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Childish Gambino Just Dropped Two Feel-Good Summer Songs

In spite of Drake’s Scorpion, which gave us “Nice For What,” we haven’t exactly had a summer banger yet — a hear-it-out-of-every-car-window jam that bounces off the walls and pavement of the city. Childish Gambino’s two new songs are unapologetically seasonal, with the titles of “Summertime Magic” and “Feels Like Summer.”

The songs were released under the title Summer Pack and will also be on his upcoming fourth album, the first under Donald Glover’s new label Wolf+Rothstein/RCA. The rapper left a mark earlier this year with the release of the “This Is America,” along with a video that captured the absurd turbulence of our current times.

But these two songs are a little more laid-back, made for chilling on the beach and feeling good — feelings I, for one, think we can all use a little more of. “Summertime Magic” is a definite song-of-the-summer contender, “pure soulful summer-crush,” as the Los Angeles Times described it, that’s Caribbean-influenced. Giving us a feeling of chill during a hot, weird summer, it can’t be said that Donald Glover isn’t a man for the people.

This fall, Childish Gambino will tour with Rae Sremmurd and Vince Staples, and he recently that this album will be the last under the Childish Gambino name. After his follow-up to 2016’s Awaken, My Love!, the rapper will sail on to something new. In an interview, he said, “I think endings are good because they force things to get better.”