Jazz’s corpse has been largely untouched for decades, but the occasional gravedigger always surfaces. Long-lived free jazz drummer Bobby Kapp and pianist Matthew Shipp conjured the entirely-improvised Cactus this year. Dr. Lonnie Smith, the Hammond B-3 P.h.D., dropped the soulful Evolution, his first release for Blue Note in 46 years. The young Canadian jazz band BADBADNOTGOOD drew lines from Roy Ayers to Dorothy Ashby to Madlib on the yet again chronological IV. R&B is in a similar state. Kelela and FKA Twigs still expand the genre’s boundaries, even with the distant, outré blood of Autechre and Oval shattering the typical R&B rhythms; D’Angelo’s Black Messiah was a lighthouse of artistry in the sea of lean and drunken tears of the thousand half-hearted singers polluting the scene. Hell, even Alan Palomo does a good Prince impression. So when Childish Gambino dropped the rapping on two new slick R&B tracks, eyes were raised with anticipation.

Childish Gambino has never been big on my radar, and honestly I think he should stick to acting and stand-up under his real name, Donald Glover. But the singles “Me And Your Mama” and “Redbone” from his new studio album Awaken, My Love! caught my attention. No lazy rapping, pretty decent and soulful vocals, complex musical structures — for the first time in his musical career, Gambino caught my attention. So my question is why? Why, Donny? Why’d you get my hopes up? Why’d you settle for a handful of poorly-executed P-Funk impersonations? ‘Bino certainly has cited Funkadelic as an influence. In fact, it seems like he heard Maggot Brain and tried to recreate it down to the face on the cover.

“Have Some Love” is a painful rip-off of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get To That?” with its ostentatious gospel vocals, acoustic guitar and instantly recognizable drum break. Sleigh Bells pulled from the original song much more gracefully in 2010 and turned it into an anthemic noise pop staple, instead of simply redrawing it with less skill. “Boogieman” recalls a bit of “You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks” and “Super Stupid”, and Glover’s lyrics introduce the “modern revolutionary” aspect of the album. “With a gun in your hand / I’m the boogieman / I’m gonna come and get you” he sings to the police with an ironic role reversal. This aspect extends to an unnecessary amount of paranoia; it permeates on Awaken’s saving grace, “Redbone” (“They gon’ find you… Now don’t you close your eyes”), and the awkward, Monster Mash-tinged “Zombies” (“They can smell your money / And they want your soul”).

“Riot” finds itself in a swaggering groove, varnished with laser sound effects and Glover’s effeminate yelps. It’s tolerable, looking beyond the redundant social activist/pessimist persona he dons (“No good fighting / World, we’re out of captains”). Glover steps into low-key Sly & the Family Stone funk on “Baby Boy”, one of the album’s most enjoyable cuts. The auto-tuned tropical confusion entitled “California” is another step into gimmicky nonsense, furthering the dichotomy between narratives about a lover (like this track) and the social justice anthem he decries. Half of the time on Awaken, Glover’s vocals are drowned out or processed beyond intelligibility (like on “California”). The mixing otherwise is fine, quite punchy and smooth simultaneously in fact, but doesn’t stand out past the irritating Maggot Brain worship the album incessantly exercises. I’ll also attempt to subdue my rage at “The Night Me And Your Mama Met”, the Eddie Hazel “Maggot Brain” solo rip-off plus some monotonous choir singing. The only redemption this track offers is Glover’s absence from it.

Perhaps most insulting of the 11-track, transparent lull of an album Gambino presented is the “Everyone’s out to get me!” attitude. Apparently, despite his George Clinton praise, he never heard Parliament’s “Come In Out Of The Rain”. “When will the people start getting together? Learning to live and love one another?” they sang 46 years ago, advising the black revolution at the time to stop focusing on social warfare. That sentiment was lost over time, unfortunately, and Awaken, My Love! is a terrible mistranslation. You’d do yourself better to cut the middleman and pick up a copy of There’s A Riot Goin’ On and Maggot Brain.

Childish Gambino / Glassnote Records