Childish Gambino, real name Donald Glover, has made weirdness into a pretty lucrative career. Of course, in the beginning, his music wasn’t received as well. Just listen to his story about being booed while opening for Kid Cudi. Fast-forward to the present day and the multihyphenate talent has developed the creative formula to covert creepiness into a financial cash cow (see: Swarm).
During a recent interview with GQ, Gambino said that not all of his weird ideas get to see the light of day. When discussing his breakout Grammy Award-winning song “Redbone,” the musician revealed that the version that fans have come to love wasn’t the first version of the track.
“I wish you guys could hear the first version of ‘Redbone,’” exclaimed Gambino before bursting into laughter. “It was so weird. I was actually listening to it the other day. I was like, ‘what a weird song this was.’ Then [Ludwig Göransson and I] cleaned it, and we were like, ‘oh yeah.’”
“Redbone” was released in November of 2016, which marked Gambino’s long-awaited return to music. The song appeared on his third studio album, Awaken, My Love!, which interpolated elements of the 1975 funk classic “I’d Rather Be With You” by Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The song went on to earn the recording artist several awards, including a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance.
Watch the full interview above.