Why Donald Glover Decided Not To Rap During The Series Run Of Atlanta
When famed rapper Donald Glover decided to make a show about rappers, he made a lot of unconventional choices. Perhaps his strangest creative decision was casting the actor Brian Tyree Henry as a rapper, Alfred (a.k.a. Paper Boi), instead of himself. "Atlanta" features a number of songs from Paper Boi, but neither Henry nor Glover performs these raps. Believe it or not, they're written and performed by Donald Glover's brother, Stephen Glover, who is also a writer and executive producer for the series.
Donald Glover has been releasing music under the alias Childish Gambino since 2008. At the time, he was starring in Dan Harmon's live-action comedy series "Community" as Troy Barnes, an air-headed jock who peaked in high school and landed in community college.
His focus on music began to eclipse his acting and comedy after leaving the series in 2013, before combining his multitude of talents and creating his own music-centric series "Atlanta" in 2016. It seems evident that Glover would play a rapper in his own series about rappers, right? Wrong. Instead, he plays Alfred's cousin and manager, Earn.
"That would have been wack to me," he said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. "It just didn't feel cool to me to actually make music and then make a show [...] I don't think anybody wants to see a show about making [music]."
It would have been 'wack' and 'awkward'
Donald Glover decided against writing or performing music on "Atlanta," but he still brought some of his own experience as a musician into the series. However, not everything is directly inspired by the rapper's own life.
"Some of [Paper Boi's experiences] are my brother, and some of them just, like, the writers' experience, all the guys and gals in the writers' room," he explained. But there was one aspect of his own life that the "Atlanta" series creator wanted to communicate loud and clear.
"Being a rapper is super awkward," Glover confessed. "It's just awkward." In this way, he set out to create "'Curb Your Enthusiasm' for rappers." This awkwardness is created by the stark contrast between hip-hop imagery, Glover explained, and the mundanity of everyday life.
"[Y]ou're in a video and you've got, like, you know, champagne and butts close to your face [...] And then you have to go to Whole Foods and the person's like, 'Hey, you're that dude!' And you're like, 'Please [...] I just really want to buy this ice cream.' But they're like, 'Yo, you gotta be you right now, so let's take this picture,' and you're like 'Okay...' You have to be that wrestler face, but in the real world all the time."
As his success grows and his lifestyle improves, a greater discrepancy is created between Paper Boi's musical persona and his lived experience. Alfred often has uncomfortable run-ins with fans and self-image (see the season 4 episode "Born 2 Die," among others). Glover's early career in comedy may have spared him some of these expectations, but not entirely. Still, he didn't feel called to play out these awkward moments on television — he left that to his co-star, Henry.
Henry didn't want to rap either, for good reason
Henry might play a rapper on TV, but he's as far from a rapper as they come. And that's fine, because Henry doesn't have to be a rapper in real life — he's an actor.
"I look at 'Nashville,' you know, and I'm like nobody asked Hayden Panettiere if she knows how to sing country," he pointed out on Fresh Air. "I know they didn't, but she's playing a country singer. So it was like — it was very interesting to have to, like, kind of, like, answer for that."
The actor specifically avoided any attempts to embody a rap persona so as to get closer to the truth of his character. Henry wanted to emphasize how different rappers acted in day-to-day life, as opposed to the face they presented to the world.
"I wanted to be so far removed from that because I think that every rapper, you know – even their names are ways that they want you to know them. It's not their birth names [...] So I didn't really want to study any rappers per se because I wanted to get to who he was, you know, who, like – who Alfred really was and where he came from before I could even go to where he was going. Like, [who] Paper Boi is, where he's going."
Rap music is heavily tied up in carefully fabricated personas, making it the perfect music genre for the age of social media. By capturing the imposter syndrome of a rapper, "Atlanta" captures a major problem in contemporary life. Glover and Henry were both somehow removed from Paper Boi, but they also gave him life — just like their characters.