NEWS
Childish Gambino has given a rare performance to celebrate his manager Chad Taylor’s wedding, and ran through a few songs during the newlyweds’ first dance.
In a video captured at the wedding, the happy couple can be seen slowly dancing as Donald Glover and a live band perform his song “24.19,” from his 2020 album 3.15.20.
Taylor has worked with the Because the Internet star since the early 2010s when he began as his tour manager, according to Rolling Stone.
His role later grew to oversee “logistics and execution” for Gambino’s creative camp, known as the Royal family, while he also launched the management company Wolf + Rothstein with Glover’s longtime manager Fam Udeorji.
Donald Glover hasn’t given a proper performance since closing out the 2019 Austin City Limits Festival in Texas. However, the creative polymath did recently appear on Summer Walker’s Clear 2: Soft Life EP.
Not everyone appears to be a fan of Childish Gambino at the moment as Beyoncéseemingly threw some light shade at him during the opening show of her Renaissance World Tour.
“Swarm on these hands, n-gga!” Bey could be heard calling out to the crowd during her performance in Sweden earlier this month, which fans speculated was a reference to Glover’s Amazon Prime Video series Swarm.
Starring Dominique Fishback, Damson Idris and Chloe Bailey, the show follows a young woman who goes to dark, obsessive lengths to defend a pop star whom she idolizes: Ni’Jah, a not-so-subtle fictionalized version of Beyoncé.
Donald Glover made headlines in March after he admitted that he intentionally did not prepare Fishback for her lead role in Swarm.
The multi-hyphenate said in an interview with Vulture that he encouraged the young actress to act like an animal.
“I kept telling her, ‘You’re not regular people. You don’t have to find the humanity in your character. That’s the audience’s job’,” Glover said. “She really was lost a lot of the time.”
He added: “It reminds me of how I have a fear with dogs because I’m like, ‘You’re not looking at me in the eye, I don’t know what you’re capable of.”
The backlash was swift, with many people criticizing Glover’s treatment of Black women in his art in the past.
On AHHCade, PNAU are leaning fully into emotion for their upcoming seventh studio album.
“There’s something deeply connected about music and the path we’ve been on,” PNAU’s Nick Littlemore shares while introducing the new project, which is scheduled to arrive July 31 through Sydney independent label etcetc, under the TMRW Music umbrella.
“We’re creating songs from the heart,” he says. “Even though these tracks are built with electronics and technology, at their core they are emotional expressions. Peter, myself and everyone we worked with wanted to create a feeling of home, whether that’s on the dancefloor or inside the listener’s mind.”
The upcoming record includes the recently unveiled “Tu Corazon (Your Heart)” featuring Mexican rock band The Warning, as well as the energetic new track “Nirvana” with EARTHGANG and sadMONTH, which officially dropped today, May 8.
“Nirvana” pairs PNAU with Atlanta duo EARTHGANG and also marks the first collaboration with sadMONTH, the new creative venture from Littlemore alongside Toronto artist Dom Dias.
Littlemore describes the song as “the beginning of an entirely new chapter. It’s intense, chaotic and taps into a future version of punk electronic music. Expect something restless, rhythmic and completely untamed.”
EARTHGANG added: “With ‘Nirvana,’ we locked into this euphoric and elevated energy together with PNAU and rode that electro wave. Huge love to everyone involved in bringing this track to life and making it hit the way it does.”
Representatives for the group have also hinted that additional unexpected collaborations will be revealed in the near future.
PNAU, made up of longtime friends Littlemore and Peter Mayes, are following up their 2024 release Sambanova. Over the years, the duo have built a career filled with major records and industry recognition. Their global breakthrough came after teaming up with Elton John for the 2012 remix album Good Morning to the Night, which reached No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. They later reunited with Elton for the 2021 remix Cold Heart featuring Dua Lipa, creating one of the biggest worldwide hits of the decade.
To celebrate the release of the new album, PNAU will launch the Australian run of their Nirvana Tour 2026 next month. The East Coast regional dates begin June 19 at Gilligan's in Cairns before finishing July 4 at Woodport Hotel in Erina.
Stream “Nirvana” below.
