Donald Glover Says “This Is America” Was Originally A Drake Diss Track

Donald Glover has opened up about the origins of his visceral Childish Gambino song “This Is America,” which apparently started off as a joke — and a Drake diss track. “I had the idea three years before,” he says in a video interview with GQ. “I told [director] Hiro [Murai] the idea, and he’s like, ‘I really want to do that.’ The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America’ — that was all we had was that line. It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this shit sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”