On Tuesday (April 4), GQ unveiled a new cover story with Donald Glover, who opened up about everything from his past achievements to what fans can expect from him in the future. Currently, the Stone Mountain star is building Gilga, which is described as “his new production company/incubator/cultural library.” One of the projects being cultivated within that entity is a short film that will come courtesy of Malia Obama, the daughter of Former President Barack Obama. Reportedly, it would be her second collaboration with Glover following her contribution to the Amazon Prime series “Swarm.”
“The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” said the “Atlanta” talent in regard to mentoring Malia. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”
Fam Udeorji, one of Glover‘s creative partners at Gilga, also chimed in on Malia’s inclusion.
“Understanding somebody like Malia’s cachet means something,” he explained. “But we really wanted to make sure she could make what she wanted — even if it was a slow process… It’s more about diversity of thought than just, like, diversity for optics.”
Another notable moment from the GQ feature was when the topic moved to “This Is America,” a groundbreaking single that many considered to be a commentary on this country’s current issues. As it turns out, the song was originally meant to be a diss record for another hip hop peer.
“I had the idea three years before [it was released]… The idea for the song started as a joke. To be completely honest, ‘This is America‘ — that was all we had was that line,” he admitted. “It started as a Drake diss, to be honest, as like a funny way of doing it. But then I was like, this s**t sounds kind of hard though. So I was like, let me play with it.”