Donald Glover had two conditions with FX for his writing room: that the entire group of writers be African-American and he didn't want an on-set office in favor of having the writers meet at his house and work on material there. FX immediately told Glover they were fine with both ideas.
A key scene in the pilot has Glover's Earn character talking to a native Atlantan whose accent makes it very hard to understand what he's saying. Glover wanted this scene to be given focus because it reflected the homogenization of Atlanta, noting that in 7 years a visitor to the city wouldn't be able to find someone who talked like that guy.
Donald Glover stated in an interview that part of why he did the show was that he wanted to show white people things they didn't know about black culture. He also said he wanted to avoid race-based "clapter", a term coined by Seth Meyers referring to politically/racially-charged material that people laugh at because it's politically correct but isn't actually funny.
Donald Glover has had a contentious view of FX since the process of bringing "Atlanta" to air began. Among other things, Donald has said that he "Trojan-horsed" the cable network by pitching the show as a sitcom in the mold of "Friends" and then making a much more dramatic and serious show that dealt with serious issues to African-Americans, and Donald's brother Steven said that the Glovers owe FX "nothing" because the network didn't embrace the series idea until Donald became better-known. Despite this, FX executives said they were happy with the show, and FX President John Landgraf actually encouraged Donald to "lean into" some of the areas of the show that the Glovers themselves thought were "weird."
In the beginning of the episode, when Paper Boi gets into an altercation, someone in the background yells "Worldstar!" Not only is this the title of one of Donald Glover's rap songs, but it is a callout to the website WorldstarHipHop.com, where people post videos of fights.