Here are my three favorite things about the new Childish Gambino album, Awaken My Love, in ascending order:
3. The music itself, judged strictly on its own merits.
2. The greater overall concept of an artist who came up in a milieu of synthesizer-based hip-hop trying, however hubristically, to replicate the greasy psychedelic genius of peak-era Funkadelic.
1. Donald Glover's excellent woke mustache.
The woke 'stache was basically invented for people like Donald Glover, a media star with enough mainstream appeal to have once had his name thrown around as a possible post-Tobey Maguire Spider-Man who's also spent the past year establishing his bohemian bonafides with not only Awaken, but his dreamy, socially-conscious dramedy Atlanta and a phone-free multimedia festival in the California desert.
While each woke mustache is capable of communicating a complex message about the goals and motivations of the person wearing it, all of them have the same fundamental theme at their heart: that the celebrity they're attached to is done churning out distractions for the rubes and is ready to start getting real. (And also that there's a 200 percent increased chance that they'll start appearing in public shirtless.)*
The tradition of using facial hair as a form of protest against the status quo goes back millennia, but the modern woke mustache as we know it debuted in 1967, when the Beatles rolled out their DayGlo-Victorian Sgt. Pepper's look with newly sprouted 'staches all around. "These aren't the same silly lads you thought you knew," the mustaches said. "They're men now. They've been to India. They've done drugs."
The mustache was immediately seized on as a cheap and easy way for famous men to advertise that they were down with the counterculture. Hippified staches sprouted across the music biz, from Vegas lounge singers going through brief folk-rock phases to former child stars turned psychedelic soul gurus.
In Hollywood, Robert Redford used one to tamp down his distractingly perfect movie star face when he wanted to be taken more seriously. Dennis Hopper grew one for Easy Rider that seemed to droop from the weight of its own wokeness.
The woke mustache is distinct from its close relative, the woke beard. The beard suggests an artist doing his time in the wilderness, digging deep in search of some essential knowledge about himself or his craft or the nature of existence. It hints at, if not madness, then at least difficulty staying on deadline and under budget.
The mustache, on the other hand, makes it clear that while the owner's wised up to the game, they're still willing to meet the players halfway. The woke mustache is open to taking your meeting. It'll do a Disney movie. It may be aware of the bullshit nature of celebrity, but it's not crazy enough to walk away from the perks of being one.
It can be hard to pick out in a sea of quasi-ironic celebrity facial hair, but the woke mustache is starting to make a comeback. Glover's nailing it. James Franco's mustache couldn't not be woke, since it's attached to James Franco. Brad Pitt's been wearing variations on the theme off and on for like a million years. Jaden Smith's wispy upper lip is a woke 'stache still in the process of manifesting itself.
The woke mustache's popularity peaked during such a troubled time that even the most cornball celebrities couldn't help but get politicised. Considering the way things have been going recently, it's not surprising that it would come back into style now.
*Don't tell me he grew the mustache for his gig playing Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Star Wars prequel centered around a young Han Solo. The photo in the Tweet above predates not only the filming but the casting announcement, and also that is definitely not a Lando mustache.
