Why is the album cover a .gif? #becausetheinternet (via Wikimedia)

At 31, Glover continues to excel in almost every field he touches, having branched from writing for sitcoms like "30 Rock" to stand-up to "Community" to his own TV show on FX while flourishing in the music scene behind a dedicated fan base as the rapper Childish Gambino, and yet in interviews, he admits he’s lost, and on Instagram, he posts a series of notes that seem to indicate his mental health status as borderline depressed.

Rationally, a man this accomplished shouldn’t feel this purposeless, but at this nomadic undestination Glover finds himself, so to speak.

“Because the Internet” is Childish Gambino’s most recent musical effort to encapsulate Glover’s mindset, but in truly Glover fashion, it is not merely an album but also a screenplay with .gifs that synch with the music on the site becausetheinter.net.

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Why? Because the internet has conflated and flattened artistic mediums, and Childish Gambino seems determined how far the flattening can go. Why make an album when you can write a mute screenplay with an original soundtrack and display the prominent artwork of Mr. Div at the same damn time? Because the internet lets you; Gambino’s just one of the first to notice and try. 

Without the script, the pacing of the album is a bit puzzling. The first half of the album is much more upbeat and confident than the second half to the point that three of the four radio-friendly songs on the project follow each other to end it. These are of course the bouncy, sing-song love rap “Telegraph Ave (Oakland by Lloyd),” the ignorant club banger “Sweatpants” which features some fantastic ad-libs from the rising Problem, and the single “3005” which feels like a peverted traditional rap single with an upbeat chorus and some melancholy lyrics about losing all hope of a happy ending.

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The fact that a song like “3005” is happier than all but one song on the second half of the album is an impressive feat; even a song like “Worst Guy,” in which Childish Gambino, admits to only giving what women need (ahem) for all the wrong reasons has an infectious nature. I can’t say I haven’t walked into a party yelling “All she needed was some,” the song’s simply infectious hook.

The album begins with a “Fuck you” after the songstress on “Crawl” tells Bino that he’ll just end up crawling back to her. This song is filled with the classic rap mix of anger, frustration, aspiration, and bravado, this time in response to an too-confident ex. “Worldstar” has a similar mix but also manages to make poignant commentary on the internet’s inherent trivialization of life by making everything live forever, a theme that Bino revisits many times throughout the album. At the same time, it’s an absolute banger that makes a listener want to go Sharkeisha and/or Terio on fools.

After “3005” though, the album spirals deeper within itself, getting too close and in introverted to find anything except more confusion and thus anger. It starts with “The Party” in a dark den of drugs and unknown people that Gambino kicks out by the end of the song.

After the dark epiphany about his fake life and fake friends, Bino can’t find “No Exit,” the darkest moment of the album built upon half-coherent ramblings over the beeping of a heart monitor and maniacal crackling. It’s a terrifying crash, one from which Gambino awakens in “Flight of the Navigator.” The song itself sounds a bit like a continuation of these ramblings, but perhaps in a beat reflective of a morning sunlight to the 3 am terrors of “No Exit.”

He also takes to singing more on this and the next couple songs; Gambino doesn’t have the strongest voice, but he conveys emotion well and sounds legitimately broken in “Zealots of Stockholm” over the distorted production before he starts rapping his internalized thoughts on what he calls “existential asthma.” “Urn” is a nice little transition in which Gambino decides to just move on in some direction any direction, and what follows is the most beautiful song of the album in a literal sense and the first/last radio-friendly jam on the album in a quick minute.

Looking at the lyrics to “Pink Toes” about rainbows and sunshine might make it seem a bit fluffy, but it’s just such a huge relief to hear some happiness in Gambino’s voice, even when what he and his co-star Jhene Aiko are saying is that the feelings can’t last, that one just embraces the emotions more than worrying about the lyrics.

Again, it cannot last, and “Earth: The Oldest Computer (The Last Night)” reminds listeners that the last night of life doesn’t feel any different than any other night as Gambino raps in a panic in attempt to get every word out before things fade to black. Finally, listeners reach the end of “The Internet” where Gambino tells us that life is nothing but a joke. The rug isn’t necessarily pulled out on his since he had been tearing at it the entire album; maybe the final shred is taken from our feet, but “Life: The Biggest Troll” actually leaves us feeling like perhaps we are standing on solid ground for the first time.

The associated screenplay makes sense of the music’s pacing though, as we follow a born-rich protagonist named “The Boy” transitioning quickly into meaningless madness as he floats without agency through a sea of fake friends and purposeless encounters. 

The album itself has a few shining moments, specifically in “Telegraph” and “Sweatpants,” but isn't necessarily easily accessible through an entire listening. However, Childish Gambino’s exploration of the boundaries of mediums in ways no other rapper, or really even musician, has ever attempted should be commended above anything else.

Ever since using the internet to catapault his rap career, Gambino has felt a painfully symbiotic relationship with it, and “Because the Internet” sounds and writes a lot like growing pains of an artistic leader plunging into an age where the definitions of genres are blurry or perhaps non-existent.

He may not have broken all the way through, but Gambino is making headlong rushes at the brick wall of future of music and art. The boundaries are falling, and the results are by no means unimpressive. To those willing to give the album an full listen, pair it with becausetheinter.net. For those who aren’t, bang out to “Worst Guys,” “Worldstar,” “Sweatpants,” and “3005” and get in the mood with “Pink Toes” and “Telegraph Ave."

Read more of NT's album reviews here.

Reach Staff Reporter Danny Galvin here. Follow him on Twitter here.