Donald Glover's ATLANTA Is Real "Reality" TV

Atlanta is an infinite entendre. The city and its name changes or carries several different meanings depending on who’s speaking.It’s a major American city. It’s the unofficial capital of the South. It’s where Coca-Cola was created. It’s “mecca” for Black folks. It’s where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. It’s where OutKast is from. It has the world’s busiest airport. It’s the “Motown Of The South.” It’s where Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta is based. It’s the last American city to host the Olympic games.

Ah, the 1996 Olympics. Depending on who you ask in “the A” [FYI: Only people who are trying to sound or look cool actually still call it “the ATL”], 1996 was the year that “sh*t changed.”

Atlanta virtually pushed itself out to make space for the rest of the world to come and feel comfortable. Communities were swept away; new buildings took their place. People who didn’t have the right skin complexion for billboards and pamphlets were herded out; people who had the right color complexion [skin wise and pocket wise] were ushered in. Some of the world chose to stay and settle in while the rest of the world left and didn’t leave much behind outside of trash to clean up.

Meanwhile, native Atlantans, especially Blacks were left with questions. For as much as they’d contributed to the city’s image via music [Cameo, Gladys Knight, LaFace Records, SoSo Def Records, Dallas Austin], politics [Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson] and sports [the early-90s Atlanta Braves teams, Deion Sanders, Dominique Wilkins], were they truly viewed as citizens, or just visitors like the people who came and went with the Olympics?

20 years later, Atlanta is undergoing another “sh*t changed” moment with more and more people moving in. For many, the city that was long thought of to be a Black man’s heaven has become somewhat of a Black man’s purgatory; stuck in a space where the “heaven” that was supposedly created for them to flourish is usually only talked about, and the “hell” that had been hidden so well for so long can be seen through their home or car window.

Photo: FX

Donald Glover’s Atlanta shows that purgatory.

His character “Earnest” or “Earn” for short, works a what folks in the A would call “a bullsh*t ass job” at the airport. He still “dates” his baby mama, who still “dates” other dudes. He has a trapper-trying-to-be-rapper cousin who has a video blowing up on the internet and now views as his way to hit a lick. Earn works, but he’s always broke. His baby mama don’t really rock with him like that. He thinks his drug-selling cousin can rap their way to riches. Earn is stuck. Purgatory.

The story he tells is one that is very common in the city. But it’s one that no one really talks about because it’s not glamourous like the reality shows that get filmed in Buckhead, and it’s not gutter like the reality rap videos that get shot off Bankhead. Visitors and show producers aren’t really excited by a story about regular Black people living in a [rumored] Black city actually doing Black sh*t.

“With Atlanta the trap you fall in is people go to the sensational sh*t,” Glover told me at the red carpet screening for the show at the Georgia Aquarium in late-August. “People pay to see that, that sh*t is worth money. I feel like what we did was try to find the ordinary extraordinary. There are famous people who live here, but there are people who work at the airport who are dirt poor, but see rich celebrities constantly in front of them constantly, as if life isn’t weird enough.”

That said, some people thought that it was “weird” that Glover was going to be the “guy” to make a television show about growing up and living in Atlanta. Geographically, he’s from Stone Mountain, a suburb that’s 20 minutes outside of the city. Musically, he doesn’t fall from any established family trees planted by Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin or L.A. Reid. And on some real sh*t, you’ll have a hard time finding an everyday MARTA-riding, American Deli-eating, Greenbriar Mall-shopping Atlantan that could tell you what channel Community came on.

When T.I. starred in ATL, people trusted it because they knew him and felt that he represented the city well. Up to that point T.I. started his career at Atlanta-based LaFace Records, wore throwback Falcons jerseys in his videos, screamed “BANKHEAD” on every other song and dared to clown Jermaine Dupri for simply having the New York-centric words “yo, yo, yo” on “Welcome To Atlanta.” People knew T.I. was from Atlanta and he reminded people he was from Atlanta.

Glover wasn’t made in Atlanta in the same way. He moved to Hollywood to get put on. Then when he started his rap career as Childish Gambino, nothing about his music said “Atlanta.” There were no DJ Toomp beats. Not A-town co-signs. Hell, he even took his music to Funkmaster Flex in NYC to get debuted instead of dropping it off with Greg Street. It wasn’t until Lloyd was featured on his Because The Internet album that any thread of “Atlanta” was visible in his music. Ten months later he dropped his STN MTN mixtape with DJ Drama that featured him rapping over Zaytoven and Mike Will Made It instrumentals previous used by Future and Young Scooter. But even then, name dropping Donald Glover anywhere outside of a coffeeshop or social media was likely to get you crickets in response.

“I never think about that stuff,” says Glover. “I feel like when you start thinking like that, you limit yourself. I try to stay unlimited. I know there are people who are always going to dislike my music, parts of me or all off me. But I try to let the product speak for itself. If an artist is really good, you have no choice but to enjoy their art. Make it undeniable.”

Even the biggest Atlanta stickler can’t deny the authenticity of Atlanta. Sure, there will be some who expect “shawty” to be every other word. Then there are people who may feel that a strip club visit is mandatory in every other episode. Atlanta dares to show different lives moving around in the same city, not just a room with a camera rolling.

Much like how Glover says that people gravitate towards “sensational sh*t” when it comes to Atlanta, another truth is that people also seem to only gravitate to one thing at a time.

If Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Ralph David Abernathy are out marching, people assume that ALL Black Atlantans are meeting at church and then marching and begging police not to beat them down. Never mind the ones who own successful business or simply chose to stay home because they figured going to work paying the bills in their own home were more important than voting for a public official that doesn’t even know where they live, or care how they live. If Lil Jon and Ying Yang Twins are dominating the airwaves, people assume that all Black people are running round with gold grills yelling “awww skeet skeet” and throwing stacks at Magic City. Never mind the ones who just graduated from Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse, Morris Brown College or Spelman and are about to start a new job working at Turner or Delta. If T.I. [Trap Muzik], Jeezy [Trap Or Die] and Gucci Mane [Trap House] are running the streets, people assume that everybody “riding down 285” “refused to get a 9-to-5” like T.I. said on “24s” and started slanging to make ends meet. Never mind the people to make a living slanging papers for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution or slanging boxes at the Post Office. If Future and Young Thug are sipping lean and popping “zans,” people assume that everybody is in the club high as hell. Never mind the enterprising marketing executive who just closed on a new house or the young graphic designer who’s making a killing with their new t-shirt line.

The beautiful thing about Atlanta is that it can be and has always been populated by all of the people mentioned above. It’s just that only the ones with name brands make it to television. Atlanta presents just about every side to the city, sans brand names. In the show we meet the parents who worked to at least get their kid to finish high school. We meet the “baby mama” who is also a school teacher. We see what “the world’s busiest airport” is like for people who just work there. We learn just how special one has to be to get extra sauce on their lemon pepper wings at J.R. Crickets.

In the opening and closing scene of the debut episode many of Atlanta’s worlds intersect in the parking lot of a package store. Upcoming trapper-turned-rapper Paperboy is in his white 4-door Caprice Classic soaking in a life-changing moment, his new self-titled single is getting played on the radio. Caught up in his very newfound celebrity, Paperboy hits a passerby with a classic “ay gul,” hoping that telling her “that’s me on the radio” will get him at least a phone number. Not only does the girl ignore him, her boyfriend kicks the driver’s side mirror off Paperboy’s car. At that point Paperboy reaches for one of his guns, where Glover’s character stops him from “messing up the money.” From there an argument ensues and escalates when the mirror kicker realizes that he’s talking to the Paperboy and changes his mind from being angry about him trying to holler at his girl, to being mad that he makes “garbage” music.

Atlanta is the newest show on FX, a network where currently the longest tenured show, Louie, has only been on for six years. In the past FX was home to game changing dramas like Nip/Tuck, The Shield and Sons Of Anarchy. It’s also been home to a gang of goofy comedies and terrible dramas that didn’t last through two seasons. The fresh, risk-taking nature of the channel is a perfect fit for a show looking to tell a new story about a city that when compared to Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami is still “new” when it comes to how it is portrayed on television.

Your parents may remember shows like Designing Women, which was about a group of upper-class White women running a boutique interior design firm. Your cousin probably watches Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta. Both of them present two extremes with the regular, native Atlantan underrepresented, if represented at all. It almost reminds you of the feeling we explored earlier where original “ATLiens” are indeed treated like visitors.

Hopefully a show like Atlanta hitting the airwaves and showing what real life is like for the people who live there, can be another moment where “sh*t changed.”