Star Wars Story, in cinemas now, Glover is not so much having a moment as dominating the clock.

I’ve felt a connection with Glover ever since his early days on the college campus-set TV comedy Community, which ran from 2009 to 2015. From his acting to his hip-hop to his standup, he was funny, surprising, smart and edgy. And I liked the way he presented his blackness. On the 2011 track Not Going Back, he rhymed about himself: “Black dudes assume I’m closeted or kinda gay / White people confused like girl on Glee and Gabourey.” He says neither black nor white people understand him because of his particular brand of blackness. And yet he is still here doing his thing because, as he says elsewhere in the song, “these smart middle-class black kids need a role model”. He was validating me in a way that a lot of hip-hop was not.

In hip-hop, the proverbial real man has an air of menace about him – one look and you know he could beat you up. Think about it: you probably wouldn’t want to fight many of your favourite rappers. Jay-Z? Kendrick Lamar? Eminem? You know they’re tough. In rock, pop and R&B, it’s different. Ed Sheeran, Chris Martin, all of Maroon 5 at once – you know you could take them.

I’m not encouraging or condoning fist-fights. I haven’t had one since fifth grade. They’re primitive. I’m just saying that most of hip-hop’s alpha males present themselves as fierce, cold-hearted, drug-war-hardened soldiers who are physically superior. It’s a core part of hip-hop. But there are some big rappers you may not fear a fight with. Drake, Lil Xan and Lil Yachty leap to mind, and Glover is from that side of the aisle; one of those rappers with no air of menace, more at home on a couch with Netflix than on the streets with a weapon.

Season one of Atlanta touched on this when Earn, the broke music manager played by Glover, is talking to his boss, rising rapper Paper Boi. “I scare people at ATMs,” Paper Boi says. “I have to rap.” He means he emits that air of menace, so white people fear him and he can’t get a desk job. Glover is the opposite: he doesn’t make white people uncomfortable. My younger self would have been so happy to come across someone like him.

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Glover plays with the notion of oreoness in Atlanta. In season one, he gave us the story of a “transracial” boy: a black teenager who says he identifies as a 35-year-old white man. In season two, which begins on Fox this weekend, he gives us an unforgettable new character in whiteface. Called Teddy Perkins, he is the full Michael Jackson – though you’re never sure if it is a result of him horrifically bleaching his skin, or whether he is losing pigment after spending years locked away from the world in his mansion.

Series two takes a journey to the edges of society and sanity, featuring characters who have alligators as pets, or who live hidden away from the world, in woods or in mansions. It’s called Robbin’ Season and, yeah, there is straight up mugging – but the new fringe characters also rob the leads, stealing scene after scene and even whole episodes.

My favourite episode is The Barbershop, uncovers a small but vital truth. Paper Boi is taken on a wild, unwanted adventure through the edges of Atlanta by a crazy, lying, stealing, constantly hustling barber named Bibby. Why put up with all this? I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

The Teddy Perkins episode is even stranger and darker. This bizarre retired musician, who may be keeping someone trapped in his mansion, speaks and moves in an overly delicate way that recalls Michael Jackson offstage. Glover may be commenting on Jackson: Perkins, we learn, became a great musician because his father was so hard on him, and he still idolises the man, even though he now seems to be adrift in life. These factors all contribute to a shocking ending.

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Glover has called Atlanta “Twin Peaks for rappers”, and this season perfectly captures the Kafkaesque unpredictability of black life in America; the way an average moment can flip into a wild ride. Go for a haircut and end up on a crazy tour of Atlanta. Go to buy a little weed and get mugged by a friend. Go to pick up an old piano and end up watching bullets fly.

All of which also feeds into This Is America, a track that contains contrasts so stark they are frequently comic. In the video, Glover dances with happy children while violent urban chaos swirls in the background. Is he ignoring the apocalypse – or distracting us from it? At the end, he poses atop a car like he’s king of the world, and the next moment he is running from a white mob with terror in his eyes. It’s a hell of a message from someone who was once thought to be oreoish, showing how quickly a black person can go from feeling on top of the world to being hunted down.

As with Atlanta, white people barely figure, though the song touches on core issues in modern America: rampant gun violence, the imperative to make more money, the desire to have status and show it off. And at the centre of the circus is Glover, shirtless, wearing just some gold chains and plain grey trousers.

“We just wanna party, party just for you,” he chants sweetly. But the happy vibe is shattered when he pulls out a gun and shoots a hooded man in the back of the head. Suddenly there’s a driving beat and Glover is singing “This is America” with a biting edge. But he never turns into one of those rappers we’re so familiar with, one of the Paper Bois who scare folks at ATMs. Mostly he is smiling and dancing with kids while chaos rages behind. It’s an epic statement about black music and black people, that elevates the 34-year-old Californian to the music-making elite.

Years ago, Glover publicly dreamed of playing Spider-Man and it seemed like a reach. Now he’s Lando Calrissian in Solo and it seems like perfect casting. In the original Star Wars trilogy, Billy Dee Williams played Solo’s friend as the coolest black man in the galaxy. Glover brings his own flavour, but his Lando is still as cool as hell. They are big shoes to fill – Lando is a classic character from my youth – but he nails it.

Glover is no overnight sensation. He built to this over a decade. And he is a long, long way from being an oreo. In fact, his career is a sort of hip-hop revenge-of-the-nerds story. Nerdy guy gets called oreo and then grows up to become a rap star by repping for smart black guys who could never be thuggish. Glover is a role model for all those oreoish black guys who needed a saviour. He stepped up and, thanks to him, I know all those guys who called me an oreo were wrong. They just never understood. Most of us who seemed like oreos were like Glover. We always loved ourselves and our blackness. We always had cool somewhere inside us.

And those guys who called Glover and me oreos? I bet they love Atlanta.