“Algorhythm” is the second track on Childish Gambino’s 2020 album ‘03.15.20.’ The song explores a bizarre mix of experimental sounds jumping hoops through different genres of music.
Childish Gambino announced the release of his fourth studio album project on a new website ‘DonaldGloverPresents.com.’ Initially, the entire album was put on the website and taken down equally fast. The album is titled ‘03.15.20‘ resembling the date of the website launch. The song titles of the album are timestamps for each of them on the tracklist.
On “Algorhythm,” Childish Gambino spits out how us humans have become slaves to a systematic life. From the day we are born, we chase materialistic dreams. In this process, we lose human values and human touch.
Listen to “Algorhythm” by Childish Gambino
Buy ‘03.15.20’ Album on Apple Music and Amazon
“Algorhythm” Lyrics Meaning & Song Review
“You sell your daughter on that data stream,” just might be the most powerful lyric on this track. Gambino could mean a hundred things in this one line. There are many ‘reality shows’ where kids are encouraged to perform for ‘The Hollywood Dream’ or a cash prize. YouTube, which has become a source of income for teenagers, is another platform to be blamed. There are many teens turning to adult camming sites to earn money too. The damage these does to a kid’s innocence is unrepairable.
The world has come to a point where humans would do anything to make money. But what we fail or chose not to understand is that we don’t live forever. We have complicated our lives by ourselves and complain about all the social issues of the world. We are to blame. No one else.
In the second verse, Childish Gambino says that everyone expects everyone to be perfect. But this is not the reality. These expectations put enormous pressure and stress on a person. And some break under this pressure.
“Pressure is to evolve, take a bite of the apple,” takes us back to The Bible and to how people are bent towards doing the wrong thing. But is it really the bad thing, if it made humans evolve? It feels like devil’s work right off the bat. But the fact is that God did put the forbidden fruit in front of Adam and Eve!
Why? Maybe we were meant to learn from our mistakes. Maybe we were not meant to be perfect.
However, the current algorhythm works perfectly to enslave every soul into a pattern and a system. And on we run forever!
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Check out the complete lyrics and further song meaning breakdown on Genius.