“Awaken, My Love!” by Childish Gambino

"Awaken, My Love!", the third album Donald Glover made as Childish Gambino, dropped on Glassnote on December 2, 2016, and it sounded like nothing he'd done before. The actor and rapper set the hip hop aside and dove headfirst into psychedelic soul, funk and R&B, producing the record himself alongside his longtime collaborator Ludwig Göransson. What comes out is fuzzed-out, bass-heavy and gloriously weird, the sound of a man who swapped his notebook for a crate of old funk records and never looked back.

"Me and Your Mama" led the singles, followed by "Redbone" and "Terrified", and it's "Redbone" that stuck: a slinky, woozy slow jam that won the Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance and was up for Record of the Year and Best R&B Song. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 and drew 2018 Grammy nominations in two categories, Album of the Year and Best Urban Contemporary Album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.