One giant leap
Album: ‘Man on the Moon: The End of Day’
Artist: Kid Cudi
Genre: Alternative hip-hop
Sounds like: A mix between John Legend and Kanye West over electronic production
90 Decibels
Scott Mescudi is a genuine, down-to-earth scholar of music who, with his debut album ‘Man on the Moon: The End of Day,’ is trying to tell his own story.
Kid Cudi, Mescudi’s persona and stage name, is the tragic hero.
Through his album we learn Mescudi’s story is compelling. One fit for the epic, genre-bending album it is told in. This is the 25-year-old’s pseudo-biography, where his tales spread across a collection of nightmares and dreams. The album combines several music styles to create an audiobook that’s separated into five different acts, much like a play.
It’s a throwback album, in the sense that it must be heard from beginning to end to be appreciated. Yet at the same time, it provides us with a slight glimpse into the future of not only hip-hop but music as a whole.
The album starts with the intro song ‘In My Dreams.’ The track serves as an awakening, yet seems to lull the listener to sleep – a deep sleep explored throughout the rest of the album. From then on, Kid Cudi’s label-mate, Common, provides narration.
On ‘Soundtrack 2 My Life,’ Cudi plays off Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ with the album’s opening lines, ‘I got 99 problems, and they all b*tches.’ The track is epic in its sound with a methodical flow as Cudi tells us about his childhood over futuristic keyboard tones.
‘Solo Dolo (Nightmare),’ the opening track of the ‘Rise of the Night Terrors’ act, is another highlight of the album. It sounds as if it’s on life support, with violin plucks and keyboard strokes creating heartbeat-like pulses. It is a haunting song with a slow-brooding flow that accompanies Cudi’s careful diction and has the ability to scare his fans. In the darkest song on an album full of nightmares, Cudi is Mr. Solo Dolo, a lone soul.
Cudi calls the album’s next track, ‘Heart of a Lion,’ this generation’s ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ But it is much, much darker, ‘No I’m not no loser/ Won’t see you in hell,’ sings Cudi. In the context of the album, the song is still spooky, but following ‘Solo Dolo’ it serves as a glimpse out of Cudi’s nightmares.
We are then launched into the album’s third act, ‘Taking a Trip,’ thanks to Cudi’s hit that put him on the mainstream map, ‘Day N Nite.’ The flow in this act, which has no narrator, almost works better. Right in the middle of the album’s 15 songs, it serves as the deepest slumber in Cudi’s dream.
At the start of Act IV, ‘Stuck,’ Common brings listeners to a place in Cudi’s ‘wildest dreams.’ Almost a boomerang-sounding transition brings us back to another nightmarish song in ‘Alive,’ where, under electronic duo Ratatat’s bloopy beat, Cudi sounds almost like a ghoulish werewolf. He sings: ‘Every time the moon shines I become alive.’
‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ the album’s best track, starts out with a Ratatat beat where our tragic hero sounds like he is marching. The indie group MGMT, which also helped produce the song, hops on the hook. Though they are faintly heard, their influence is felt.
The best minute of the album comes at a point when Cudi barely speaks as Ratatat’s guitar solo and hazy trippy beat fades in and out.
The album’s final track, ‘Up Up & Away,’ is laced with acoustic guitar strums as the album ends on a fitting note. The tragic hero has escaped the night terrors as he sings to himself ‘Wake up wake up wake, wake up.’ Suitably, the hook on the last song sums up the album, and Cudi’s realist mentality, to perfection.
The ‘Man on the Moon’ is different. Cudi is here to fuse genres. Here, perhaps changing the game, and bringing it to another level.
‘I’ll be up, up and away/ up, up and away/ cause in the end they’ll judge me anyways so, whatever.’
After all is said and done, Mescudi is just being himself.
Published on September 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm
