Dissect - S7E3 - Worldstar by Childish Gambino

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

We continue our season-long examination of Because The Internet with “Worldstar” -- a song with more than a few hidden secrets and surprises. We reveal all of them. 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 studios, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Today we continue our serialized analysis of Because the Internet by Childish Gambino. On our last episode, we dissected the album's opening song, Crawl. There we met the story's protagonist, The Boy, an immature internet troll, whose moral and mental infancy seems to represent society's early stages in the internet era. In the album's screenplay, the boy had just gotten home from summer camp. He lives in a gigantic mansion with his disconnected dad. His mother is dead, and he spends most of his time trolling strangers on the internet.

The script then flashes forward 15 years, and we find the boy, now in his late 20s, doing the same things he did when he was an early teen, partying with his friends, eating pop tarts, and trolling on the internet. During this exposition of the narrative, two key questions were pulled. posed, questions that will be explored throughout because the internet. First, Gambino opened the album asking, Who Am I? Which clued us in to the exploration of identity and modern existence in the age of the internet. Second, Gambino asked, what's the rationale?

That is, why live at all? How do we justify our existence? It's with these existential questions in mind that we continue our exploration of Because the internet with its next track, the subject of our episode today, World Star. World Star was written and produced by Childish Gambino and Ludwig Gorinson. The song's production centers around a metronome from the computer music program Ableton. A metronome, also known as a click track, is a generic pulse that musicians use when recording to help them keep time and stay on beat.

Gorinson sampled this metronome from Ableton on his iPhone. Now the interesting thing about this metronome is the two notes that it plays. It begins on a high F, and then it drops down to a B, which plays three times. The interval, or the space between these two notes, is what's called a tritone. A tritone is known for being one of the most dissonant intervals in music, and was even dubbed Diabolis and Musica, which is Latin for the devil in music. Some 18th century churches even banned the interval from being used. used. It's this dissonant tritone that will hear virtually non-stop throughout World Star,

imbueing the song with a distant haunting quality despite a minimal amount of instruments being used on the track. Later, a heavy 808 drum kit joins the metronome. Laird atop the opening moments of World Star is a sample of a cell phone video of a fight inside of a small apartment. Two men square up, and to the entertainment and excitement of their friends, one knocks the other out cold with a single punch. This video was part of a 2013 fight compilation video found on Worldstar Hip Hop.com. World Star Hip Hop is a content aggregating website known for showcasing underground hip-hop talent and videos of violent street fights and other explicit content recorded mostly on cell phones. The site gained prominence in the late 2000s, and by 2012,

BET had voted World Star Hip Hop as the top hip-hop and urban culture website for three years in a row. The site became so embedded in the culture that people began screaming or chanting World Star in real time when witnessing or recording street fights, hoping to create the next viral video. Unsurprisingly, the website has drawn criticism for its content. The Gothamist blog said of World Star, quote, it's an internet cesspool that's cashed in big on senseless fight videos. The site's popularity has created a sort of voyeuristic feedback loop, in which disassociated bystanders, immediately videotape violent incidents, and act as if they're already watching a video on the internet." It's this surreal interaction between a recorded and real-life event that the song

World Star investigates. Indeed, in the screenplay, it is a real-life World Star moment that the boy witnesses through his recording cell phone that becomes the pivotal and citing incident in the narrative. The event occurs in front of a nightclub, and while the intro of World Star plays, the screenplay depicts the boy and his crew driving to the club while eating In-N-Out burger. Gambino's first words on the track are Blow Up, Conjuring images of violence and Explosion, but also referring to the process by which a person or piece of content can viral. It's a pretty ingenious phrase to begin the track, as this duality of violence and virality will reverberate through the entire song. Gambino continues, World Star Before Rap, You Already Know

That. This refers to Glover's ascent to fame through comedy writing and acting before his rap career took off. When he dropped his first impactful mixtape Coltac in July 2010, he'd already won an Emmy for comedy writing with the 30 Rock writing team and was starring as Troy Barnes on community. The line is also a clever statement about the inspiration for this track, worldstar hip-hop.com, as World Star literally comes before hip-hop or rap in the site's name. Gambino then raps, so fresh prints they about to bring the show back. This of course makes reference to the classic 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air starring Will Smith. As an actor and music artist, Gambino has often referred to the connections between

Will Smith and himself. Take for instance Gambino's feature, on Chance the Rapper's acid rap mixtape. In this comparison, Gambino separates himself from Will Smith, spit real shit. He claims his content is more substantive and meaningful than what Will Smith would rap about in his party anthems. But the connection between Glover and Smith extend outside of both being rappers and actors, especially when considering the fictional characters they play, the boy and the fresh prince. Both are wealthy, young, black, and don't have direct parental supervision. Both characters also take heavy autobiographical inspiration from their actors.

And so it seems Gambino is clearly connecting the boy with the fresh prince, keying us in on the connection between these constructed identities of young American black royalty. After comparing himself to the Fresh Prince, Gambino raps, listening to Kilo, Weekend cost a Kilo. Here, Gambino shouts out his frequent collaborator, Kilo Kish, an artist who will appear as the voice of reason later on the song, Zellets of Stockholm. Gambino then uses Kilo to refer to a kilogram of cocaine,

implying that his weekend parties cost as much as a kilo of Coke, about $100,000. Gambino then says, Hair so long, I'm about to bring the froback. This plays off the nostalgia or throwback first to vote, with the Fresh Prince reference. We also recall a number of 90s references in the previous track, Crawl. Be them Nickelodeon's Clarissa explains it all, or the show Double Dare. Regarding our obsession with nostalgia culture, Glover told Time Magazine, quote,

If you go on Tumblr, you'll see a lot of nostalgia, a lot of, remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remember Sister, Remember, Clarissa, it's a lot of that. I don't think we want to go forward, because it's a little scary, unquote. Gambino then continues the first verse with internet heavy references. method of saying hello when picking up the telephone. The phrase is also an internet meme typically used to spam or troll internet message boards. When Gambino says girlfriend acting all wishy-washy, he apathetically criticizes his romantic address for being non-committal, a statement will come to realize as merely a projection of the boy's own shortcomings. Next, Gambino alludes to the classic

Disney movie The Little Mermaid, rapping, It's Your Birthday, Make It Earthquake, fell in love with an N-word like a mermaid. We then hear an interpolation of Ariel from the Little Mermaid. After we hear Daddy I Love him, Gambino wraps, that's a first date. And the Little Mermaid, Ariel, the mermaid daughter of King Triton, falls into a forbidden love with the human Prince Eric after observing his birthday party on board a ship at sea, hence the line, it's your birthday. Gambino's passage is essentially a retelling of this tale, wherein he compares himself to yet another prince from the 90s, this time Prince Eric, and samples Daddy I Love him as a tongue-in-cheek reference to forbidden interracial love. In the case of Ariel and Prince Eric,

the racial difference is between a mermaid and human. For Gambino, he's likely referencing a white girl defending him, their black boyfriend, to a racist father. There's actually one last layer to these little mermaid lines. In a 1993 episode of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Ashley, the youngest daughter of Uncle Phil, brings home a boy she meets at the mall that day, which we might call a first date. The boy is a punk to Uncle Phil, which prompts Phil to yell at him. Ashley's response, well, listen for yourself. What's this thing? It's a symbol for God! We recall that the current verse began with a reference to Fresh Prince.

Realizing this, we understand how Gambino has used Forbidden Love to intricately string together his opening Fresh Prince reference, the Little Mermaid and his own personal narrative. Gambino then continues, Nobody think about it worst case, best case with a front page, 10K on the first day. It appears Gambino is commenting

on the general lack of foresight when seeking fame, specifically viral internet fame. Our quest for fleeting temporary stardom can mask the negative consequences or worst case scenarios that sites like World Star can encourage. At best, we're part of

or capture a moment that goes viral, We make it on the front page and get 10k hits on the first day, only to quickly get pushed aside by what's next on the timeline. But at worst, as we'll see in the upcoming scene in the screenplay, someone could quite literally die, recalling the videos of death and suicide that are also featured on World Star's website. Fittingly, Gambino continues to verse by positioning himself as a prince worthy of virality and expands on the mentality of bystanders attempting to capture a viral moment through violence. Yeah, I'm motherfucking, take your phone out to record this. And nobody can ignore this.

I'm more or less, I'm more or less individual. Making movies with criminals trying to get them residuals. When it all go crazy, when I hear that action, I'm a B. Scorsese. Gambino tells us, take your phone out to record this. Ain't nobody can ignore this. He then shifts from the U directive command to saying I, recognizing his own participation in this process of chaotic content creation.

He raps, I'm more or less a moralist individual. making movies with criminals, trying to get them residuals. When it all go crazy, when I hear that action, I'm a B. Scorsese. Here he acknowledges the moral conundry of encouraging world star moments. Instead of preventing violence in bedlam, we promote and record it simply in hopes of gaining some personal reward or recognition. Gambino describes these violent videos as making movies with criminals, connecting amateur clips to traditional cinema,

where a film studio exploits stories of crime for profit, Amateurs with iPhones pursue internet-based points and validation, whether that be quantified in likes, retweets, or actual money. Saying, when I hear that action, I'm a B. Scorsese, makes the word action a double entendre, referring to both the action that takes place within a fight, but also the word film director shout to begin recording a scene. The reference to Scorsese cites of course Martin Scorsese, the award-winning director of films such as Goodfellas, Taxi driver, The Departed, and the Wolf of Wall Street. These films all commonly grapple with the exploits of criminals. Gambino's line about making movies with criminals that is not limited to World Star wannabies. It's the practice of Oscar-winning autosers as well.

While these films capture illicit acts that tantalize audiences, they also provide a form of glory or cultural capital to those committing the crimes. Whether showing up to theaters or shouting World Star, we the viewing audience clamor for this content, and that in turn spurs more production. Gambino contends that we all, himself included, find ourselves complicit in this process. Gambino implores us to recognize the whole picture here, and in the last line of the verse,

directs us, my end word, hold it horizontal man, be professional. This line refers to the fact that many videos on World Star are filmed vertically, reflecting Amherstile feature-ish lack of forethought. Recording horizontally is more favorable, as it more closely resembles the aspect ratio of professional films. Metaphorically, Gambino seems to ask his audience to see these viral events with more of a wide view, to consider exactly what our obsession with violence-based entertainment perpetuates. To drive this point even further, Gambino has also incorporated a special act during live performance of this moment in the song. Glover will go to a fan in the front row who's holding their phone vertically, grab their phone, and rotate it to horizontal for them.

Taking this into account, taking this into account, at the end of the first verse, it's clear that Gambino is directly and literally reaching out to his audience, imploring us to understand the context of their entertainment more critically. This kind of performance art, through his interviews and live shows, is incredibly. important to our understanding of the album and confirms what Glover told Complex Magazine, quote, the album really doesn't even make sense without the live show, unquote. As World Star continues, we hear another sample of a violent fight video, thrusting us deeper into the viral chaos in front of us. That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, Gambino encouraged us

to consider our complicity in the perpetuation of violence-based entertainment. As World Star continues, the song grows increasingly more chaotic, and were thrust directly into a frenzy moment of violence and encouraged and recorded by spectators. After another sample from a World Star Hip Hop fight compilation, we hear the World Star chant reaching a unified, repetitive peak. It's a kind of ominous modern-day battle cry, a call to action that appeals to our most base desires, be it world star hip-hop of the early 2010s or the modern popularity of Takashi 6-9,

When we consume, encourage, and promote content of this nature, we are all in a sense shouting, World Star. Gambino begins his second verse, My Girl Ain't Bad, She's more like evil, My Girl Ain't Bad, She More Like Evil. When I'm looking in the mirror, How flies this negro? The use of bad is typically a description of an attractive woman, and Gambino's darkly distorted evil means she's badder than bad, hotter than even the hottest women. He then goes into an examination of his evil girl, saying, she on Hollywood and Vine,

think in she Hollywood on Vine. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles is along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where celebrities are commemorated with stars bearing their names on the sidewalk. Gambino further details his girl rapping, making movies with her friends all the time, showing off her ass, that's a network, but I saw through it like a wet shirt. This woman creates sexualized content for the internet, and either dreams of or mistakenly believe she's already achieving a higher level of fame, hence the line, think-and-she-Hollywood on Vine. Of course, Vine here refers to the now defunct social media app. Her twerking on the net

also constitutes a network. This describes her content creation in the same vein as a television network, in which case she is Hollywood on bind. Gambino described. describes pulling a prank for the internet's delight. He wraps, put shrooms in my roommate's coffee, and got more likes than a white girl talking. Gambino, or the boy, documents his friend's unexpected hallucinations, and of course, posted on the web. The boy's post gets more likes

than a white girl talking, and like, that's like really a lot of likes. Gambino then quickly transitions from this innocent humorous mischief to more violent material, noticing that his video has more hits than a fight comp, where they fight cops till they stop when I heard shots, watching dude drop from a Glock. This very real violence stands and stark contrast to the light playfulness just a moment ago, and the percussiveness of Gambino's flow accentuates its harshness. Like the duality of the phrase blow up at the beginning of the track, the hits here are both the views on his prank video and the violent hits captured in fight videos. Again, using the same word to describe virality and violence implies a connection between them. The imagery of fighting police

officers also evokes the tension felt between the police and the communities most often presented in World Star videos, Black people and poor people. As the track continues, Gambino's lyrical description of a viral gunfight becomes reality as he's cut off by another sample of a violent video. The difference between watching a copse from a clock out of... The difference between watching watching a violent video and actually being present at the scene of the crime is mimicked here by the transition from the lyrical description of the event to the actual sound sample of the event itself and one of the most prevalent

convergences between the music and the screenplay the gunshot we just heard coincides with a shooting the boy witnesses at the nightclub as we mentioned earlier the scene begins with fam the boy and their crew driving to a nightclub while eating in and out. When they arrive, the boy isn't dressed appropriately to get in the club, so he waits outside. A black SUV pulls up and yells at a guy named Jay that's standing next to the boy. The boy watches this exchange and then stares at the sidewalk where someone spray-painted the word Roscoe's wetsuit. Seemingly out of unconscious instinct, the boy takes out his phone and films the fight. Gunshots are fired from out of the car and suddenly Jay is bleeding from his stomach. The screenplay

It calls our attention to the boy's experience of this event, saying, quote, The boy is seeing this through his phone, unquote. More shots are fired, and everyone outside the club is screaming and running. A cop appears to fire shots at the SUV, killing the driver. Jay dies next to the boy, his blood covering the sidewalk. It's here that the screenplay reads, quote, That was the end. He'll never read this sentence, or any sentence.

He ended earlier. before this sentence, as far as he knows, before any sentence. He's back to his the natural state. The boy felt something. It's funny because this dude is dead. There really isn't a connection. It's more of him seeing himself for the first time since. The boy's thoughts are cut off by two bystanders that yell.

The boy's phone rings. It's Pham telling the boy to get in the car. Pham pulls up next to the boy, he gets in, and they speed off. Then the scene ends. This is the inciting event of Because the Internet, triggering what will become an existential crisis for the boy. In the car after running away, the boy will realize he has a bullet hole in his jacket, emphasizing just how close to death he came. He also is described as having felt something, something that, quote, really isn't a connection. It's more of him seeing himself for the first time.

the boy got a true glimpse at mortality, the very real ramifications of what he thought was just another world star moment, moments he watches every day for entertainment. The boy sees himself in Jay as he bled out in the street, vulnerable, mortal, and alone. Jay could just as easily have been him. As recorder and subject, as human beings on earth in this moment in time, Jay and the boy are intertwined. While the boy may not realize it yet, hence the disclaimer that his feeling wasn't really a connection. The connection is there. But for now, it can only come out as an inarticulate feeling, as the boy hasn't fully understood what he just experienced. This scene in the screenplay is heavily inspired by a shooting

outside of a nightclub in Atlanta that Donald Glover and his crew witnessed themselves. Glover told We were in Atlanta hanging, and we came out of the nightclub and someone just started shooting in the parking lot, and everyone was yelling, World Star, and running around until the cops came and broke everything up, unquote. The real-life fam actually shared a news clip that covered this event as an annotation on genius.com.

Overnight, a large fight outside of a popular Midtown bar led to one man being shot in a parking lot near 13th Street and Crescent Avenue. Ramping fire and a pause and three shots. I think it was about 15 shots, I heard. And I saw a buddy laid out in the parking lot coming to cop, the police shot him. Because he had a gun in his hand.

Here in World Star, at the moment of violence hitting closest to the boy, childish Gambino, and Donald Glover, we have the moment of realization that something isn't quite right with the world. Try as he might to enjoy the entertainment provided by World Star and the rest of the internet's offerings. The boy will now be forced to grapple with the harsh realities of a culture that finds entertainment in the pain of others. In this instance, the plight of the disenfranchised. Interestingly, the boy only felt something when he was actually a part of a World Star moment. Thus, Gambino raises the question, do we need to experience the problem to truly see it, even though we see it on a screen every day?

How can we truly feel the problems we face? How do we replace apathy with empathy? As World Star continues, the screenplay's depiction of recorded violence that we just experienced is actually described in Gambino's next lyrical sequence, and the phone call that we're about to hear aligns with the phone call the boy received in the screenplay. You're all Big Brother now, Lil'Sys let her run around. Gambino or the boy pulls out his phone to film the night scene,

rapping, Let Me Flash on him. We're all Big Brother now. Little Sis let her run around. The reference here to Big Brother alludes to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, where in a government organization known as Big Brother, monitors and tracks. every move of its populace. By saying, we're all Big Brother now, Gambino points out that our current government doesn't even have to do the work of surveillance anymore, since people voluntarily

record each other and themselves every day. With this voluntary Big Brother established, the system is content to allow its populace, little cis, to run around. Gambino then follows this with a quick succession of Atenapea, observing how a money counter, an AK, and cell phone all make a similar sound. And it's through this connective tissue of sound that Gambino draws our attention to the interaction between these objects. The money counter is indicative of our constant preoccupation with gathering wealth. The AK-47 is an assault rifle, representing the presence of an overpowering violence. A vibrating cell phone is a modern tool for connection, communication, surveillance, and the spread of viral material. We capture violence on our phones,

dispersed it on the web for capital, and the success of this venture encourages us to rinse and repeat the cycle, creating an endless feed of morally suspect content. Amidst this mayhem, the final sound, the one that connects with Gambino, is the phone call. It's really important to note that this interruption, this transitional moment when the phone rings, occurs at the exact middle of the track. We are precisely two minutes and three seconds into the four-minute and five-second long song, splitting World Star into two distinct and equal halves. A division will realize has great thematic significance by the end of this episode. Right now, we understand the cell phone ringing is a call for connection, and Gambino picks up.

By placing this moment at the literal center of the song, Gambino seems to indicate that connection is at the heart of its subject matter. Hello? Yo, bro, man, check out that video I just sent you, man. It's hilarious, man. It's like this kid. Man, he got like, he can't play it on the side of that, man. He's like freaking out. The bisecting phone call is a message from the boy's friend Steve, played by Steve G. Lover, Donald's real-life brother. Steve calls Gambino to share a funny Vine video. The video was actually tweeted out by the real-life Steve when World Star was released as a single in October of 2013.

The video shows a man pranking a little boy by sneaking up on him and spraying him in the side of the head with silly The young boy reacts by screaming and running away, almost as if he's been shot, not realizing that it's just silly string. From Steve's description of the video, we get the sense that the victim in the video is overreacting, and it's in this overreaction that Steve derives entertainment. By using imagery of violence that's actually harmless, Glover seems to point out the psychological effects of the violence and trolling we constantly see on the web. The juxtaposition of this seemingly harmless humor directly after the death the boy,

witnesses and records at the club, serves as an interrogation of the content we encourage and consume every day. We all want to share and connect, and we find memes and videos and online forums as a means to do that. However, this process impacts the real world in ways we can't predict, and may not realize until they come knocking on our door. The boy is now starting to understand the full ramifications of our consumption of content for entertainment, and after his experience at the nightclub, we get a feeling he won't be able to enjoy the video as much. much as his friend does. Following Steve's phone call, the distinction between the first and second half of the song become more obvious as the music re-enters with a new, lush keyboard part. The tone

of this mellow keyboard part contrasts with the frenetic energy of the first half of World Star, and yet the same exact drums and metronome sample be heard throughout the first half actually join these keys. Despite the majority of the production staying the same, the simple addition of a keyboard changes the entire mood of the song, trading the game. the menacing overtones for a calm serenity. Recall that Glover just pointed out a similar contrast and viral internet content by juxtaposing a video of gun violence with a silly vine video of a prank. In the same way the two contrasting musical halves share material, it appears that there's a fine line between danger and entertainment. And to solidify this point even more, Gambino re-enters the track

pointing out a similar duality in the song's title. Gambino both interacts and merges direct with the choral world star chant, bringing himself and his audience together. Using their chant to punctuate his line, the repeated couplets exhibit the tension and stress of seeing all sides of the situation. We don't want to be on World Star and all I want to be is a World Star. It's here that we fully understand the duality of Gambino's conception of a world star, which is so perfectly embodied in the website of the same name. Worldstarhiphop.com is an incredibly powerful symbol of the internet's infinite capacity, as well as its tendencies to exploit. Worldstar hip hop has been criticized for leaching off the people who appear in

its videos, a group that is disproportionately made up of minorities and the poor. While these people get made fun of online, the website reaps the rewards of advertising money and notoriety. And yet, the website can be endlessly entertaining. And in interviews, Glover takes care to state, that he actually has love for the site. He told Complex, quote, I see more on World Star that's realer than anything else. It's like the universe. Like, no one is winning. It's just life. It's terrifying. It's really sad. There's all this fucked up shit in it. There's racism. There's homophobia. There's sex. But I love it because it feels realer than anything else, unquote. This holistic perspective on World Star as both a massively

entertaining source and a painful reminder of hardship is conveyed in the second half's chorus, as the ubiquitous World Star chant morphs into dichotomous homage. There's a beautiful, culminating unity as the saxophone plays in the background, and the group now combines its hedonistic battle cry of World Star with the plaintiff pleas of Gambino's singing. Instead of talking to the audience, as he's done so far, Gambino now joins the masses, finding a lyrical bond and a cry for help. What brings us together and connects us are our fears and our aspirations. We don't want to be on World Star Hip Hop, because even as we love watching, we know the people that we see in those viral videos are feeling pain,

are being exploited, and are many times being torn apart by the masses, by us. They exist for our entertainment, and we see them not as people, but as amusing commodities. We don't want to be commodified, manipulated, seen in a viral instant for some incomplete version of who we are. But despite knowing all of this, we still kind of do. We want to be a world star. We want to feel seen, to be famous, to be validated, to connect with others as much as we possibly can. And herein lies the inherent paradox of world star aspirations. Our intentions to be seen and acknowledged are pure, and a part of what it means to be human.

But historically, these intentions are easily exploited by the internet, by agents, by record labels, and on and on and on. The question seems to be, how far are we willing to go? Do we have to sacrifice to receive external validation? At what point can we acknowledge and accept ourselves in our pursuits with all of our mistakes? Can we be World Stars without being on World Star? The saxophone solo that concludes World Star aligns with the script and the scene that follows the shooting at the club. Having sped away from the club, the boy and his crew discussed the shooting on the way to pick up their friend, Doc at a jazz club. The crew is hyped up about witnessing the shooting, acting no different than

if they watched it on World Star. Meanwhile, the boy is locked into his phone, watching the video he took of Jay dying over and over, clearly trying to process what he just experienced. He touches his coat, noticing there's a hole in it. He wonders if it's a bullet hole, and then he thinks, I shouldn't be here. They arrive at the jazz club. Fam and the boy watched their friend Doc playing the saxophone on stage. It's here that we understand that the sax and the outro of World Star is actually scoring this scene in the screenplay. The boy asks Fam if he's weirded out about almost dying. Pham says no and that he's not scared of death. The boy says he isn't either, but that there's no reason for them to be alive, but instead makes fun of people in the crowd.

The boy continues saying that he can't offer anyone anything, that his job is trolling people on Twitter. Pham says, quote, that's not your job. You do it because it's funny. You're rich. You don't have to do anything. The boy agrees asking, isn't that sad? Fam responds that it's not sad because they're making moves, citing how they just started a clothing company. The boy counter saying all they did was print some t-shirts for themselves and that the only reason they did that was because their friends did it before them. Fam doesn't buy it, insisting that they're making moves. The boy then responds, quote, but none of it matters because we're doing it for ourselves. We're just jerking off for each other. No one in the future is going to give a shit that I made a shirt once.

FAMM then responds, the don't make a shirt, my N-word. The boy fiddles with the hole in his jacket, and the scene ends. In this scene, we're starting to see the immediate effects of the narrative's inciting incident, the boy witnessing and capturing a death on his phone. He's realizing the futility of his existence up to this point and notes the need for change. After discovering the hole in his jacket, he wonders if it's a bullet hole but isn't sure. The fact that he wouldn't notice a hole in his shirt before speaks to how he's sleepwalk through his life to this point. He says directly, I shouldn't be here, commenting on his mortality and his second chance at life. But we also notice that the word here is put in parentheses in the script,

which forces us to read the phrase, I shouldn't be, as its own statement with existential implications. This is what leads to his questioning at the jazz. Club, how he feels there's no reason that he's alive, how he's not contributing anything of value or meaning to the world. Fam admits he doesn't know what to tell him. Fam's apathy is similar to Steve's amused tone on the phone about the prank video, and the boy keeps fiddling with the hole in his jacket, a symbol of his existential crisis that he continues to ponder. Now, having heard the second half of the song and the scene it scores in the screenplay, we can look a little more holistically at the overall structure of the track. Recall that the song is divided perfectly into two equal halves of two minutes

and two seconds, split down the middle by the phone call. Knowing Glover's conscious intention behind the world building of BTI, this perfectly equal division forces us to investigate possible meanings behind the execution of this idea, and it turns out that this duality and division appears in multiple guises in World Star. We just outline the duality behind the concept of a world star, how we simultaneously want a connection and attention, but don't want the exploitation or negative consequences. There was also a division in the screenplay that the song scores, as the boy in the first half was trolling on the internet, but had the start of a life-changing revelation in the second half. And then there's the song's production. The first half is frenetic.

Gambino's voice is layered, echoed, and at times digitally altered. My girl ain't bad. She more like evil. Meanwhile, background effects create unrelenting tension and anxiety. Yeah, motherfucker take your phone out to record this and and nobody can ignore this. And of course the sampled fight videos add a layer of violence to the chaos. The second half, however, is warm by contrast, melodic, even blissful. And like the division of the song's production, it's

lyrical content also presents its own division, which is perhaps best framed by the prank Gambino described polling on his roommate. Gambino put shrooms in his roommate's coffee and got more likes than a white girl talking. The mushrooms, of course, are psychedelic mushrooms, which induce hallucinations and feelings of connection to one's environment and the people around them. Right after this prank, Gambino quickly shifts to rapping about police brutality and the surveillance state. The tension and fighting the police and the individuals captured on World Star evokes

scenes of police brutality. The references to Big Brother in 1984 push for more awareness of the surveillance state. Both of these matters are commonly brought up in discussions about raising general awareness in America. The phrase, stay woke, has become a modern directive to recognize the patterns and tools of an unjust system. In addressing both of these topics, Gambino has woken us up to their importance. In the first half of the song, he served us coffee. So wait, did Gambino put shrooms in our coffee? Given that the song's second half features a long saxophone solo with delay and pitch modulation creating a psychedelic unease? It seems, metaphorically, he has. Recall that the backbone of the

beat from the first half remains in the second half, creating a feeling of being in the same place, but with something significant having changed. This mirrors the boy's experience and his realization of a need for change, despite being in the same place with the same people. The boy too has been woken up and is now beginning to experience the mind-altering effects of his revelation. Finally, recall how the choral world star chant in the second half reveal what unites us and brings us together, both our fears and our aspirations of being world stars. We recognize that Gambino's music is having the same effect as psychedelic mushrooms, that we're realizing and feeling our interconnectedness of being in the world, searching for something together. Interpreting the second half of the song

as a psychedelic experience reminds us of her capacity to feel unity and connection amidst all the world's chaos and energy, if only we let ourselves perceive it. Conclusions. The duality of the track World Star is an offering to see both sides of our internet behavior. Glover spoke about this exact concept using the exempt of Terrio, a young child who became famous on Vine. Quote, people don't realize this cake has so many layers that we deal with. You can't just laugh at Terrio.

You can't. Because it's like, Terrio's like my little cousin. I know him. It's like there's this really charismatic black gay kid and everyone's laughing and making fun of him. But that kid's got to go to school. And that kid has to go to church. He's still a kid. I just want people to understand we've got to eat the crust of this shit too. We can't just eat the stuff we love. We have to eat all of it and understand." Unquote. World Star then is not an indictment of our consumption of internet entertainment. Rather, it's a pursuit of understanding every side of the equation. We can enjoy the sweetness of enthralling

imagery and sensational virality. Glover is just asking us to eat our vegetables too. In the script, the boy is used as an example of someone who's beginning to see both sides. His near-death experience shocks him into a realization of mortality and the real-world consequences of his internet consumption and trolling. When witnessing the nightclub confrontation, his first instinct is to record. But when Jay is murdered, and the boy realizes it could have been him, he questions his instincts, questions his trolling, questions himself, questions life itself. Thus, World Star is a song, asks us to try and understand everything going on amidst the chaos. If the vortex of the internet era threatens us all, then at least we can look around and see everyone with us at the center

of the conundrum. Being presented with the turmoil of our existence in the first half of the song, the second half points out that we're all facing it together. Glover thus packages World Star as a mini-narrative that as will come to see is a blueprint for the structure of the entire album. Having himself realized that there's more to his existence than just eating cake, the boy will need to look around, seeking answers and his friends and those around him. How have they behaved, and is there any purpose to what they've been doing?

All she needed with him? All she needed with him. All she needed with him. All she needed was him. We'll go over at the start of the boys' search for meaning and the relationship that he's had with his friends on the worst guys. A song will examine note by note, line by line, next time on Dysect. Today's episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me. Remember, you can go deeper into the world of Because of 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 Dissect podcast. Today's episode was edited 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.