Childish Gambino just released his last album. I’m gonna miss him.

It’s like the top of an era. Donald Glover says his latest album, out Friday, “Bando Stone & the New World” is the most recent work of Childish Gambino. and that makes me sad. Childish Gambino is top-of-the-line musical acts of our time. I’m serious. I’m not cool enough to dislike Glover. I still love “Atlanta” which I called the darkest TV show in historyand plenty of of his other projects, reminiscent of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” With Gambino, he combined his musical talent, comedic talent, and perspective on black people in an enchanting way. With Gambino, he really won my heart.

When Gambino first began, I believed it was a funny response to hip-hop. I believed Glover was proving that he could actually rap, which was surprising in a funny way, but at the identical time he was using his Gambino persona to poke fun on the seriousness of hip-hop and attack the concept that he wasn’t really black or that he was some sort of black equivalent of Oreo. He was the king of the Blerds — the black nerds — which was an oxymoron because he was so deep in his mind that he couldn’t be an actual nerd.

I’m still listening to “Campfire” from his 2011 debut album, Camp, at the least once per week. It’s on my gym playlist. “Bonfire” is an incendiary roar that’s funny and sarcastic. It’s a way of poking fun at hip-hop while still coming up with great rhymes. He said, “You told me I should just quit. ‘First of all, you talk like a white guy / Second of all, you talk like you ain’t quit yet.’ / Stepfather of rap, yeah, you hate me, but you’ll respect me.” In these lines, he burns through black self-criticism and self-critique and plays with hip-hop’s variety of metaphors while poking fun on the countless ways rappers proclaim themselves the perfect.

I believed the Gambino thing was a conversation with hip-hop, but then, much more interestingly, it was something completely different. In 2016, we got “Redbone” from Gambino’s third album, “Awaken My Love.” When I first heard it, I used to be shocked. I asked, who did that? I had no idea Glover had such a soulful, funky song in him. “Redbone” is an incredible record. If you’d sneaked it on an old Ohio Players, Parliament or Bootsy Collins album — and even one among Prince’s very early albums — it could be right at home. “Redbone” is not any joke. This is baby-making music. But the lyrics — the message to “stay alert” because individuals are sneaking up on you — suggest that something deeper is happening. Is it telling you to look at out because your partner may be cheating on you, or is it a political message? Both? It’s an exquisite, gripping record that marks a shift away from the goofy Gambino and toward the mature Gambino.

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Of course, the height of the Gambino aesthetic got here in 2018 with the enduring “This is America.” I believe it’s a hip-hop song because a hip-hop song can sound like anything, and he’s principally rapping, nevertheless it’s so different than most hip-hop, definitely different than the hip-hop of, say, “Bonfire.” The artistic growth from “Bonfire” to “Redbone” to “This Is America” is mind-blowing. It’s one other flamable song that’s on my gym playlist.

“This Is America” is a dance-style critique of America. Gambino talks about guns, saying, “This is America / Don’t get caught slipping now,” taking the message we often hear from West Coast rappers — don’t get caught off guard and don’t go outside with no gun, you would possibly get killed. But when a Blood or Crip rapper says it, talking about gangs and the gun craze of their neighborhood, it’s different than a nerdy pop star saying it. When Glover says it, it implies that everyone in America have to be afraid of the gun epidemic. But in his genius, Glover brings the speaker of the song into the image. He says, “Guns in my neighborhood / I got a belt / I gotta wear them.” The song also dives into capitalism and the problem of reparations, but he does it with sparse words. It relies on a variety of short lyrics, bluesy repetitions, and listener interpretation. “This Is America” seems like a song with a hidden message that you’ve gotten to be black to actually understand.

Childish Gambino was beautiful. I’ll miss him.