Donald Glover Spotted In 2004 Beastie Boys Concert Footage
You know how sometimes at weddings they put disposable cameras on all the tables and ask the guests to document their experience? Back in 2004, the Beastie Boys tried something similar but more elaborate during their concert at Madison Square Garden. The group gave camcorders to 50 people in the audience and asked them to film all night. Later, they compiled the footage into the 2006 concert film Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That. As it turns out, Childish Gambino has a cameo in the movie, despite the fact that Donald Glover wouldn’t launch his rap career under that moniker until 2008’s Sick Boi mixtape.
As The A.V. Club points out, a Reddit user discovered a brief appearance by a young man who appears to be Glover in the audience footage from that night at MSG, rapping along to “Three MC’s And One DJ” from 1998’s Hello Nasty. Glover was an NYU student at the time, honing the chops that would get him a gig as a writer on 30 Rock two years later, around the time of the concert film’s release. He seems very enthusiastic, which is in keeping with our own Tom Breihan’s story about Glover careening into his back during a Kanye West/Jay-Z show at an Austin power plant during SXSW.
Check out the footage below.
Now seems like as good a time as any to wonder aloud whether that “final” Childish Gambino album we were promised will actually materialize this year.