"Awaken, My Love!"

Awaken, My Love! is the third studio album by Childish Gambino, released in December 2016 on Glassnote Records and produced by Ludwig Göransson and Donald Glover. The album was a complete reinvention of Glover's musical identity, abandoning hip-hop entirely for a deep immersion in 1970s funk and soul (Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield) filtered through a contemporary production sensibility. 'Redbone' became a viral phenomenon, a slow-burning funk masterpiece that spent years on streaming charts and reached global audiences who had never engaged with Childish Gambino's earlier rap work. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album. Awaken, My Love! is Glover's most emotionally rich and sonically adventurous work and stands as one of the finest funk-influenced albums of the 2010s.