Feels Like Summer and Late Capitalism

On September 1, 2018, Ivan Dixon and Greg Sharp released the music video for Childish Gambino's (aka Donald Glover) recent track Feels Like Summer. A low-key animation, the video unites numerous figures in the hip-hop community into the stale and familiar setting of lower middle-class suburbia. It's the neighbourhood of Boyz n the Hood, one of elevated bungalows and screen doors, one that manages to always feel like nowhere no matter what happens there. The neighbourhood is in fact modeled after Atlanta rather than Los Angeles, but what's important is that it conveys the everywhere nowhere-ness of suburbia, rather than depicting an actual place. What I find compelling in the video is its relation to the larger cultural moment within the context of late capitalism.