i agree that to anyone that isn't familiar with something like funkadelic this is gonna seem like an off the wall album, and that's a good thing. they enjoy the music and get to discover a lot of new music in the process. it's cool that donald glover has pushed this great music back into pop culture, and the album is at its best for me when taking these older ideas and updating the sound for today. but personally thinking back to the great funk albums like sly's 'there's a riot goin on' or 'maggot brain' that glover uses as obvious reference points, the innovation and power of those albums and their music is so context specific. it's in the production, the boundary pushing instrumentation, time and place. at its worst this new gambino album feels like a calculated but simultaneously musically undeveloped and ignorant attempt to recreate the impossible. it just doesn't sit right with me, a lot of the album doesn't sound very good, it's awkward, like someone in school just discovered p-funk and started a cover band but the actual composition, chord progression, production etc was an afterthought to the original impulse to replicate the sound. with all that music nerdery said, i don't think you need to be a music nerd to get that feeling.

probably helps tho.