“Kids See Ghosts” belongs in its own dimension. Fusing elements of contemporary hip-hop, grunge, soul and experimental hip-hop, this project shares elements of each individual artist’s previous work, but it is in no way comparable. This thing is a psychedelic masterpiece, with both artists bringing out the best in each other. So how would a collaborative album between these two enigmas pan out? Actually pretty good. Now in 2018, the two rappers combine to form, “Kids See Ghost,” both the album’s title and supergroup’s name.
Kid Cudi on the other hand, is responsible for some of the decade’s most underwhelming and unbearable albums such as, “WZRD” and, “Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven.” Despite this, he has maintained a very loyal fanbase. The man is responsible for some of hip-hop’s most legendary albums in recent history. Kids See Ghosts, both freewheeling and focused, suggests that he may indeed be on to something.Former enemies, Kanye West and Kid Cudi, team up for the collaborative project of the year and possibly the decade.Īs stated in my last review, Kanye West really needs no introduction. But his statements so far suggest that Kanye wants its legacy defined by playful experimentation and unpretentious intuition.
#Cudi montage instrumental full#
The full story of Kanye’s Wyoming era isn’t yet told (new albums from Nas and Teyana Taylor will theoretically close things out later this month).
As such, Kanye feels uncommonly focused and Cudi’s impulses-his last album was nearly ninety minutes long -are reined in considerably. The seven-song format provides a suitably narrow scope it’s easy to imagine something getting lost in a project twice as long. While Kanye’s lyrical performances are a marked improvement over his slapdash ye verses, Ghosts works best when he allows room for Cudi to shine. His strengths are limited, but his hums and warbles perform some heavy lifting here all the same, more aligned with the moody pop hooks of Man on the Moon than the stuffy dorm room experimentalism of Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven. But Kids See Ghosts is quietly dominated by a clear-minded, rejuvenated Cudi. Some of the album’s most progressive moments are pure Kanye (such as the Kurt Cobain sample at the core of “Cudi Montage,” or “4th Dimension,” which wields an eerie, warped Louis Prima Christmas song as its backdrop). Ghosts may not be about mental illness, exactly, but it’s colored by it in fascinating ways. Where ye failed to address this tension in a cogent way, this record uses it as subtext. Kanye’s recent stream of cloyingly upbeat tweets hinted that he’s achieved a certain inner peace, but ye ’s aimless ramblings on suicide and murder suggest something very different. As a listener, it’s difficult to detach this from both artists’ ongoing struggle with mental health. As such, Ghosts often toes an interesting line, thick with atmosphere but ripe with positivity. Kanye’s instrumentals are cold and nightmarish, even when the lyrical content (such as the zen ruminations of “Reborn” and “Feel the Love” ) skews toward the uplifting. Ghosts lacks the tight precision of Pusha T’s Daytona, the first album of the bunch, but it’s a notable improvement over ye, Kanye’s eighth solo album, which was fractured and noncommittal, unsure of what it wanted to be or how it wanted to be it.īut where ye lacked an identity, Ghosts has one that’s lucid and engaging. It marks the halfway point of Kanye’s ambitious Project Wyoming, in which he and friends have retreated to the mountains of Wyoming to craft five different albums with seven songs each. Īs such, the very existence of Kids See Ghosts, the new collaborative album between Kanye and Cudi, is itself something of a minor miracle. In the midst of this, the relationship between the two longtime collaborators ( since 2008’s 808s and Heartbreak ) had devolved into petty, bitter public sniping. West was hospitalized just one month later for “temporary psychosis” shortly after the Saint Pablo Tour derailed.
Cudi checked himself into rehab, plagued by depression and suicidal thoughts. Late 2016 marked a bleak time for both Kanye West and Kid Cudi. Kids See Ghosts Kids See Ghosts G.O.O.D./DEF JAM 7/10
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