The first feature in Ty Dolla $ign appears, dropping his always-incredible multilayered harmonies into the mix to serve as a great complement to Cudi’s more understated, straightforward flow. “Willing To Trust,” however, turns things back around and introduces the album’s best run. That all goes out the window here with one of the year’s most blatantly unmusical tracks on an album this big. Cudi has never been a good singer, but he’s a master at playing to his strengths. ![]() The song is dangerously off-beat, with Cudi straining at the top of his range – there’s no possible way that this wasn’t Cudi messing around in the booth copy-pasted onto a premade beat later. “In Love” takes it further and gets completely unhinged. With bright acoustics and falsetto whoops in the background, the bones of a song are there, but the rest is taken up by baseline, underwritten lyrics and repetitive melodies. Of course, Cudi has repeatedly proven throughout his career that he’s one of the best at doing this, but it’s still incredibly boring to listen to attentively. The former starts to really take on the background-music designation, with Cudi attempting to capture a blissful vibe of new romance more than anything else. The similarly-titled tracks “Ignite the Love” and “In Love” come back-to-back, and they’re also two of the weakest points of the album. Cudi sounds great, so it’s unusual for him to be so washed out and faded into the background. Still, it could have been mixed much better. As most of Cudi’s best moments can sound like they were off-the-cuff – it’s a major reason why he was such an important figure for the breakthrough of Drake-style emotional rap – it’s easy to get lost in his soothing tones. The track “Angel” is a low-key track backed by nothing but a couple heavenly, shimmering synth chords, as Cudi passionately sings through what sounds like a freestyle about a partner’s divine nature. “Do What I Want” runs into a similar issue – hearing Cudi dropping some rap flows, running through some charming vocal inflections, and clearly in a more upbeat and fun-loving place is great, combined with the heavy trap beat and raw guitars of ascendant production duo Take a Daytrip – but the chorus is repetitive, obnoxious and feels off-key. Locked into what works for him at this point, as the track continues it begins to feel a little like he’s doing what he thinks we want to hear, touching on his narrative beats and melodic style with about 70% of the vigor as usual – the chorus especially is a little undercooked for someone renowned for them. Rager on his last album two years ago, it’s additionally elevated by an instrumental of trap psychedelia and some engaging, static-sounding percussion noises. ![]() Speaking about self-love after the defeat of his decade-long doubt-casting rival Mr. ![]() Entergalactic has its high points, but for the most part it feels a little bit like an AI-generated Kid Cudi album, hitting all the expected points without as much of the deep, human vulnerability that makes him so many people’s favourite artist.Īfter an expectedly cosmic instrumental opening theme – featuring someone other than Cudi humming for once – the project kicks off with “New Mode.” Drawing us into his world with a series of those classic hums once again, the track is catchy, charismatic, up-front and confessional like all of his best ones. While a lot of what gives Cudi such a dedicated and passionate fanbase worldwide still appears across the project, it’s still a soundtrack to a narrative film – meaning that for the most part, we’re getting all the classic Cudi-isms, just toned down and designed to blend seamlessly into the background. ![]() The soundtrack to a new Netflix animated special dedicated to his late friend, fashion designer Virgil Abloh, the project comes in the wake of a resurgence in both Cudi’s popularity and musical quality following a stint in rehab and a mental health breakthrough. Flirting with a musical retirement – though we know how often to trust those lately – and now on his eighth solo full-length, the endlessly influential Kid Cudi has dropped a new multimedia project in a career full of multihyphenate ventures.
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