Cudi then prepped for his debut full-length, the following year’s Man on the Moon: The End of Day, a 58-minute journey of self-reflection. Music label and began work on Ye’s 808s & Heartbreak in 2008, an album that dealt with West’s depression from the death of his mother and the end of his engagement with Alexis Phifer. He was soon signed to the rapper’s G.O.O.D. A few years later, his music landed in the hands of Kanye West. He moved to New York to pursue a career in music in 2004. His mom was a teacher like mine, and his father had passed, as mine would in 2016. Cudi, born Scott Mescudi, bounced around high schools in the suburbs of Cleveland before he was expelled for threatening to punch a principal.
#KID CUDI ALBUMS CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER FULL#
I kept going back to the project’s seventh track, “Day ‘n’ Nite.” The song seemed to speak to what I was dealing with: I was the poor kid of parents who both earned degrees, yet didn’t achieve a grade point average of over 2.0 for a full semester. I got wind of Cudi’s music about a year before, from some homies who insisted I listen to his mixtape A Kid Named Cudi. But for those 45 or so minutes, Cudi’s first two studio albums became a beacon of hope, showing me that I wasn’t alone no matter what I was dealing with. The circumstances made me a recluse, scared to divulge my problems and too afraid to confront them head on. I was in the final two years at Berkeley High School and the product of respected parents, failing to live up to academic expectations, and chronically depressed. I’d periodically hop on the line, retreat to the back, pop on the albums on my iPod Touch, and reflect on my place in life. In the case of Kid Cudi’s first two Man on the Moon projects, it brings me back to 2010, to the 51 AC transit bus line that rode from Berkeley to Oakland. But strictly in terms of art and emotion, Man On The Moon II ends up going much deeper.Music has a way of bringing you back to a moment. Rager is a less radio-friendly album, to the extent that Kid Cudi sacrifices some listenability for his own creative ends. Ultimately Man On The Moon II: The Legend of Mr. The song ends up being all the more terrifying when it becomes apparent that the horror story metaphor isn’t about some sensational fantasy but instead about life. As a result, “Maniac” ends up being one of the album’s darkest and highest quality songs with lyrics depicting a verbal horror story in the most metaphorical of manners.
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The track features indie rap star Cage, who fittingly was admitted into a mental hospital in his early years.
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One of the album’s best songs, “Maniac,” however, operates within the ominous parameters with nothing setting it apart other than sheer quality. The deep unique stylings of a piano in the back of the album’s second song “REVOFEV,” really stands out from the other tracks but never deviates from the dark motif the album takes on. The best examples of this come out in “Erase Me,” featuring Kanye West, which really highlights Kid Cudi’s love to make rock music.
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Originally supposed to be an entirely collaborative album featuring multiple artists, Cudi opted out of this approach in an effort to make the album more personal and true to the original roots of his first installment of Man On The Moon, and it shows.Įven his few collaborative efforts on the album featuring Kanye West, Chip Tha Ripper and Cage, Man On The Moon II gives a different insight into Kid Cudi’s head, providing a much more abstract perspective on Kid Cudi’s problems, utilizing poetics and metaphors to create dark images without directly spelling out his issues as in his previous work.ĭespite the album’s dark atmospheric instrumental swells that emphasize a minimalist music background, the album’s most memorable tracks come in the form of the deviations from that nightmare theme but pop out with a little extra flair. Both are like lucid dreams with dark undertones, with Man On The Moon II crossing into the boundaries of an airy whimsical nightmare. Rager plays essentially the same as his debut album, Man On The Moon: The End of The Day. Kid Cudi’s Man On The Moon II: The Legend of Mr.