Rickrolling these niggas
They mad 'cause they don't know any better Childish Gambino – III. Life: The Biggest Troll [Andrew Auernheimer]
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She beautiful in the face, but her voice is truly amazing Childish Gambino – III. Life: The Biggest Troll [Andrew Auernheimer]
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So I took a dose of the edible Joey Bada$$ (Ft. Chuck Strangers, Dessy Hinds & Kirk Knight) – Satellite
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Used to be sure, now I'm starting to doubt ya LEGIT – "Leave"
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There’s a decent chance this message is for Jhené Aiko.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNXnOz10pA
The outro has an existentialist slant, suggesting that since we all are stuck together we have an obligation to help each other.
At the very end, you hear pages being flicked through. This symbolizes the beginning of the album’s story in “The Library” and the end of the story here.
I disagree that this last part is about Jhene Aiko herself. Perhaps it’s linked to The Boy’s reliance on Jhene’s character in the story, and a representation of how CG loves in general, but both of them said they were just friends and it would honestly just be a weird way to end an album about living in a world with the internet.
Also the greater meaning here is clearly about how we showed up to this album (and also to life), and CG doesn’t have anything meaningful to offer to us, but he does depend on his fans because we are the reason he has a career. These last lines in my opinion show his fear of losing everything, particularly because on the internet (haha Because The Internet) people are so fickle and trends die so fast. People move on, and Gambino is afraid that he too will just be one of those trends that die.
I agree with the larger and more existential meaning as well though. I just think you should remove those first lines about Jhene.
This is more so a thought, but what if the end chime/words which sounds like “That’s when you die” symbolizes the death of The Boy, to evolve into “a Man”. And on a Meta note Childish Gambino/Donald Glover declaring the death of the Boy from Camp/BTI to be his own self-actualized person.
To me, this is The Boy dying, and his voice fades as his consciousness fades. The fact that he’s dying now after having found what he wanted – someone to be with that understands him, to have purpose to live beyond recirculating troll jobs on the Internet, and to understand that you don’t need to be a follower in life for your own life to mean something – that’s when he begins to die.
That’s the true joke about life. At a certain point, we all reach a moment of clarity. We don’t all reach that point at the same time. Some reach it at a young age; others reach it when their youth is gone and all they have a regrets. But for most of us, by the time we have a chance to use that clarity for something meaningful or productive, that’s when your story is over.
Life is just an extended rickroll.
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Since The Boy dies via drowning in the screenplay, this section could be Gambino slowly slipping away from consciousness. His voice is getting more and more distant, and by the time he realizes what’s happening, it’s too late. It’s at this point that he realizes he doesn’t want to die anymore. He has someone who loves him. He’s not alone anymore. He could be talking about his girl here, but he also could be talking to you, the listener.
As any artist knows, the art doesn’t mean jack shit if there’s no one around to appreciate it. Rarely do people make entertainment for their own pleasure, after all. And as someone who’s dabbled in all types of entertainment – from music to film – Donald Glover is a great entertainment. But I’d imagine that once you become that successful, you can lose sight of why you’re an entertainer to begin with. “Who am I doing this for? What am I doing this for?” And really, those are all questions we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives, because we’re all trying to figure it out as it goes along. Donald has mentioned that a big theme of this album was feeling lost. This last section could be him asking us to help him find himself.
this part sounds like gordo in that one ep of lizzy miguire
I think it’s about death and Growing old how you go from wanting the help, thinking that it’s yours to have. Then you resort to begging and despairing, the slow death that is aging, decaying, that’s when you really die.
At the end it plays the same sound from the beginning song, starting a sort of loop again. This happens in “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons” except with the girl waking him up again.
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I was thinking when he said, “you’re here now” is like you have finished the journey through this album and maybe a call to the listeners who bought the album instead of getting the leaked version? (in which the leaked version cut off part of this song)
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Here’s another wild suggestion…
The outro to the song starts with Gambino saying “you have to help me”, as if saying that the listener is obliged to help him no matter what, like it’s a duty. Afterwards, he starts saying, asking “please help me”. This change in words shows that he’s become desperate, seeing that no one is helping him yet, so he starts asking, almost begging for help. Soon after, his voice fades away and another voice says “that’s when you die”. The two repeated lines before this is an illustration of how we as people can sometimes be quite arrogant even in our time of need that we sort of expect people to help us as if they HAVE to. When we realise that, in fact, no one is actually forced to help us we reach a state of helplessness and desperation, leading to us begging for help, still to no avail.
This links to the concept of the Internet, where we’re all connected and as close as ever yet still so far away, even a call for help from the biggest voice reaching many ears can still be lost in a sea of reluctance and isolation.
The sounds represent our daily lives in a way we start and finish our days with the internet, via. mobile, comp, tab, etc. Also the sound represents him (us) being trapped by the internet… note that before the internet/computer shuts down he is pleading for help. Maybe he’s pleading to rescued from the internet and how connected he is to it, to what it says, what it does. I think he is showing that the internet has a hold over all of us, it affects all of us, as seen in worldstar, the internet can start, finish, and determine a fight or as seen in Flight of the Navigator he talks about all the “pretty people” and his vivid dream where he is surrounded by people but when he wakes up he’s alone (he hates being alone); Because The Internet made him feel as if he wasn’t alone with everyone else online to keep him company. Unfortunately, he realizes too late how dependent he is on the internet for company, hence the begging to be saved. Too bad the computer shuts down….locking him inside.
The sound at the end I actually believe is the of one of those 1990’s computers shutting down, the same sound when it starts up. My dad actually still has one and it sounds similar. Those computers were the start of the public internet, black screens, green letters, coded cpu, white noise and all.
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Like Mitch said earlier, it could be the whole story starting over. Three things point to this. 1. The pages turning or whatever the noises are. They can be heard in the intro. 2. In the script, while “The Boy” and his friends are eating he says “we’ve been here before” 3. Marcus keeps on talking about Donnie Darko in the beginning of the story. In DD at the very end, the story essentially starts over, just like this one has. BOOM.
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Another thought:
Donald has been mentioning several things about a Buddha statue. This could be a little hint. This song, possibly the entire album, could play into the Buddhist belief system. Why so? Well take the pages turning for instance, they symbolize the story restarting (the boy’s life restarting). In other words, the boy is being reincarnated and what is a big part of Buddhism? Reincarnation. Your Karma plays a part into whether you’re reincarnated or not, and telling from the Boy’s life, his Karma wasn’t so great. So in fact, he is being reincarnated to essentially have better karma in his next life.
http://buddhism.about.com/od/abuddhistglossary/g/karmadef.htm
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The 5 second noise at the very end is symbolizing Donald/The Boy logging off a computer.
You can look at the library (Intro) annotation for proof. He said it an interview
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Mitch’s suggestion is right. Earlier in the BTI script there’s even a conversation that discusses the cyclical nature of life with the Boy and the girl he falls in love with.
As far as “You have to help me”, the whole album is about how the Internet has changed how we interact with people. The idea that we’re closer than ever while we’ve also never been further apart. Since you’ve gotten to the end of The Boy’s story, and you know what he’s been through, it’s him asking for help. There’s more to it than that, but yeah.