Dissect - S7E2 - Crawl by Childish Gambino

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

We continue our season-long examination of Because The Internet with the album’s opening song “Crawl.” Here we meet the album’s protagonist The Boy - a Black, rich internet troll who lives in a glass-walled mansion on top of a hill. Dive deeper into the world of BTI with our visual guides, where you can also read the BTI screenplay in full. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Today we begin our serialized analysis of Because the Internet by Childish Gambino. On our last episode, we surveyed the wide variety of art forms like film, writing, design, performance art, and music Donald Glover used to construct this transmedia world. By weaving together physical, sonic, visual, and online material, Glover wove a web of art to catch our invested attention, encouraging exploration, conversation, and connection.

People trying to make you be like, no, live with this. Like, no, you got to build a bigger world. I'm not going to make an album. I'm going to make an album. I'm going to make the rollout dope. I'm going to make the movie with it dope. I'm going to make everything dope. I'm going to make a world.

Because the thing is, like, album, it doesn't mean anything. Music doesn't mean it means as much as you put into it, and we don't have time to put anything into it. So, like, I don't see. In the different pieces used to build this world, Glover wove bits of reality and fictional components together, blurring the distinction between the identities of Donald Glover, Childish Gambino, and The Boy, the protagonist of Because the Internet's narrative. As we discussed last episode, this narrative begins at the end of Camp, Gambino's 2011 album. There, the narrator recounted being on the bus home from Summer Camp and telling the only friend he made there that he had feelings for her,

only to be betrayed and humiliated. From this, he learned to be open and honest with everyone instead of hiding parts of himself. However, he admitted that he still hadn't grown up and moved on from that experience. There isn't a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure.

But it's a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and matured and shit. But that's not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven't. It's here, getting off the bus home from Summer Camp, that Because the Internet's story begins.

In the style of a play, the tracks of Because the Internet are separated into five acts. The scenes within each act are indicated by Roman numerals that precede certain song titles. And like we discussed last episode, there's a screenplay that accompanies the album, and the music is intended to score specific scenes. The album's opening track titled The Library Marks the First Act and propels us into the world of Because the Internet. Likely playing on old dial-up internet connections, the library provides the effect of logging on and entering a new world.

Glover touched on the intended effect of opening the album with this five-second sound clip. Yeah, and that's just like a quick intro. It's kind of like logging on, you know, like log on the computer, like connection kind of thing. Yeah. For Glover, the key concept to this sound was connection, perhaps the most prominent theme of because the internet. Of course, we are connected to the internet, and on the internet we connect with other people. But is this connection real? And by extension, is who we are on the internet real. As we'll see, this kind of interrogation of the idea of connection in the age of the internet

is at the heart of BTI. Naming this short connection sound, the library, encourages further exploration of what it might mean. Libraries are institutions of freely accessible information for the public. Historically, libraries are a representation of power, and civilizations would build them up to gather knowledge and promote education. Modern libraries offer reservoirs of data, as well as access to the internet, but these physical spaces fade under the shadow of the internet as a more universal library. The internet is now the default home of information, but have we considered the consequences of such a seismic shift? With this context in mind, we can listen to the track again,

this time noticing that it does kind of sound like a digital recreation of flipping pages in a book before landing on or connecting with the page you were looking for. In BTI's prelude film, clapping for the wrong reasons, we saw that Glover and his team recorded music in the library room of the temple, the enormous mansion Glover rented to create BTI. In this hyper-specific sense, the library is then a reference to the album's place of creation. And so from the start, Glover uses a recognizable pillar of society, the library, as a foundation for his narrative. This is an offering of multiple perspectives, as we could choose to read it with the idea of library's historical significance in gathering knowledge, a room in the boy's mansion, or in the specific sense as the album's origin point.

This multiplicity mirrors Glover's world building and is just another technique used to encourage exploration and connection as we begin the screenplay. Picking up where Camp left off, the first line of the script reads, You can't live your life on a bus. The directive of live your life has existential implications. It's a command that we assume agency over our decisions rather than ceding control to something else. To live your life, you must act. You must drive. You can't just go along for the ride. The script continues by detailing the story's protagonist, named simply the boy, getting off the bus from summer camp. He gets into

a limousine with his father, who is cast to be played by rapper Rick Ross. They sit in silence for, quote, what feels like eight hours, before having a small conversation. The boy's father asked if he made any friends at camp. Despite having befriended the girl, the boy lies and says no, and his father shakes his head as if both disappointed and unsurprised. As they arrive home, the description of their mansion establishes the central setting of the narrative. Quote, an infinity pool lines the horizon in the backyard. A spiral staircase fades up the wall and into the master bedroom upstairs. You can see all this from the foyer, which has a large Buddha statue in the center of it, unquote.

Now inside the mansion, the father receives a call from the Califax collection. agency. The father quickly hangs up the phone. The boy grabs some pop tarts and heads to his room, where he treats his things a little carelessly. He immediately logs on to his laptop. The background picture of his desktop is his mother holding him when he was younger. He has a new email from his friend FAMM, who is cast to be played by FAMUDAROGI, a member of Glover's creative team, royalty. The email reads, This is you, and attached is a video of a woman performing oral sex on a horse. After watching the video for longer than he should, the boy goes on hot new hip-hop.com and sees that rapper Rich Homi Kwan has released a new trending song. The boy

pauses, types fuck you n-words into the comment section, takes a bite of his Samores pop-tart, and then revels in the stream of reactionary comments telling him off. The last comment misidentifies the boy's racial identity, saying, LMFAO, Crackers Be Crazy. The boy's smiles at his screen before the script becomes a title card, formally introducing Because the Internet as the title of the screenplay. With this brief scene, we're introduced to the boy, a rich, lonely internet troll. We get the sense that things aren't what they appear to be from the outside. His father's mansion and wealth is immediately undermined by a call from a collection agency, the same one that calls twice in clapping for the wrong reasons. The boy leaves a comment that

resembles nothing of how he behaves in real life. He doesn't connect with his father, his mother is dead, and fam, his only friend, trolls him. Additionally, the boy's father is cast as Rick Ross, a curious but very calculated choice when we understand a little bit more about Ross's past. Born William Leonard Roberts II, Rick Ross was a correctional officer before embarking on a music career. His original stage name was Teflon de Don, but eventually changed it to Rick Ross, inspired by the 1980s drug kingpin of the same name. As Rick Ross, William Roberts achieved musical success by painting a picture of lavish living, even though it wasn't his real life. Ross's persona was at first an act, a fabricated existence of material gains that captured attention by typifying

the sort of luxury many desire. His act eventually became blurred with reality after he became successful. In casting Ross, Glover emphasizes the idea that we all construct characters for ourselves, especially in the age of the internet. What we then have to figure out is whether we are those characters we build up, or if we even have a true identity. As author Kurt Vonnegut, who will be cited by name later, said in his book Mother Knight, quote, we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be, unquote. After this portrait of the young boy, the script suddenly flashes forward an entire 15 years. We assume the boy is now somewhere in his late 20s. It's at this point that the screenplay directs us to begin playing

the album's next track, the first scene in Act 1, Crawl. Crawl is produced by the duo Christian Rich and Childish Gambino. Glover once described the mood of the song, quote, it feels uncomfortable, it's something amazing but terrifying, unquote. Not unlike the internet itself, this juxtaposition between amazement and terror is in large part created by the song's chord progression, which is first heard on what sounds like an imitation choir patch on a vintage melaton keyboard. The majority of the chords in this progression are what's known as major chords, the most common chord in all of music. Here's the first chord of the progression, a b-flat major. On its own, it sounds bright and happy. This is what major

chords are known for. The second chord is also a major chord, a B major. Again, on its own, bright and happy. And the third chord also major. And so we have to ask ourselves, why does Crawl's chord progression sound so ominous, so uncomfortable, despite being made up of these happy chords? Well, this comes from the strange, unorthodox way the chords are used. The distance between the first and second chord is what's known as a minor second interval. This is the smallest distance between two notes and the most dissonant interval in all of music. This dissonant interval of a minor second

is commonly used in horror films to create a sense of terror and danger. For example, the famous theme from Jaws is constructed from this interval, as is the infamous shower scene from the movie Psycho. The second half of Crawl's chord progression oscillates back and forth between two chords a minor second apart, giving it an eerie feeling similar to the horror movie examples we just

heard. And this is what makes the progression so haunting. It's made up of major or happy chords, but the way they're used creates a unique feeling of unease. It's kind of like smiling with a gun to your head. We also recognize a possible connection between this chord progression and the song title, Crawl. Like I mentioned, the chords are extremely tight-knit, moving up and down, using the smallest possible musical increment there is. If you're trying to compose the musical equivalent to crawling, this certainly would be a fitting way to do so, as the chords crawl from one to the next.

The chaotic, unsettling nature of the production is accentuated by vocals from the rapper Mystical, best known for his 2000 Neptune-produced hit, Shake Your Ass. Mystical's vocal style very obviously draws from Rick James. Interestingly, the majority of the ad-lib we hear Mystical perform on Crawl can be traced back to a live performance by Rick James of his song Mary Jane. Now here's a recreation of the adlibs and crawl using just samples from the Rick James record. We compare this to Mystical's vocals on Crawl.

Pretty similar, right? While we can't say for sure, we might speculate that the Rick James samples were used first in the song's production, and Mystical was brought in later and re-recorded them, plus added his own original adlibs. In any case, the percussive aggressiveness of mystical's domineering vocals, layered atop the ominous chord progression, creates a world of chaos and danger. Out of this vortex, singer Kai performs the song's hook. Kai sings Where We Were Kind of Thing, Betcha Craw all alone. This fragmented refrain establishes a vague, abstract setting,

obscured and desolate darkness and mystery. The ambiguity of this refrain combined, with the context of the screenplay, the narrative, and Glover's own personal life, demand that we explore multiple interpretations of possible meaning. In terms of the BTI narrative, the boy had just returned home from Summercamp, newly rejected by the girl. His father is distant and unhelpful, and his mother is dead. In this context, Bet Your Crawl All Alone, sung by a female voice,

seems to comment on our protagonist's state of loneliness and isolation. Crawling likely implies adolescence and lack of maturity and is crawling on the World Wide Web to seek connection, albeit through trolling. And to this point, the refrain's emphasis on infancy, combined with the menacing world of its terrorizing production, could also refer to the dangers of the Internet itself. In interviews, Glover would often use a baby as part of a metaphor about the Internet. Quote, at this point with the Internet, it feels like we're just giving a handgun to an infant

and going, don't shoot yourself, unquote. We also think of Donald Glover himself in the period between camp and because the internet. He had just left community, he got off the bus, so to speak, in order to create his own work. This was paired with a real-life existential crisis, resulting in an apparent suicide attempt and the hotel notes. Especially relevant to this discussion of Crawl's refrain and being all alone, are these lines from the hotel notes, quote, I didn't leave community to rap. I don't want to rap. I wanted to be on my own.

I've been sick this year. I've seen a bunch of people die this year. This is the first time I've felt helpless. But I'm not on that. Kept looking for something to be in with. Follow someone's blueprint. But you have to be on your own, unquote. And so like the title of the library,

this opening refrain contains a multitude of possible meanings, depending on the lens you view it through. The Boy, Childish Gambino, or Donald Glover. Fittingly, after the refrain, Gambino appears for the first time on the album and asks a direct question about identity. Through muffled distortion, Gambino cries, Who Am I?

As his first appearance on the album, the question is inherently emphasized. This timeless philosophical question of Who Am I will loom over the entire album. It's the question the album seeks to answer. In the age of the internet, the age where our constructed Rick Ross-like online identities so often contrasts with the real-life versions of ourselves, who we are is more blurred than perhaps any other time in history.

We might even wonder if the electronic distortion put on Gambino's voice when he asks this question is supposed to reflect how technology distorts our self-identity, adding another layer of complexity to an already complex question. After this brief but significant intro, Gambino continues with the song's first verse, A verse will dissect right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we discussed the existential question Gambino opens the album with. Who Am I?

It's directly after this question that he delivers Crawls' first verse. Rec league, I ain't paying a bar, y'all be stringed like a broke guitar, and he still put it down like the family dog, yeah? A murder song, murder one, explain it all, Ferguson. We ain't got to sing the same old love song, cut a white girl with the same black gloves on. Yeah, what you're saying to it? Gambino wraps Rec League, I ain't pain to ball, y'all bee string like a broke guitar,

and I still put it down like the family dog. He first asserts a fun, commandeering lack of commitment to the game, which we assume to be the music industry. The use of the shortened Recreyser refers to Recreational League, known for its lower intensity of competition and cheaper costs. It also stands for Rec, as in Gambino destroying his peers. REC could also be short for recording, as in the recording industry, establishing the topic of the verse. Gambino then criticizes others as B-string, meaning the backup players on a team, as well as the

B-string on the guitar. The highest string on the guitar is an E-string, and is the one most likely to break, exposing the second highest string, the B-string. This is then the broke guitar Gambino's B-string competition plays with. Meanwhile, he's putting it down like the family dog, or Kee-Sprose. killing the game. Gambino continues his sinister talk, rapping, Yeah, I murder some, murder one. Explain it all, Ferguson. While today our first thought about this line might be the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests in

Ferguson, Missouri, because the internet was released well before this event. Instead, the line alludes to Ferguson Darling, the annoying younger brother in Nickelodeon's 1990s hit show, Clarissa explains it all. Gambino then moves on from the nostalgic past, rapping, we ain't got to sing the same old love songs. This broad reference to old love songs seems to be a nod to the recurrent notion of past loss. Gambino, or the narrator, doesn't want to feel old memories and stays away from the songs that might trigger those past emotions, whether the love be romantic, like the girl on the bus, or familial, like his deceased mother.

Having strung together multiple musical images throughout the verse so far, Gambino continues with what is most apparently a drug reference, cut a white girl with the same black gloves on. The term white girl in drug vernacular means cocaine, and the process of cutting or mixing and preparing the drug requires handlers to wear gloves. Thus, Glover makes a clear connection between the previous musical touchstones and the distribution of drugs, a metaphoric bond that he'll continue to employ throughout the album. Tying into the 90s reference just a few moments ago, This line also alludes to the trial of O.J. Simpson and the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. The trial incited racial tension throughout America in 1995, and at the time was the most talked-about scandal in the nation.

The key piece of evidence in the trial was a black glove found at the scene of the crime. Considering that Nicole Brown-Simpson, a white woman, was stabbed to death by someone wearing the black glove, This line seems to clearly contain a reading centered on racial tension and 90s nostalgia. A third reading on the line unveils yet another plausible interpretation, a magician's iconic trick of cutting their assistant in half. This illusion commonly involves a woman assistant, wearing black gloves, lying in a box, and apparently being cut in half by the magician. Thus, in one line, we have three different perspectives or ideas. Given that Gambino's next line is, yeah, what you're sane to it, and seems that his same to it, It seems that his third question of the song asks us to figure out which interpretation or connection makes sense to us.

Gambino continues rapping, Old money look, no money don't do it. Make him turn around in their lane like a UA and I'm only looking back if I'm looking at her booty. At her boo, the rationale. They want to smoke niggins when they black a mile so we acted out. Gambino continues rapping, old money look, no money don't do it. Make him turn around in their lane like a Ui. pointing out the action or inaction of different social classes, he then claims that he can make them change or turn around, even in their own lanes or careers. Unlike those who had changed course under the influence of others, Gambino claims, I'm only looking back if I'm looking at her booty. This is followed by a melodic interpolation of R. Kelly's 2000 track,

Feeling on Your Booty. Gambino continues crawl asking, What's the rationale? This poses the existential question that will reverberate throughout because of the internet, which is, why? Why be alive? Glover actually keyed us in on the existential quality of the world of BTI before it was released. He often mentioned reading the philosopher Soren Kirkagard in interviews and openly carried the book Dostoyeski, Kirkerga, Nica and Kafka by William Hubbin, which surveyed the life and ideas of these pioneers in existential thought. Like the question,

Who Am I, posed at the beginning of the track. He asked the existential question of, what's the rationale openly, making clear that this album and world seeks to address it. Gambino's immediate response to the question is, they want to smoke N-words like they black and mild, so we act and out. Black and milds are a popular pipe tobacco cigar, so the use of smoke refers both to the cigar and the act of murder with gunfire. Gambino makes it clear that his response to what's the rationale is heavily influenced by dangers he faces at the black male.

Even when he's mild or docile, he's threatened, so why not act out? After a repetition of the song's hook, Gambino delivers verse 2. Gambino's voice is heavily processed with Echo as he raps, Blue Dream by the Bouquet, till I'm blue-faced on a Tuesday. is a hybrid strand of marijuana, and Gambino describes smoking an excessive amount of a flower, a bouquet, until he's blue-faced or nearly out of breath. This intoxication is reflected in Glover's distorted vocal, and the stuttering Tuesday, day-day underlies a warping sense of time. Gambino continues, Can I have some? And words be like, put a plus-18 on an evite.

He starts by mimicking someone asking for his weed, and then memes them with a hashtag. use here of the popular Twitter hashtag NWords B-like alludes to the way racial stereotypes spread like wildfire online, as the hashtag is a literal label that attempts to assign race to certain behaviors. As we saw in the screenplay, the boys engaged in this type of meming and trolling, and the next line, put a plus 18 on an Evite, foreshadows a coming party in the screenplay. Gambino then doubles down, rapping, and I said what I felt, no rewrite. Nah, they can't hold me. Besides a simple nod to Gambino's past lyrical content, this might be a reference to the hotel notes that Glover posted on Instagram. As we discussed in our last episode, these notes made headlines for their extreme vulnerability,

leading many to wonder if Glover was suicidal or why he posted them at all. Given the public psychoanalysis Glover received as a result of his letters, the following line, Nah, They Can't Hold Me, rejects the attempts of outside forces trying to control him. It also speaks to a general freedom that defies limitation, rejecting the labels and scrutiny Glover has received throughout his career. No, nah, I can't home me. June July, drop something, I double dare you. I mock somers.

I scorched winters, I burn on them. Gut niggins so Kurt Vonner, El Bonner, got a crush on her. I got a waiting line for that. Ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got a rhyme with that. Too true like it's two chains. Blue blood like he both gangs. Offering a complete seasonal takeover,

Gambino wraps June, July, drop something, I double dare you, I'm Mark Summers. Referencing the release dates of his musical projects such as Camp, royalty, and because the internet, Gambino name drops Mark Summers, host of the 1990s Nickelodeon game show Double Dare, using his name as a double entendre for marking or killing Summers. He then wraps, I scorch winters, I burn autumn's, gut endwards, so Kurt Vaughn. This line name checks the famous American author Kurt Vonnegut. While the line cleverly evokes an image of violence, especially in reference to Vonnegut's fame Slaughterhouse Five,

the influence of Vonnegut's work is essential to the transmedia world of BTI. For instance, many of Kurt Vonnegut's novels appear on the bookshelves of the Boys' Room, a physical exhibit Glover created that people could visit and walk around in. Vonnegut's books were known for their irony, dark humor, and exploring the absurd in relation to existence. dilemma, all things Glover himself will utilize and explore in BTI. Vontinget often experimented with nonlinear story structures. Glover actually mirrors this nonlinear technique by putting gut, the last syllable of Vonnegut's name, at the start of the line, gut endward so Kurt Vaughn.

Also, given the violence surrounding this line, the way Vonnegut's last name is cut off reflects dismemberment. Gambino literally ripped the guts out of Vonnegut. Gambino continues, L. Varner got a crush on her. At the time, singer L. Varner was dating NBA player Ammon Schumpert. Gambino laments this, admitting, I got to wait in line for that. Ain't nobody got time for that. As the internet enables instant gratification, nobody wants to wait or spend time making connections when the next hookup is a swipe away. Ain't nobody got time for that is also a reference to a viral 2012 news report of a woman named Sweet Brown, detailing her experience of an apartment fire. Well, I woke up to go give me a cold pop. Then I thought somebody was barbecue. I said,

Oh, Lord, Jesus, it's a fire. Then I ran out. I didn't grab no shoes or nothing, Jesus. I ran for my life. And then the smoke got me. I got bronchitis. Ain't nobody got time for that. Sweet Brown became a viral sensation, inspiring countless internet memes, adding to Glover's collection of internet references on the track. Gambino commends the truth of Sweet Brown's adage rapping Too True like its Two Chains, Blue Blood Like He's Both Gangs. On the surface, Too True is a nod to Atlanta rapper Two Chains in his famous ad lib. We also consider that Too True alludes to the idea that there are multiple truths and that we contain a multitude of identities. In terms of two chains, this might allude to his previous rapper named Titty Boy. Much like Rick Ross and his name change,

Both of these rappers created multiple dynamic identities and found success with the persona they created. Blue Blood, like he both gangs, obviously refers to the two most famous American gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, who are often associated with the colors red and blue respectively. This continues the thread of multiple identities, and Gambino points out that we contain this deep inside ourselves, in our blood. Blue Blood is also a name for a person of noble birth, perhaps a slide nod to Glover's creative, team named royalty. Fittingly, this line triggers an abrupt change in instrumentation. A cello enters, imbueing the track with nobility and haunting grandeur.

This beautiful rendition of the hook is then juxtaposed against a terrorizing, frenzied bridge. One of many times on this album, Glover will set beauty and chaos in close proximity. Kai and Mystical's duet expresses both emotional and physical danger, providing an unsettling soundtrack for the scenes of the screenplay that are meant to be read as crawl plays. Like we mentioned earlier, there's a flash forward 15 years from the opening scene in which the boy came home from summer camp. The boy is more of a man now, somewhere in his late 20s, still living in the huge mansion. He wakes up in his bedroom, which is described as an elegant mess. Trash and laundry pile up on ornate furniture, a flash drive and his

vaporizer sit next to his computer. The closet is a closet is full of the boy's white t-shirts, floral shirts, and his sterling coat, the same wardrobe Glover wore in all interviews during the BTI rollout. The boy heads down the mansion's spiral staircase, past the Buddha statue and glass walls. In the kitchen, there's a mess of old Samores makings and empty beer bottles. He microwaves a Pop-Tart still in its foil wrapper, but he's too engrossed in his phone to notice. He eats his Pop-Dart breakfast on a little island in the middle of his infinity pool. The script notes that the house is so high up that they're literally above the clouds. Fam, the same friend who emailed the boy the bestiality video 15 years ago, text the boy with a plan

for their crew to go surfing. When Fam arrives in his beat-up car, he presses the boy to let them use one of the sports cars in his garage. The boy resists. Fam asks repeatedly and emboldened in the script, why do you even care? They end up taking a silver Porsche 9-11. Pham drives while the boy checks his Twitter. His account name is, You are unimportant at the goldmuller, and he spends his time online trolling celebrities and posting videos of homeless people and fights.

As he scrolls through his feed, thinking about how people say dumb things all the time, he comes across a tweet that reads, Rasko's Wetsuit, and he wonders, what's that? The quick Google of, what is Rasko's Wetsuit, only results in the response, Roscow's Wetsuit. The boy asks FAM,

but he doesn't know either. The crew heads to the beach. As they get changed into wetsuits, they bicker about the lack of women, only to notice that there's actually a woman already out on the surf. The crew go to flirt with the girl, but the boy stays on the shore alone. The girl's name is Sasha,

an Australian and an experienced surfer. The crew tells Sasha that they only go surfing because it's a good cover to smoke weed. They invite her to a party that night at the boy's mansion. She surfs back to shore and asks the boy why he put on his wetsuit if he wasn't going into the water. The boy thinks of Roscoe's wet suit again and says he put his wetsuit on because everyone else did. The boy then gives Sasha his number and a dress for the party that night and the scene ends. These opening moments

that accompany the song Krawl established that the boy, now in his late 20s, is still a boy. He's still trolling online, still eating pop darts, still hanging with the same friends, still living in luxury, but clearly lethargic to it all. His father's doesn't seem to be around, and he doesn't seem to connect with his friends in any significant way. We get the impression that nothing has really changed in 15 years. Like the mansion's spiral staircase that he walks up and down every day, the boy is entrapped in a repetitive, meaningless cycle. Fam, who we assume is the boy's best friend, seems to be using him for his wealth, signified by his insistence that they take one of his sports cars. When the boy pushes back,

Pham asked him repeatedly, in bold text, why do you even care? This adds to the existential questions that were posed in crawl. Who am I? And what's the rationale? At this point, the boy has no significant response to these questions, planting the seeds for the existential crisis to come. And to this point, the boy doesn't even drive his own car, FAM does. We recall the script's opening line, you can't live your life on a bus. Despite him getting off the summer camp bus, the boy is still being driven around, still has no real

agency in his life. He's directionless, just going with the flow, simply doing what others do. Fittingly, the boy and his friends go surfing, as in surfing the internet. To ride a wave is to understand powerlessness, to allow some greater force to return you to safety, much like riding the bus on camp. The boy only put on his wetsuit because his friends did, and his friends admittedly only go surfing because it's a good cover to smoke weed, a source of mindless entertainment. This seems to reflect their experience with the internet as well. Despite the internet being a modern day library full of information, they use it to troll, mock others, and stir trouble. With these opening scenes, we also get the introduction of Roscoe's wetsuit, which the boy sees first as a

mysterious tweet and then is later alluded to with the crew putting on wetsuits at the beach. Thus, the seeds have been planted for what will become one of the central recurring motifs throughout BTI. At this point in the narrative, we, like the boy, simply have to wonder what Roscoe's wetsuit could possibly mean. The same could be said about the mysterious sound that ends the song Crawl, which like Roscoe's Wetsuit will also recur a few times throughout the album. Conclusions. After logging on with the library, because the internet's first scene, Crawl, presents its protagonist as a child in the age of the internet. With his mother dead and his father absent, the boy is tossed vulnerably in the tumultuous whitewater of the web.

He's been surfing for some 15 years, still on the metaphoric bus, directionless. Thus, the song title Crawl, and the hook's lyric Betcha Crawl All Alone, conveys the boy's current state of relative infancy, loneliness, and lack of development. It also alludes to Donald Glover's characterization of our use of the internet today as being an infant with a handgun. Like surfing in oceans wave, the internet is a place of both entertainment and danger, and it's too early to fully know the repercussions as we haven't lived long enough with the internet to find them out. We're all in a sense crawling, infants with iPhones, and it appears that the story of the boy, well at least in part, attempt to examine some of the complications of being

raised by and with the internet. Already, Glover has established two of these complications, connection and identity. The internet connects us all in a way that's unprecedented, yet there's also a feeling that we're all more disconnected than ever before. This is reflected in the boy's nihilistic trolling, his general malaise and detachment, and the disconnect between him and his friends in real life. Meanwhile, existential questions about identity

have been presented in both the lyrics and the script. Who Am I, are Gambino's first words on the album? He asks, what's the rationale in the first words? verse, and FAM continually presses the boy asking, why do you even care? Yet, despite the allusions to these larger questions, Gambino's lyrical content on crawl generally presents a cocky, immature narrator much like the boy. Meanwhile, the song's production provides a haunting soundtrack to the boy's life, perhaps alluding to the invisible danger he's in, and to the dangers of the internet more generally. As because the internet continues, those dangers will become all too real,

and the boy will be forced to reckon with them directly. How will the boy react to a murder that takes place right in front of him? A murder he witnesses and records through the screen of his cell phone. We'll find out on Because the Internet's next track, World Star, a song will examine note by note, line by line, next time on Dissect. Today's episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me. Remember, you can go deeper into the world of Because the Internet through the supplementary guides on our website, Dysectpodcast.com.

While you're there, be sure to check out our limited season 7 merchandise. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at Dysect Podcast. Audio editing for today's episode by Eric Bass and me. Song Recreations by Andrew Atwood. Screenplay score by So Wiley. Theme music by Bureaucratic. Okay, thanks. everyone. Talk to you next week.