When Gillum was in the first grade, his mother left his father (who is an associate professor of art at CSU Fresno).[2] Gillum and his younger brothers, James and Noah, moved in with their grandparents in Berkeley, California. They later moved to North Oakland, although Gillum continued to attend school in Berkeley. When Gillum was around 12 years old, his mother began dating a woman named Melissa Mills.
This initially confused and embarrassed Gillum, who could not comprehend the change in his mother's personal life. However, as he came to accept Mills as a part of the family and grew close to her, Mills became depressed due to drugs she was taking to treat her manic depressive disorder. One day, Gillum came home to find Mills dead from an overdose. He details this experience in the last verse of "Everything Will Be OK" on his second album, When It's Dark Out.[3]