Uh, no, it no more has to do with 'destroying Amer

Quote:

---

Music video[edit]

In the music video, Gambino assumes a stance similar to the Jim Crow caricature

Directed by Hiro Murai, who has continuously worked with Gambino, the music video for the song was released on YouTube
simultaneously with Gambino's performance of the song on Saturday Night Live.

The video received about 12.9 million views in 24 hours,[20] and has over 490 million views as of February 2019.[21] In an interview with the New York Times, Murai discussed his upcoming season for Atlanta, a show involving Gambino. He stated, "There's sort of a world-weariness in both this season and the music video. They're both reactions to what's happening in the world."[22]

The video contains a lot of scenes involving violence. It starts off with Gambino dancing through a warehouse, interacting with a series of chaotic scenes. According to Murai, the video was inspired by the films Mother! and City of God.[23] Choreographed by Sherrie Silver, Gambino and his entourage of young dancers perform several viral dance moves including the South African Gwara Gwara and "Shoot" popularized by BlocBoy JB, who is one of the ad-lib contributors on the song.

Gambino's dancing is contrasted against moments of violence. Only 53 seconds into the video, Gambino shoots a man in the back of the head with a handgun, while assuming a comical stance similar to a Jim Crow caricature.

The first person depicted as being shot in the video, a guitarist who had been accompanying Gambino's singing up to that point, was musician Calvin the Second, but was initially mistaken by many viewers to be the father of 17-year-old gun violence victim Trayvon Martin. This first shooting also marks a transition in the music, from an African "folk-inspired melody" to "dark, pulsing trap".[24]

At a later point, Childish Gambino uses a Kalashnikov patterned automatic weapon to gun down a church choir, which viewers have interpreted as a reference to the 2015 Charleston church shooting. In both instances, a child appears from off-screen holding a red cloth, on which Gambino gently lays the weapon used, while the bodies are simply dragged away, which viewers have interpreted "as a reference to Americans' willingness to protect gun rights over people".

Scenes also involved children using their cell phones to record the chaos happening in the video, while Gambino sings the lyrics "This a celly / That's a tool".

Martha Tesema, writer for website Mashable, stated that "cell phones have been used as tools to broadcast police shooting, rioting against, or choking black people in this country".

Throughout the video, numerous vehicles from several decades ago are featured, many of them with their hazard lights flashing and the driver's side door ajar, which critics interpreted as representing fatal police shootings during traffic stops, particularly the shooting of Philando Castile, who was shot while in a 1997 Oldsmobile; others have interpreted that the older model cars represent the relative lack of upward mobility of African Americans.

American singer SZA makes a cameo appearance towards the end of the video, seated atop one of these vehicles. The video ends with Gambino in a darkened portion of the warehouse, fearfully running towards the camera while being chased by several white people. Viewers have said this resembles scenes from the 2017 film Get Out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_America_(song)

---