Atlanta's Donald Glover Wants to Show Viewers "How It Feels to Be Black"

Donald Glover, Community alum, rapper (under the name Childish Gambino) and creator, writer and star of FX's upcoming Atlanta, initially called the comedy a "hip-hop Twin Peaks" -- a description you'll find apt when watching its first funny, trippy episode.

Thanks to the hazy, dream-like imagery director Hiro Murai paints on screen as well as the drifting, wavy quality of the action, Atlanta keeps you suspended in a state somewhere between real and surreal, a very deliberate choice on the part of the creative team.

In the pilot, he's inexplicably home from college, working a soul-sucking menial job and annoying his parents and baby momma Van (Zazie Beetz) with his lack of focus.

When his cousin gains steam as a local rap star Paperboy (Brian Tyree Henry) Earn positions himself as Paperboy's manager and is thrust in the Atlanta rap scene -- and a world of drugs, guns and violence.

There are weird, nonsensical turns too, and times when you're not sure if the homophobia, police brutality or gun violence is intended to make you laugh, cry or what.

Earn, in jail, wonders aloud why a mentally ill man in police custody isn't getting treatment rather than being locked up.