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Music

Of Course Childish Gambino's "This Is America" Is His First Number One Song

Donald Glover's firestorm of a multimedia single has made a chart-topping debut on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Donald Glover probably has the best agent in the world. No access to Wi-Fi is probably the only acceptable reason if you aren't at least aware of his allegorical and deeply angry "This Is America" video by now, and he'll essentially be hopping from that to a likely ridiculous opening weekend on May 25 for Solo, the Star Wars side story he's starring in. Life's pretty good for Gambino, and it seems to only be getting better after the news of "This Is America"'s chart-topping success, a first for Glover.

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According to the ever-reliable chartdata Twitter account, "This Is America" will debut at number one on this week's Billboard Hot 100. It also notes that this is the first Childish Gambino song to ever hit the chart's pinnacle, topping his previous peak of 12 for the meme-able slow jam and unofficial Get Out theme song "Redbone."

This was probably a foregone conclusion, given that the Hiro Murai-directed video has become probably the most analyzed piece of recent hip-hop media next to Kanye's recent, disappointing interviews. Maybe we are back in the 1960s and incendiary slices of pop music can become both hit singles and cultural conversation starters. Wishful thinking, probably, but it can't hurt.

Phil is on Twitter.