Few would have predicted when they were watching Liz Lemon and Tracy Jordan crack jokes on 30 Rock in 2006 that one of the writers behind those punchlines would soon become a celebrated rapper and multidisciplinary creative visionary. 

Donald Glover, born in 1983 in California and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, entered the entertainment industry in his early twenties, writing for Tina Fey's hit TV comedy. Around the same time, he began making music under the stage name Childish Gambino, famously provided to him by an online Wu-Tang Name Generator. Glover rose to new prominence in 2009 when he was cast on Community, the cult-favorite NBC sitcom set at a community college. His performance as the lovable jock Troy was a highlight of the show's early seasons.

Glover enlisted Community score composer Ludwig Göransson to produce early Childish Gambino releases like 2011's Camp and 2013's Because the Internet, merging sharp and observant bars with his appealing comedic sensibility. Even as his music gained more fans, though, he continued his trailblazing TV work, creating the FX series Atlanta, in which he plays Earnest "Earn" Marks, a music manager trying to guide the rap career of his cousin Paper Boi. Since debuting in 2015, Atlanta has won consistent rave reviews for its surreal, absurdist storytelling and its bold sense of humor about the entertainment industry.

His third album as Childish Gambino, 2016's "Awaken, My Love!," expanded his musical range by switching to sung vocals and arrangements that recalled P-Funk and Sly and the Family Stone. The single "Redbone" became a chart hit and garnered several Grammy nominations, taking home the award for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2017. Though he announced his intention to retire the project shortly after that, Childish Gambino returned with a bang for 2018's "This Is America," whose provocative video took aim at American racism and violence. The song (which Glover revealed much later began as a Drake diss) debuted at Number One on Billboard's Hot 100 and swept the Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Music Video, and Best Rap/Sung Performance categories at the following year's Grammy Awards.

Since hitting that new career peak, Glover has continued to balance music and TV/film projects, starring as a young Lando Calrissian in the 2018 Star Wars prequel Solo, headlining Coachella in 2019, and concluding Atlanta with a third and fourth season in 2022. In the spring of 2020, he surprise-released an album called 3.15.2020, produced in collaboration with DJ Dahi; four years later, he revisited that album and released a "finished version" he called Atavista, featuring guest appearances from Ariana Grande and 21 Savage. At the same time, he announced a new project called Bando Stone & the New World, the soundtrack to a film of the same name. He has called it the "final Childish Gambino album."