“I AM JUST A RAPPER”

Alexander Williams 

His Master's thesis, "I AM JUST A RAPPER: A Lyrical and Cultural Analysis of Childish Gambino's Rise from Outcast to King," argues that by fulfilling his lyrical prophecies, Childish Gambino becomes Plato’s philosopher king: a leader proving his claim to the throne through his weaponization of intelligence, philosophy, and guardianship. To conduct this analysis, his thesis first presents a summary of the Black male rapper archetype to give the proper historical, critical, and cultural contexts in which Gambino’s work can usefully be analyzed. Second, it connects Alexander's research to prior scholarship on African American studies, hauntology, Romanticism, Black Marxism, and trauma theory. The last piece of Alexander's methodology is using Gambino’s lyrics as poetic support to illustrate how his ascension to philosopher king is a transcendent contemporary moment of resistance against the resurgence of white nationalism under the banner of Trumpism and a triumphant model of Black reclamation in the age of Black Lives Matter and police militarization.

You can read Alexander's Master's thesis here:
https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/63...

For those interested in his Huffington Post micro-essays, you can read them here:
https://www.huffpost.com/author/alexander-williams