Donald Glover's Hip-Hop Act Childish Gambino Signs to Glassnote

Donald Glover of Childish Gambino performs at Bonnaroo.

Gary Miller/WireImage

With his hip-hop act Childish Gambino, Donald Glover – best known for his role as Troy on NBC's hit comedy Community – is giving his acting career a run for its money. He's just signed a deal with indie label Glassnote, home to Mumford & Sons and Phoenix, and is getting ready to release his debut album, Camp (tentatively set for November 1st).

"The biggest compliment I can give the album right now is it’s worthy of being on Glassnote," he tells Rolling Stone. "I love Glassnote’s stuff, and he [Daniel Glass] was like, 'We can do anything with this album if the album’s good.'”

Glover probably also scored some points with one track in particular that gives a shout out to Mumford & Sons. "I definitely reference them in this one song," he says. "We all know each other, it’s kind of cool. It’s like a family."

Is working with Mumford or Phoenix a possibility? "I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it right now, but I've started collaborating with a bunch of artists," he says.

His wish list of partners goes well beyond the Glassnote family, however. "Who wouldn’t want to work with Kanye and Jay-Z? I love [Watch the Throne], I was defending it cause it was perfect to me. I love it," he says. "And I know a lot of people have a lot of problems with it, it’s just like a really good stadium rap album. All the songs are so big, like 'Lift Off.' That sounds like the NBC theme song. It’s fucking huge."

Will Camp be worthy of the stadium-rap moniker? "I’m like, 'This is for the stage,'" he says. "I want people, when I play that first chord, to be like, 'Oh my god, I know this song.'"

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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