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Glover’s mic skills have radically improved since the last few outings, and his delivery is quite often formidable. On its own, Because the Internet’s album component breaks a number of Childish Gambino’s poor rap habits. It’s all very ambitious, but experiencing Because the Internet as the artist intended requires an hour of fully plugged in attentive reading, embedded Youtube clip viewing, and listening. Zealots of Stockholm (Free Information)”, songs that are well-timed and appropriate in the context of the multi-platform project but don’t make much sense without the screenplay.

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The third and final acts of the album are ill-served by the hairpin shifts in action they’re meant to soundtrack, and in the process, we get a series of jerky, very literal advance-the-plot numbers like “The Party” and “No Exit” followed by over-long, mournful fare like “I. Unfortunately, as the play begins to lurch with purpose the album resolves to allow the screenplay to do the heavy lifting. Worldstar” begins as a blippy trap number and takes a hard left on a found-sound fight sequence before landing on a psychedelic chamber jazz coda all because of a club night gone wrong in the play’s first act. If you’re fleet enough of a reader, the sequential song prompts in the screenplay reveal the album to be less of a stand-alone release than the full-fledged audio component to a daring multi-platform media project whose audio and literary wings collude to complement and even explain each other. Viewed through the lens of the album and screenplay, Gambino’s pre-release antics may have even been part of a long con to tease the themes of the project out into the real world. The story tracks the Boy’s helpless, irrational descent to his own undoing. The star of Because the Internet is “the Boy,” the future estranged son of Rick Ross who gets his kicks trolling celebrities online and hosting mansion parties that only serve to amplify a nagging loneliness.

He announced a new album, the clunkily titled Because the Internet, and launched into a promotional campaign that included a confessional series of Instagram posts about depression and fear, frank talk about mortality in interviews, an introductory prelude-cum-making-of-featurette titled “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons,” an installation at the new Rough Trade NYC store, and, finally, a 76-page, four-act screenplay that shares a title with the album. The 2012 follow-up mixtape Royalty tried to recover by calling in buddies from Black Hippy, Wu-Tang Clan, and more to boost Gambino’s hip-hop cred, but he ended up getting creamed every step of the way by his more talented friends. It spent more time thumbing its nose at the backpackers, racists, and dismissive women that gouged out the massive chip on Glover’s shoulder than it did, you know, trying to be a good rap album.

Gambino seemed to draft Camp, his nerd rage nadir of a debut studio album, as a piss and vinegar shower for his doubters. But as the beloved “Community” awarded Glover’s musical exploits a higher profile, the pridefully uncool sloganeering of songs like Culdesac’s “Different” crystallized into spite. Gambino later linked up with “Community” composer Ludwig Göransson for Culdesac and EP, proudly twee-as-fuck offerings that pondered Glover’s outsider upbringing over increasingly plush instrumental settings. Early Childish Gambino releases like 2008’s Sick Boi carried the playful “Just fucking around, sorry!” vibe of a rap career started on a lark but buckled under too much squeaky voiced Lil Wayne worship.